Digital Arts Service Corps - survival guide

The DASCorps Survival Guide: Strategic Planning

Bill Brown — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:04:22 +0000

At some point during your VISTA year you may asked to take part in or prepare a section for your organization’s strategic planning. You may even be asked to coordinate it as past VISTAs have been. Or your organization may not even have a plan past the next 3 months. This section is an introduction to the concepts and methods of Strategic Planning you may have to use during your service year.

What is Strategic Planning?
Strategic planning is typically a 1-3 year forecast of what the organization will look like and how it will “get there”. In the case of nonprofits, especially over the last several years, strategic planning has become key to being more "competitive" within the social service sector as funding is dries up for an ever increasing population of nonprofit organizations.

When is the right time to plan?
- There are no major professional or personal conflicts between executives or board members
- The executive director and/or board president are committed to planning
- There are enough resources and time to devote to the process
- There are no major decisions or organizational chaos in the next several months that could undermine the process (i.e. leadership changes)
- Your organization has been operating to several years
- Your organization is committed top-down to implementing any and all strategies developed

Where to Plan
Strategic planning can occur over the course of an organizational retreat where board members, directors, and staff come together for a day or weekend to plan out their future. These retreats usually happen off-site at hotels, restaurants, etc. and are reasonably well catered (or should be!). However, the plan needs to be revisited, revised, and evaluated throughout the year on a regular basis.

Start BIG go small
The strategic planning process typically starts from the big picture (Vision/Mission) and drills down to the most practical action steps (Objectives) needed to fulfill the plan. Each stage in the process determines the shape and detail of the next stage.

The strategic planning process is framed by three key questions:

Where have you been? (What do we do/have we done?)
Where do you want to go? (What will we do/want to do?)
How do you get there? (How will we accomplish that?)

Where have you been?
To know where you want to go you first have to know where you’ve been as an organization. To start, evaluate performance in the last year. Look at both successes and failures and try to understand why in each specific goal your organization did or did not succeed.

If work is not well documented, you can create surveys for staff and/or the community you serve to better understand your organization’s achievements or lack-there-of. Bad news usually never flows up, so your executive staff may not even be aware of certain problems. Anonymous surveys may get at some of these unsaid issues.

Looking back is also a good opportunity to revisit your organization’s mission statement. Good questions to ask when refocusing your mission statement include:

What is the purpose of the nonprofit (this is usually the Vision statement)?
What actions are the nonprofit going to take to achieve this vision?
Who is going to benefit from these actions?

Where do you want to go?
Now that you now where you’ve been, it’s time to look at where your organization wants to go. Before you jump right into defining goals, you first should define all the factors that go into the future success or failure of your organization. The SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) Analysis does this very well. By breaking down both internal and external factors that influence your organization’s growth.

Another great framework to explore the external influences on your organization is the PEST (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological) Analysis. Sometimes added to this are also legal, education, and even environmental influences. Keeping all these external factors in mind is especially critical to nonprofits that work in and impact nearly all these external variables.

How will you get there?
So you know where your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats lie, but now what? It’s time to make your SWOT analysis actionable by putting them in a new chart that pits your strengths to your threats, your weaknesses with to opportunities, etc.

Here are some ways of how this might work using the previous SWOT example. Note that each idea that comes out of this analysis can be categorized as a “Goal”:

By pairing up with other local nonprofits (Opportunity) you can collaborate on projects which will decrease the workload on your staff (Weakness)
Since your last initiative was successful (Strength), you can market this to foundations that now could potentially fund you (Opportunity) while also using your strong board (Strength) to make contacts within those foundations

The Final Product
With goals developed from looking at your SWOT and from staff/director/board/community input, you can now begin the process of further breaking down the plan from organizational goals to specific objectives and next actions. Without objectives and next steps, your strategic plan will be highly ineffective towards reaching goals.

The easiest way to lay out objectives in detail is to give each one to the person whose role it is to complete it and have them generate all the next actions. At this point in your strategic planning process, you begin to find overlap with project management, as each objective becomes more-or-less a separate project.

A finalized strategic plan includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Vision & Mission Statements
Long-term Strategies
Targeted Client/Community Profiles (not discussed in this session)
Stakeholder Analysis (not discussed in this session)
SWOT Analysis
Strategic Objectives for Goals
Next Actions and Steps for Each Objective
Financial Projections (VISTAs almost never engage with these)

Last Minute Tips
Here are some common problems people run into during planning or implementing a strategic plan:

No plan for implementation
No point person to continually evaluate plan’s implementation
No one communicates or disseminates the plan to the entire organization
Getting stuck in the day-to-day and losing sight of long-term goals
The plan is never integrated or looked at as part of the day-to-day
Strategic planning and evaluation occurs once every year or two
No one is accountable for their own objectives or next actions

Further Resources
Strategic Planning for Nonprofit Organizations. Allison, Michael. Wiley Publishing, Inc. 2003.
Strategic Planning for Dummies. Olsen, Erica. Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Alliance For Nonprofit Management
Free Management Library/Management Help

The DASCorps Survival Guide: Social Entrepreneurship

Bill Brown — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:55:42 +0000

What is Social Entrepreneurship?
Social Entrepreneurship is when a social issue, problem, or inequity is recognized and a venture is developed to solve or alleviate. At the center of Social Entrepreneurship is the idea of the social value proposition, which is the bottom-line for social entrepreneurs. This is opposed to the financial or monetary bottom-line that is at the center of typical business entrepreneurship.

What does it take to be a Social Entrepreneur?
To be a Social Entrepreneur you have to have a massive quantity of skills to bring to bear on the unique challenges posed by working in the social sector. Luckily if you’ve been going through this book and actively participating in training sessions, you already have been exposed to most of the necessary skills and know-how to get started.

There are two key qualities that make up a successful social entrepreneur. The first is knowledge of their field/industry/sector. To start up a successful enterprise, the entrepreneur must have the experience and knowledge to understand exactly what’s needed to start and grow. This know-how includes knowledge of their customers/community, current key players, others doing the same work, supply sources, and what types of people/professionals to get on board.

Another key characteristic of a budding entrepreneur is to already be established, well known, and have a multitude of contacts within their field/industry/sector. Much more so than working in the private sector or for the government, the social sector forms many alliances and partnerships between organizations. Thus, there is a huge reliance upon networking, making connectedness a prerequisite. Also, having a strong reputation is immensely important.

Here are some of the distinct issues and challenges faced when acting as an entrepreneur within the social sector:

Social need far exceeds resources no matter how much funding you receive (makes scaling very difficult)
Pay and wages for employees is often “below-market” compared to other sectors
Need to form alliances with other organizations and nonprofits to achieve social mission (as opposed to competitive private enterprise where alliances are rarely made)
Fragmented funding streams (foundation grants, federal funding, private donors) make sustainable and consistent funding very hard to achieve
Difficulty in determining and assessing social value bottom-line as opposed to a private/market monetary bottom-line
Bad performance often goes unaddressed while high performance is rarely commended in the social sector

Examples of Social Entrepreneurship
Each organization where DASCorps VISTAs serve are Social Entrepreneurship ventures. They have seen a need or gap in their communities and created an organization that works to solve or alleviate it.

There is a large world-wide movement of non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) who are global social entrepreneurs, working to solve health, educational, economic, and other issues. The most lauded among these is Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus who founded the Grameen Bank, which grants microloans (also known as microfinance or microcredit) to people with no collateral who need just a few dollars to buy supplies to begin new businesses or ventures in developing countries.

Defining Your Venture
It’s time to consider being a social entrepreneur when you’ve figured out a new approach to a social issue or when you’ve found an innovation to old methods of addressing a social issue. And it is definitely time to become one when you have the drive and passion to be the change agent who researches, implements, and spreads your enterprise.

After you’ve got the initiative to start your own social entrepreneurial project you’ll need to think, plan, and strategize thoroughly. One tried and true method to do so is to create Logic Models.

Logic Models
One great way to begin understanding all the in’s and out’s of starting up and achieving your social mission is to form a “Logic Model”. Logic Models allow for better understanding your social entrepreneurship project/program by conceiving from “inputs” all the way through to “impacts”. These models also help you to look critically at any assumptions you might be making before starting.

Logic Models progress in a causal chain: Inputs (staffing, resources, money, etc.) lead to Activities (community organizing, running programs, building online communities, etc.) lead to Outputs (projects completed, completed hours of programming, services delivered, etc.) lead to Outcomes (knowledge and skills learned, attitudes changed, practices changed, etc.) lead to Impacts (system level changes, changes in the broader community, organizational changes, policy changes, etc.).

The further you get away from Inputs towards Impacts the ability to control and manage at an organizational level decreases at each stage. Additionally, the time it takes for effects to occur increases the further away from ‘Inputs’ you get, i.e. it takes longer to go from Outcomes to Impacts than it does from Inputs to Activities.

Evaluation also becomes more difficult the closer you get towards Impacts, i.e. measuring Outcomes and Impacts is much more complex and difficult than being able to measure your organizational Inputs and Activities.

What should be lined up to start?
For a full-blow organization starting up, be it nonprofit or for-profit, there are several key components to flesh out so you can establish the vision, scope, growth, sustainability, and future of your organization. This is otherwise known as your Business Plan.

By documenting these components you will be able to get potential Board members, funders, and supporters on-board and on the same page very quickly. If you’ve completed a Logic Model, then most of this process should be filling in the details.

Here is a list of some of those pieces:

Vision/Mission Statements
Staff/Founder Bios (who is your team doing the work?)
Market/Competitive Analysis (who is doing similar work in the same field?)
Financial Projections
Funding Plan
Product, Service, or Programming Descriptions
Marketing Plan
Strategic Plan

Fiscal Sponsorship
If you find yourself unready to commit to starting a private company or a nonprofit for your social entrepreneurship undertaking, consider using already established nonprofit organizations that would be willing to work with you on establishing and funding your idea.

Fiscal sponsorship has many benefits such as testing out whether or not your idea is viable in a real-world scenario, being able to apply immediately for foundational or government funding under your sponsors nonprofit name and reputation, seeing what it would realistically take to operationalize your idea, and also giving you the time to properly set-up your organization while still getting “the work” done and, hopefully, getting paid.

The benefit to organizations that act as fiscal sponsors includes being able to add supplementary or complimentary programming to their activities, grow alliances within the sector (if you establish a new nonprofit), receive portions of grants received, and create relationships with new funders or strengthen relationships with existing ones.

As a VISTA, you should be continually establishing contacts and strengthening the relationship with your host organization throughout your year. Always keep in mind that if you have an idea or an initiative you want to try to test out and get funded, then you may want to approach your host organization or other nonprofit contacts you have to see if any would want to be fiscal sponsors. However if you do find a fiscal sponsor, make sure the agreement between you both is clear, documented, and legal.

Logistics of Starting Up a Nonprofit
Starting up a nonprofit is a multistep process that takes a great deal of time. However, thousands of nonprofits start up each year, so it can’t be that hard! (Note: as with everything else in this book, none of this should be construed as legal advise)

Leverage Those Contacts!
Before you being your foray into legal documentation and filings, make sure you find and have a lawyer to contact, if necessary, throughout the process. You should also look into getting an accountant or someone who knows how to set up simple bookkeeping. Around the time of finding a lawyer and an accountant, open up a bank account for your organization with a bank that handles small NPO’s.

At this point you should also begin recruiting potential Board members. Having a Board in place is a prerequisite for filing to become a nonprofit so it’s better to start sooner than later after you’ve begun filing out all the forms. Use as any contacts as you have from your VISTA service year as well as any previous or outside contacts to recruit and select Board membership from.

Legal Documents and Filings (nobody enjoys this)
Hopefully by this point you will have completed a Logic Model so you can better understand exactly what it is your seeking to do from start to finish (inputs to impacts). With a fleshed out idea in hand, start to think of a name for your NPO. The name should reflect your mission or vision or activities.

With your name selected, check with for your state’s regulations on reserving a corporation name. Often these are found in the State Secretary’s website usually in the Corporations Division. It is a short form that costs around $30 to file (depending on your state).

Next on the list it to establish your Bylaws, which is going to be an exhaustive process that will take many hours. You must research samples, templates, and any other resources you can find to ensure your Bylaws are accurate and will pass state and IRS inspection as a nonprofit. There is no specific form to fill out for these, but there are preferred formats to use. Again, research and find samples. Bylaws typically have no filing fee as they are sometimes attached to the Articles of Incorporation and to the IRS Form 1023.

Another form to be obtained at the state level is your Articles of Incorporation form (again likely found on the State Secretary’s website). This is a lengthier form that requires you to state explicitly your purpose, activities, that you’re seeking nonprofit status, and who your initial staff/Board members are. Filing your Articles of Organization costs several hundred dollars (typically $200-$300 depending on your state).

After you’re officially recognized as a corporation in your state, you need to get an Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the federal government. This is another fairly easy process to complete as the IRS has enabled it to be submitted online. You must have an EIN to apply for 501(c)(3) public charity status from the IRS since it will act as your tax ID.

Next is The Big One, the IRS Form 1023. This is by far the most complicated, confusing, frustrating, and time-consuming form you will have to file in this process. This form enables your nonprofit to receive official 501(c)(3) status. Once filed, it takes between 2-6 months for IRS to grant you 501(c)(3) status. This process can become drawn out if your Form 1023 is not thorough or clear enough for the IRS.

While you can fill the Form 1023 out yourself, it is not recommended. When you get to this form, it’s a good time to contact the lawyer you’ve hopefully already secured. Most lawyers will have Form 1023 templates all setup and ready to fit to your specifications so it is a simple (but expensive) way to fill it out. If you decide to fill it out without a lawyer, consult as many books and how-to’s as possible. See Further Resources below for more resources on this.

The cost of filing the Form 1023 is high at $750 if your organization will exceed $10,000 in gross income annually over four year. If your organization will make less than $10,000 annually, then the cost of filing is $300.

Altogether, the cost of starting up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit generally ranges from $1000-$2000 (depending on state filing costs and whether you seek legal council during the process).

You’re not through with the Government yet
After you incorporate your organization and receive your 501(c)(3) public charity status from the IRS, there are several reports and forms you must fill out every year in order to maintain your nonprofit status.

One form is the IRS Form 990, which must be filled out each year to document financial information to make sure nonprofit public charity status is not being abused. Also, your organization will likely have to file an annual report with your state that details Board Membership and any organizational changes. There may be fees to submit required annual reports.

Parting Words
It is the sincere hope of those of us at Transmission Project that your VISTA year will go a long way to instilling the entrepreneurial spirit in you. It is also hoped that this book and your training sessions will give you the knowledge, tools, and understanding to be a successful social entrepreneur in the future.

Further Resources
Mancuso, Anthony. How To Form a Nonprofit Corporation. Nolo, 2007.

Wei-Skillern, Jane, Austin, James E., Leonard, Herman, and Stevenson, Howard. Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector. California: Sage Publications, 2007.

W.K. Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Development Guide. 2004.

IRS Information and Forms related to Nonprofits

Logic Model for Social Entrepreneurship
Map out your venture idea in the logic model below, defining the aspects of each stage.

The DASCorps Survival Guide: Event Planning

Bill Brown — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:53:27 +0000

At some point during your VISTA year your agency might need to announce itself to new consumers, engage with the community, or attract/retain funders. All of these actions and more might require an event. And you might be called upon to head up such an event. You will need to use event planning techniques for such an occasion.

What is Event Planning?
Event planning is the process of planning a festival, ceremony, competition, party or convention.

Step 1: Define Purpose of Event
Determine if the purpose of the vent is worth the time, effort, and resources needed for an event. Ask if an event is the right tool for communication for the purpose. Review if the type of event matches the purpose.

Step 2: Goals of the Event
Once you have determined that an event is the best tool for the desired action, you should define the goal of the event. Try to define the goal as some measurable outcome, such as number of people in attendance.

Step 3: Budget the Event
Determine how much your organization is willing/able to pay for the event. Review revenue opportunities as well as expenses.

Keep in mind if the event is a fundraiser or should produce enough revenue to break even from expenses. Partner contributions should also be factored in, along with donations from local, state and national government.

Call vendors and ask about pricing, and inquire about non-profit pricing. Research if donations to your organization are tax deductable.

If the event has been done before, ask to see the budget and vendor list to help guide your plans.

Step 4: Consider Logistics
When deciding on where to host the event, keep these things in mind (also keep in mind budget for event):

Size of space
Lighting
Parking
Electrical Supply
Computer/Internet Access
Electrical Outlets
Setup Area
Food Storage/Preparation Areas
Cleanup Procedure
Pre-Event Access to Space
Cancelation Procedure
Handicapped/Disability Access
Public Transportation Access
Child Care Resources

Research all special licenses and/or permits that might be involved. Contact city government and local law enforcement and event venue. Some areas that should require some research are:

Alcohol
Food
Live/Loud Music
Sports Activities
Monetary transactions/Solicitation
Use of Public Space
Law enforcement after hours/amount of people
Fire codes
Liability insurance (Organization & Event Venue)

Step 5: Select Date/Time
When selecting the date and time of the event, there are many factors involved.

Internally, check to see availability of staff to participate in the event. Consult board of directors of their availability to both participate and fundraise for the event. Also check with volunteer availability, too.

Do an environment scan and determine if there are any conflicts with the proposed date/time, including:

Other scheduled events,
Non-traditional holidays
Work/school schedules
Public transportation schedules
Cultural norms

Remember: reviewing date/time might actually lead you to new partners for your event, such as schools, churches, and neighborhood organizations.

Step 6: Create Checklist/Project Timeline
Set up a checklist/project timeline, with specific tasks that must be accomplished by specific dates with specific roles for staff and volunteers.

Some of the things to keep in mind are:

Publicity
Catering
Entertainment/Speakers
Decorations
Audio/Visual
Overnight Accommodations
Transportation
Contracts
Finalized Agenda/Program
Confirm Attendees
Materials for Event
Name Badges
Signage
Shipping to Event Location
Set-Up
Reconfirm Details

Step 7: Plan Publicity
Plan your publicity and community outreach. Use agency partners and your board of director’s contacts. Determine if you need to adjust budget for publicity costs, such as printing, ad buys and media (cds, video tape).

Media:
- Radio (community/non-profit announcements; non-profit advertising; on-air interviews)
- Television (community spots; interested parties that have a certain "beat' they cover and might want to videotape the event; on-air interview)
- Newspaper, ("beat" reporter; columnist interested in the issue, community event/meetings section)
- Internet/Blogs (your own website, partner website, special website for the event?, bloggers interested in the issue/event, message boards, craigslist, email list, e-newsletter)

Produced Materials:
- CDs
- Video Tape
- Internet Video (YouTube, Agency Website-Hosted Video)
- MP3s
- Fliers
- Press Release
- One sheet for event and agency
- Invitations
- Newsletter

Community Outreach (where you might place materials and make in-person announcements)
- Church
- Schools
- Health Clinics/Doctors/Dentists
- Bookstores
- Restaurants
- Local/State office buildings
- Grocery Stores
- Library

Step 8: Evaluate Event

The DASCorps Survival Guide: Program Evaluation

Bill Brown — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:48:21 +0000

Why Evaluate?
DASCorps VISTAs build dozens of new programs, systems, strategies, infrastructure, and ways of operating throughout the year, which are meant to last and endure long after their year of service is up. Just as important as planning and building these capacity-building initiatives is to ensure that they are properly evaluated.

Evaluation does not just serve the purpose of proving whether or not you succeeded or failed, but also functions to show you how, where, and why you succeeded or failed and make improvements and changes accordingly.

Here are some specific ways evaluation will help you and your organization:

Verify the effectiveness of programs or projects (necessary for ALL funders)
Improve the future outcomes and impact of your activities
Generate relevant data for marketing or publishing
Compare your programs and projects to establish strongest/weakest undertakings by your organization
Find out ‘what is really going on’ in a program, project, or organization (not just what is said in grant reports, marketing materials, or during meetings)
Figure out where gaps or excesses are located and make adjustments to increase efficiency (resources allocated more efficiently)
More effective and productive meetings since there will be less guess work or ‘gut feeling’ in understanding “what is actually going on”

When Do You Evaluate?
VISTAs do sometimes create large-scale organizational evaluations for their host organization, but most of the time evaluations are typically small and related to projects and programming.

After you complete a strong or successful project or program, it is your role as a capacity builder to make sure that it is not one-off and can be replicated. Part of that is documenting the process of the project or program you are involved with, but another part is creating the mechanism to evaluate and assess how and why your program or project worked.

Also, and especially, perform evaluations after an unsuccessful undertaking. There are just as many lessons to be learned in catastrophic failures than monumental success so always evaluate both. Don’t be afraid of or ignore failure, learn from it!

Data and What To Do With It
Collecting and analyzing data is the backbone to most any evaluation or assessment you will make. Data and information provide the ingredients to most successful decision-making. With data being so critical, you must have a huge scope of how to get and use data when evaluating.

Data: Qualitative and Quantitative
The difference between qualitative and quantitative data is pretty straightforward. Quantitative data is anything numerical or calculated (number of participants, age range, demographics, time or money spent on activities) while qualitative is anything this is not numerical or calculated (usually descriptive text but can also be types of media).

However, you can easily make the qualitative data more quantitative by grouping or categorizing content then calculating based off those groupings. For example if you have a text field in a survey you can try and find common patterns and group those accordingly (what sociologists and anthropologists call ‘coding’).

Getting The Data
The Field Guide to Nonprofit Program Design, Marketing and Evaluation (published by Authenticity Consulting) describes a variety of methods and avenues to collect different types of data to suit your evaluation needs. Here is a table listing and comparing data collection methods adapted from their guide:

Type of Data Collection

Surveys, Polls, and Questionnaires
When you need lots of information (mostly quantitative) quickly and efficiently in a non-intrusive way
+ Anonymous
+ Cheap
+ Easy to analyze and compare
- May not be thoughtfully completed
- Easy to bias answers via wording
- Impersonal

Focus Groups
When you want to examine at a specific issue in group discussion to draw out common patterns (concentrates on feelings, experiences, reactions, complaints, and suggestions)
+ Understand common perceptions
+ Broad range and depth of information in short time span
- Requires strong facilitator
- Difficult to schedule around people

One-on-one Interviews
When you want to understand individual/on-the-ground experiences more (mostly qualitative)
+ Strengthens relationship between interviewer and interviewee
+ Broad range and depth of information
- Time and resource intensive
- Difficult to compare data across interviews

Type of Data Collection
Observation When you want a subjective first-hand account of “what is actually going on”, typically focuses on programmatic or organizational processes (mostly qualitative)
+ Real-time analysis
+ Adapts to most any condition
- Relies on subjective interpretation
- Very complex to document and organize

Document Research
When you want to analyze an organizational or program process by looking at communications, memos, emails, meeting minutes, financials, applications, etc. (almost always for internal purposes)
+ Information already exists
+ Limits bias since info already created
- Time consuming
- Complex to categorize and understand
- Information may be incomplete
- Difficult to know what to look for

Case Studies
Creating: When you want a comprehensive and well-formatted examination of your own programs or organization (for external stakeholders)
Comparing: When you want to compare related programs or organizations doing similar work to put your own work into a larger context
+ Thorough and well-researched
+ Persuasive way to frame work
+ Great deal of input and voices represented
- Very time consuming to research and create
- Limited scope and breadth

Statistical Data
When you need background information (almost always quantitative) on a community, industry, field, etc… that can be found using available archival/governmental/institutional/tech data (i.e. census, demographic studies, web traffic reports, Google analytics, etc.)
+ Information already exists
+ Broad scope and breadth of information
+ Relatively easy to find
+/- Conducted by outside agency
- May not be regularly updated
- Very limited depth of information

Data Driven Decisions
There is no phrase that gets more buzz across all sectors of the economy than “Data Driven Decision-making”. What this essentially means and signifies is a departure from ‘gut decisions’ or decisions based on intuition towards basing decision-making on information and data gathered from the field.

To start building in data driven decision-making ask yourself “at what point would a critical decision happen?” After you identify those points, try to work in evaluations on a timeline of those ‘critical junctures’ where data and evaluations will inform the decisions about whatever is being done.

For example, if you are starting up an afterschool radio program you will need to set evaluation benchmarks for students to ensure they are meeting their individual goals and project due dates. With projects due once every two weeks, the timeframe is tight for each student in your program so you will need to make fairly regular ‘critical decisions’ (maybe once every two weeks). These evaluations might document where each student is in the production process, what skills they still need to learn, or how much additional time might be needed for them to complete their project.

To take that a step further, a board of directors’ committee meets once every three months to decide the future direction of that same program. With this in mind, you would want to ensure that a formal evaluation geared towards getting the data and information relevant to that committee’s decision is completed every three months just before their meeting. Relevant data for this would not include how individual students or student projects are going, but will be more quantitative like recruitment numbers, retention percentages, and costs of programming.

Yet, with these two examples you will still be looking at the same single program. With this in mind, you will need to build in the mechanisms and processes to incorporate both evaluations when creating the methods for collecting relevant data.

Constructing a Framework for Your Evaluations
The Center for What Works and The Urban Institute have published a series of incredibly useful nonprofit evaluation tutorials called the Outcomes Indicators Project. It summarizes types of assessments and evaluations that cut across the nonprofit sector, no matter the organizational mission, while also detailing 14 program specific reports. These focused reports span from youth mentoring to community organizing to adult education and family literacy to performing arts and more.

For a thorough listing of different types of outcomes and commonly used indicators for each, read The Nonprofit Taxonomy of Outcomes report also published as part of the Outcomes Indicators Project. It is too lengthy to adapt here, but it is highly recommended to read the report (it’s like a cheat cheap for crafting effective measurement methods). You can download it here: www.urban.org/center/met/projects/upload/taxonomy_of_outcomes.pdf
External Stakeholders Focus on Outcomes
External stakeholders (such as the community, other agencies you work with, foundation or government funders, etc.) will usually want to hear about your outcomes (what you’ve accomplished) rather than hear evaluations on internal processes and organizational (in)efficiency. Funders, in particular, are very concerned with outcomes-reporting as they want to see organizations accountable for what they do with their allotted funds.

Since most of your evaluation for external stakeholders will be based upon outcomes and impact results, it may be beneficial to reexamine what exactly those outcomes will be and how you will achieve them. See the Social Entrepreneurship section for a quick how-to on creating a Logic Model for the program, project, or organization you will be evaluating. It may be useful to start at the Impacts stage (end) and work back through outcomes all the way to inputs (start).

Last Words
Remember as your VISTA year ends one of your most important roles as capacity builder is to make sure your organization has the documentation, evaluations, and recommendations necessary to continue with your work after you’ve left. So, make sure that you plan, coordinate, and make time to create and complete evaluations.

Further Resources
Davenport, Thomas H. and Harris, Jeanne G. Competing on Analytics. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Management Help: Basic Guide to Program Evaluation
United Way Outcome Measurement Resource Network
Urban Institute and The Center for What Works - Outcomes Indicators Project

The DASCorps Survival Guide: Marketing

Bill Brown — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:57:34 +0000

At some point during your VISTA year, you might be tasked to create marketing materials for your program or even a marketing plan for the entire agency. In this section, you will learn the steps and ideas inherit in a marketing plan.

What is Marketing?
Marketing is the process of discovering the needs and wants of a prospective customer and satisfying them.

What is a Marketing Plan?
A Marketing plan is a document that details the actions and overall plan to achieve certain marketing objectives.

Marketing Plan vs. Business Plan
A business plan details the goals of the business, including reasons for and plans to attain the goals. The marketing plan is a part of the business plan.

Marketing Plan vs. Communication Plan
The communication plan is the detailed actions to achieve certain marketing objectives. The communication plan is part of the marketing plan.

The Four I’s of Service Marketing
When marketing services, there are four unique elements that must be taken into account.

Intangibility: Because services are intangible, they are harder for consumers to evaluate, both general quality and benefit.
Inconsistency: Service depends on the people who provide them; their quality varies by provider.
Inseparability: Can the consumer/client separate between the deliverer of the service and the service itself?
Inventory: How much downtime is built into providing the service? How does that affect the client and volunteer experience?

Marketing Plan Part 1: Situation Analysis

The situation analysis describes what is happening in the market your agency is engaged in. The situation analysis consists of the following: marketing summary, SWOT analysis and competition/alternative provider inventory.

Situation Analysis: Marketing Summary
The marketing summary details the market your agency serves. Some details that can be included are:

Market demographic behaviors: geography; age; gender; income; behavior profiles (including motivation, personality, perception and learning)
Market Needs: What do people in your area need? How does your agency’s mission/vision address those needs?
Trends/Growth: Take into account political, economic, social and technological factors in your community

You have options to obtain this info: secondary, such as market and/or demographic reports produced by other agencies/organizations; or primary, where you collect the data.

When surveying consumers/clients, you can use gap analysis, where consumers assess their experiences and expectations of service quality.

To review Inconsistency and Inseparability, 2 of the 4 I’s of Service Marketing, you can develop a customer contact audit, where you list the points of interaction between the client and service provider.

Situation Analysis: SWOT
Review your agency’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Situation Analysis: Competition/Alternative Providers
Research other non-profit agencies, for-profit organizations and government agencies that deal with the same market and general service needs that your agency does. Keep in mind info such as: events, donors, and features.

Marketing Plan Part 2: Marketing Strategy

The marketing strategy details how you plan to communicate the value of your agency and programming. It takes into account what your goals are, who you are trying to reach, how you want to be seen, and the tools you will use.

Marketing Strategy: Marketing Objectives
In this section, you detail the goal of the marketing strategy, which usually compliments a business/strategic plan goal. Goals should be quantified and measurable in terms of what is to be accomplished and when.

Marketing Strategy: Target Markets
For non-profits/agencies, one of the differences in marketing is who your target market is. For-profit organizations’ target market is their customer or the consumer of the product or service. For non-profits/agencies, there are generally 3 target markets.

Consumer/Client: This is the same as a for-profit; it is the person who will use your service or product.
Donor: This is someone who is giving financial or material support to your agency.
Volunteer: This is a person who is offering service to your agency.

These target markets will have different wants and needs to be addressed. You might have to use different media and tools to communicate with these targets.

Target/Target Audience:
There is a difference between the target and the target audience. This can be especially present when dealing with non-profit consumer/clients. Target is who will be using your service. Target audience is who hears your message and can create change or drive people to your program/agency. For example, a service tasked to reach out to diabetic children could have a target of diabetic children and a target audience of parents of diabetic children.

Marketing Strategy: Positioning and Messaging
What associations do you want consumers, donors, and volunteers to have about your agency? Positioning and messaging help determine these associations.

When you position your agency, you are defining the brand of the agency and where it fits in the market you compete/work in. One way to determine the agency’s fit in the overall market is by using a marketing mix or the 4P.

Product: What is the service or program you are marketing to the consumer? How is it different or the same from competitors and alternative providers’ offered items?
Price: How much does the service/product cost. This cost can be monetary, volunteer, or in the amount of time invested in the program by consumer.
Promotion: How do you communicate to your target and target audience? This takes into account both media and relationships, such as volunteers and community organizing.
Place: Where can consumers/clients access your services?

Messaging is the tone of the marketing and communications, which reflects the positioning or branding of the agency. This can be anything from logo and colors used to literacy level of written marketing.

You must also communicate these ideas to the agency’s staff; this is internal marketing. Due to the 4 I’s, your program’s marketing is dependant on your staff. They communicate with the consumer (through providing the service), donors (through general contact and special events) and volunteers (who work with staff). Staff might also have to interface with media. The staff should share the same idea of what the program is and it’s importance, so that these values and ideas can be shared with the target markets they come into contact with.

Marketing Strategy: Marketing Execution
Marketing execution is the tactical marketing plan, or how you will communicate with your target audience and market. You should review all previous marketing materials and initiatives to determine what worked and what audiences have previously been targeted.

Review what competitors have been doing in terms of marketing, and whom they are targeting.

Determine the medium you want to use to relay your message, taking into account your audience.

Compile a list of tools and partnerships you can use in your marketing execution.

This is where your communication plan comes into play. Your communication plan will help you manage medium and other factors such as public relations.

Marketing Strategy: Marketing Model
The marketing model details the marketing execution of both programming and the agency as a brand mapped to the target and target audience.

It can be displayed as a table or matrix.

Audience/Who Goal/Why Objective/What Tactics/How and When Success Metric

This can be an easy guide for others to follow. You can detail specific audiences and how to deal with them, such as press or family members of clietns/consumers.

Links/Other Resources
Nonprofit Marketing Plan Walkthrough

Strategic Communications Planning

Consistent Social Media Practice

Brand Strategy Tool Kit

SPIN Project Resources

All About Marketing

The DASCorps Survival Guide: Grant Writing

Bill Brown — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:58:31 +0000

Finding, writing, submitting, and winning a grant is not an easy task. It is time consuming, technical (not in the fun DASCorps sense), and complex. This section will try to break down some basics so you’ll know where to start and then go through the general steps towards receiving a grant.

If your workplan is or becomes heavily geared towards writing grant proposals, we strongly suggest that you ask your host organization to pay for you to take a grant writing course (usually offered online or at local colleges). You may even be able to get this paid for by Americorps using your IST funds.

Not all grants are created equal
There are many different kinds of grant opportunities out there from a variety of sources. These typically breakdown into government (federal, state, local) or foundation grant funding. Federal grants are much more time consuming and process driven than typical foundation grants, however they usually offer much larger funding and can fund an organization for several years.

What is an RFP?
RFP stands for Request For Proposals and generally means that a foundation is currently accepting grant applications for specific types of programs or organizations. Foundations also use RFP’s as a way to publicize new initiatives or programs sponsored or endorsed by the foundation. So do your homework to find out more on a foundation’s motives and new initiatives when they put out an RFP.

Planning
Before diving headfirst into a grant application, make sure you have these basic components already planned and organized:

Be able to explain the need for your project or program
Define your outcomes and how they will be measured (metrics)
How will you achieve these outcomes (methods)?
Demonstrate why your organization is the one to undertake this project or program (credibility)
How will you know when you’ve succeeded?
Generate a program or project budget
How will the program or project live on after the grant?

Optimally you will be matching a program that’s already been planned for to a grant opportunity. Unfortunately, sometimes organizations may look for a grant and then develop a program to fulfill that grant. Be careful as too often this leads to programs and projects that may be outside your organization’s mission and scope.

Finding Funders
Thankfully, researching funders and grant opportunities has been greatly simplified by many free online databases. Here a few of the best sites (see “Further Resources” at the end of this section for more grant databases):

Community Foundation Locator (www.cof/locator.org)
The Foundation Center (www.fdcenter.org)
FirstGov (www.firstgov.gov/Business/Nonprofit.shtml#fundraising)
Guidestar (www.guidestar.org)
The Grantsmanship Center (www.tgci.com)
The Philanthropy Journal (www.philanthropyjournal.org)

To make life easier on yourself and the people you have to communicate to about your grant writing undertaking, create a thorough spreadsheet that will detail all your potential funders, grant due dates, contacts, type of grant, etc…

Found The Grant! Now What?
As tempting as it is to jump in and start writing the grant, pause for a minute and give the funder a call. There may be a contact person or phone number listed for posted grants. Personal contact is a great jumping off point.

When you get someone on the phone, give a concise “elevator pitch” saying “Hi my name is ____ and I’m an Americorps*VISTA with insert organization name and I’d like to talk to you about insert program name and purpose.” If nothing else you won’t get an outright ‘no’ from someone (since it will probably be lower level staff), and it will help get your foot in the door.

Query Letter
The first formal part of a grant application is the Query Letter, which grant founders will use to invite you to submit the full grant proposal. The query letter runs approximately 2-3 pages and typically includes the following (which should already be documented in your pre-planning):

Organization’s name, what you are seeking funds for, and how much
Your organization’s mission, history, and current programs
Definition of the community need (who, what, and where)
How you’re going to address the need and measure its success
Any other supporters you have or will approach
Wrap-up, restate goals, and thank the funder

Writing the Full Proposal
So the funder has invited your full proposal after the query letter or you’ve been lucky enough to find a grant that does not require one. Now it’s time to write the full proposal.

It is monumentally important before you even put your organization down in the name box to take a good deal of time and THOROUGHLY go over the grant’s guidelines and requirements. Many VISTAs have been torpedoed by the tiniest oversights on a proposal that would have otherwise secured a grant.

Once you know the guidelines inside and out, it is finally time to start the full grant proposal. Below is a general list of all the pieces needed for a full grant application:

Title page and Table of contents
Executive summary
Background statement/Organizational qualifications
Statement of community need
Project’s large-scale goals
Project’s immediate objectives
Action plan
Timeline
Explanation of how you evaluate project’s success
Budget
Statement of how the project will be funded and sustainable into the future
Any and all relevant attachments

Here are some general tips when writing the full grant proposal:

Write with some passion and conviction
Communicate that your organization is the best one for the job (demonstrate that your organization IS an authority on what you are pursuing)
Be honest and realistic in what you plan to do with funds
Echo the funder’s key words and phrases in your application
Do not spend a lot of time on the introduction, as funders look more to solid program plans, evaluation methods, and budgets

The DASCorps Survival Guide: Volunteer Management

Bill Brown — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:34:12 +0000

Volunteers are the backbone to most any nonprofit. VISTAs (who are also a type of volunteer) often have to set-up and develop volunteer recruitment and management programs and systems. Occasionally this is part of a VISTA workplan, but typically VISTAs create volunteer programs because they find that accomplishing their work without additional help would be nearly impossible.

What can volunteers do for you? Well, just about anything. Some nonprofits even have executive directors who are volunteers. Volunteers can fill any type of role, need, or niche.

Before You Recruit

Keep Outreach Materials on Hand
Outreach and recruitment materials are key towards getting qualified volunteers to come work with your organization. You should have a ready-to-go set of solid recruitment materials at your organization, which should include:

Single-sheet flyers or posters
Promotional DVDs
Ready-made “blurbs” about organization and volunteer needs (to be posted in community newsletters, college newsletters, volunteermatch.com, etc.)
Volunteer Fair kit (includes flyers, posters, reports, DVD’s, fold out display, banner with organization name)

Know the Legal Requirements
Your organization needs to be up to speed on exactly what the legal requirements for your volunteers are. For example, if you are finding volunteers to work with an afterschool media production program in a Boston Public School, you need to have each volunteer CORI checked (essentially a criminal background check) before they can work with any students or youth.

Create Applications and Agreement Forms
You may want to create a volunteer application form, but most nonprofits DASCorps members serve with are rather small, so often times volunteers will be brought on ad hoc and informally without an application. However you should definitely have a volunteer agreement form drafted that each volunteer must sign that stipulates their responsibilities and your organization’s responsibilities.

Recruitment

Define Your Ideal Volunteer
Draw up a list of the skills and qualifications for what you would call your ideal volunteer for each opportunity your organization has.

Find Your Targets
If you are looking for more technical volunteers with skills in web design or media production, then go find a local college or university that has a program strong in those departments. If you have a concert fundraising event, you can probably recruit unskilled volunteers locally through personal contacts or through posting at community centers.

There are also many effective online volunteer matching services as well such as volunteermatch.org, idealist.org and craigslist.org to post opportunities (especially easy if you keep ready-made recruitment ‘blurbs’).

Colleges, Universities, and Service-Learning
Colleges and universities are excellent sources of skilled and motivated volunteers. Nearly every college now has a volunteer or community service center that coordinates volunteer opportunities with local organizations for their students. Contact the volunteer/community service center director and explain your needs and they will likely recruit on-campus for you.

Service-Learning is a new movement at colleges and universities. S-L (also sometimes referred to as ‘experiential learning’) connects students’ course work with real-world community action. Typically these opportunities must be coordinated 2 months prior to the start of the next semester.

Individual professors may offer S-L opportunities or a local college/university may even have their own Service-Learning Department. S-L volunteers typically can do both direct service and/or capacity building depending on the course and the professor. It is highly recommended to seek out S-L opportunities.

Volunteers are not Made, but Asked
Most people will be more than happy to volunteer with you if you simply ask. Passive methods of volunteer recruitment such as flyers and online posting may get some volunteers, however research shows that most people will not seek out volunteer opportunities, but will volunteer if asked directly.

The Independent Sector, a nonprofit think-tank, published research stating that of “51 percent of teens reported that they were asked to volunteer, 93 percent actually did. The results were stark if young people were not asked: among the 49 percent who were not asked, 24 percent actually volunteered. In other words, teens were nearly four times more likely to volunteer if asked than if they were not.”

Interview Process
You will probably want to conduct an interview with potential volunteers unless it’s for one-off, informal events. During the interview you will want to lay out expectations of both the volunteer to the organization and your organization to the volunteer. It’s a good idea to get a ‘feel’ for the volunteer and make sure the opportunity is actually in line with their personal or professional interests of the volunteer.

When possible the staff person who will most closely work with the volunteer should be present during the interview. Definitive scheduling and availability of workdays, dates and hours should also be determined during the interview process.

Orientation
All volunteers should receive a basic orientation to your organization and how their volunteer work fits in with your organization and its mission. If necessary be ready to provide any training to ensure the volunteer is up to speed and prepared, for example if a volunteer is working with a youth media program that’s doing a photo project, make sure the volunteer is trained on digital camera use and Photoshop prior to volunteering.

You may also want to give the volunteer a printed out detailed job description, contact information for their supervisor, and even an organizational handbook (if you have one). If nothing else, make sure volunteer tasks are clear, concise, and communicated. Nothing extinguishes a volunteers’ spirit like not knowing what they’re supposed to do or being unable to say what they’ve accomplished after they’ve finished.

Management (VISTAs cannot directly do this!)
As you can guess, and hopefully what Project HQ informed you of during your PSO, VISTAs cannot be direct supervisors of volunteer labor. VISTAs can develop outreach materials, run recruitment drives, create orientation materials, but cannot be the direct supervisor of volunteers. The reason: CNCS tells us there was once a lawsuit concerning a VISTA who supervised volunteers. ‘Nuff said.

But this does not prevent you from creating volunteer management systems or databases, which are essential to managing any volunteers. The database system should include the name of the volunteer, phone number, address, why they joined, when and where they volunteered, etc.

There are a number of cheap and easy ways to set-up a volunteer management system/database on a shoestring budget. Here are some low-cost methods:

Spreadsheets with Microsoft Excel
Open-Source Content/Constituent Relationship Management software such as CiviCRM, Drupal, and Joomla
Google Docs spreadsheets and documents which are free and can be shared with anyone else who has a Gmail account
Salesforce.com Foundation donates free licenses to nonprofit organizations (www.salesforce.com/foundation/)

Retention
Informally known as the “60 day window”, the first 2 months a volunteer is with your organization is the length of time it takes to shape the volunteers’ attitudes towards the work, their supervision, and your organization. Make them feel like they belong or you may lose them after this period. Building volunteer relationships, recognizing volunteers, and maintaining open and clear communication are all key to retention.

Tips toward keeping volunteers happy, productive, and committed:

Take time to know your volunteers’ personal and professional skill-sets so you can put those to work for your organization
Make organizational language and terminology easy to understand (ditch confusing acronyms)
Proactively communicate news and events about your organization with volunteers
Reimburse volunteers for reasonable expenses incurred such as travel or food
Take your volunteers out to lunch
Have a volunteer recognition event or dinner with your volunteers and organizational staff

Evaluation
You will want to evaluate your volunteer program so you can:

Assess the quality of volunteer experiences with your organization
Measure the impact your volunteers have had with your organization and its programs
Find ways to improve your volunteer program
Identify causes of volunteer turnover
Develop recruitment strategies based on how people found out about volunteering at your organization

If you have already set-up a volunteer tracking database, evaluating your volunteer program will be much easier since some data will already be available to assess. This data is typically demographic and will help define the “who”, “what”, and “where” of your volunteers and program.

Beyond your database, you should develop and schedule regular volunteer surveys and exit interview questions. Here is where you can find out the “how” and “why” behind your volunteer program. All you have to do is gear your questions towards the information you want to see, such as “why was your experience as a volunteer good or bad?” or “how can we improve our volunteer opportunities?”

Further Resources
Free Management Library/Management Help
Idealist.org Volunteer Management Central
CiviCRM
Salesforce.com Foundation

The DASCorps Survival Guide: How do you Search for a Job after AmeriCorps?

Bill Brown — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:08:56 +0000

Knowing Where You Want To Go
Here’s the unfortunate thing about Americorps, it’s not a career path. It’s a one year commitment that you can re-up for a few years, but that’s about it. So planning your path is extremely important throughout your VISTA year.

In the very rare case that you know exactly what career path you want to go down, your service year should be full with ample opportunities to go to conferences and make contacts with people and organizations doing the work you want to do.

For The Rest of Us Without a Defined Career Path
A lot of VISTAs have only a general idea of where they want to go beyond Americorps; so don’t feel anxious or guilty about not being 100% sure!

There are many books and resources that give highly detailed ways of figuring out your dream career, and we encourage you to seek those out if necessary (see Further Resources at the end for some). However, here’s some quick and dirty ways to get at what you want to get in to:

List all the skills you are good at and enjoy using the most (event planning, public speaking, writing code, etc.)
List all fields of knowledge that interest you the most (nonprofit management, public policy, digital media, etc.)
Ask everyone you know who you think might be relevant what they would define the job as. You’ll hopefully get a few people saying “Oh, that sounds like [insert dream job name you didn’t know of]”.
Seek out and talk to people who are in those jobs now. Ask them how they got there and for any advice they might have for you.
Research and find those organizations that are doing that work

Contacts: The Best Way to Land a Job
For those searching for the next step, one good way to go about your year is to get engaged in as many networks, conferences, and functions as possible. The VAST majority of jobs in any sector are gained through personal or professional contacts. The broader the net you cast out, the more contacts you’ll have. It’s pretty simple. Remember CONTACTS! CONTACTS! CONTACTS!

Many VISTAs have found jobs after Americorps with their organizations, other organizations they’ve worked with, or through other Americorps contacts. Think about it this way, it’s easier for an executive director to hire someone they know or someone recommended by a person they know and trust rather than going through an exhausting hiring process. It saves the E.D. a lot of work since they or someone they trust already approves.

Using Your Federal Noncompetitive Eligibility Status
After completing your full year of VISTA service, the government grants you “Noncompetitive Eligibility Status”. What this means is that you can apply for any federal job that you meet minimum qualifications for and get to forgo the formalities of the competitive process. Hiring government agents do have the choice, however, to decide whether or not to use the status.

Go to http://www.usajobs.gov to search jobs and find agencies that will favor “Noncompetitive Eligibility Status” or just to see what kind of jobs the government offers. Typically you’ll have this status for only 12 months after your service ends.

Build Your Work Portfolio From Day One
Following the old adage “show, don’t tell”, you should, from your first day on, be documenting the work that you do so you can demonstrate to potential employers how effective you really are. Documented work can be strategic plans, program outlines, curricula, media produced, code developed, projects managed, grants submitted, etc… You know you are a good worker. Make sure you have the evidence to back it up!

Your Host Organization Should Be Supportive
Your organization and supervisor should be mindful throughout the year, but especially during the last few months of your service, that they need to support you as you transition and find your way to the next step. This means being flexible with hours when if you’re studying for an entrance test (GRE, GMAT, etc.), visiting potential schools for next year, job searching, or going out to interview.

Your organization should be committed to and support your professional development. If there is a course that is related to your work you want to take or a book you need to get then you should free to ask your organization to support your endeavor financially of possible.

Framing Your Work with the Digital Arts Service Corps
The Three Sectors: The U.S. economy is divided into three separate sectors, private, public, and nonprofit. The private sector includes all for-profit companies from General Electric to the pizza place on the corner. The public sector is anything related to federal, state, or local government (Americorps falls into this sector). Lastly, the nonprofit, or third sector, is comprised of organizations founded to be in the public interest (all of the organizations the DASCorps serve at are nonprofits). It is important to note that while you have been working in the nonprofit sector, you have been paid and supported through the public sector.

Communicating Your DASCorps Work: VISTAs work both for Americorps (public sector) and for their host organizations (nonprofit sector), so what’s the best way to explain this to potential employers? The best answer is: include it all! State that you were an “Americorps VISTA with the Digital Arts Service Corps working with [insert name of your host organization].” You should also add that you “worked with a national network of technology related nonprofits and VISTAs through Americorps.” Trust us, all of that is very impressive.

The Resume: Your resume is one part of the job hunting process, not the entire thing. Resumes usually serve the purpose of being able to cull large numbers of applicants down to a manageable few who then get interviews. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking your resume is the be-all, end-all of getting a job (online resume posting is very seductive yet highly ineffective), but it is really just a way to land an interview.

Your resume acts as a lengthier business card (no 3 page resumes!). You want to leave employers wanting to know more about you. Hence, you will hopefully get an invitation to an interview where you can explain and expand further on your skills, interests, aspirations, and experience on your resume.

Know Your Skills
Coming out of your VISTA year, you will have TONS of skills and know-how. While it’s daunting to have to narrow down your skills to a resume-safe 3 or 4, it’s not actually that difficult.

Think of one big project or workplan goal you worked on during the year. Now, break that down to its constituent objectives and actionable steps (see the Project Management section for more detail). Each actionable step requires some skill that you had to employ. And each objective is made up of many steps so completing any objective takes a cluster of skills. This balloons on up to goals, which require many objectives, so completing a goal means you have amassed a number of skills.

But which skills do you put down on your resume? The answer is the ones you enjoy most, are the most effective at, and are the most complex. By most complex we mean the skills highest up on the goal/objective/actionable step hierarchy. Think of it this way, if you put a high-end skill such as “program management” down, it also implies a whole host of other skills like “planning classes, recruiting members, evaluating effectiveness, etc.” so you don’t have to explicitly state these.

Writing your resume
There are literally hundreds of resume writing resources available and you can spend days researching them all, but here is a quick DASCorps recipe for a resume:

Define what job title you are looking for (i.e. consultant, administrator, programmer, volunteer coordinator, etc.) and research what skills, experience, and knowledge are needed to get that title.
Make a list of 3-4 of your strongest skills and/or knowledge that make you a solid candidate for that job title.
Write down successful instances where you’ve used those skills or knowledge in your past work.
Attach “action words” to each accomplishment that communicates results
List all previous work experience. Make sure you have no work gaps or can explain gaps (you can use volunteer work to explain gaps).
List all previous education or training you’ve had including college/university work, seminars, certifications, etc.
List all community service experience you’ve had. REMEMBER VISTA is not community service. It is work experience. Use it that way!

Choosing the proper format is also important. Most job types and titles have specific and commonly used formats (i.e. secondary education, social work, computer science). It is highly recommended to scour the internet looking for resume examples for the job type you are looking for.

The Interview
Employers will ask a lot of questions to poke and prod and figure out if you’re the person for the job. However, most interview questions boil down to these basic points of interest so make sure you can answer these in a variety of ways:

Why are you drawn to their organization?
How can you help their organization?
Who are you (your past, present, and future)?
What sets you apart from others applying for the position?

In turn, you should ask the following from employers if they do not touch upon it:

What exactly is the job (activities, responsibilities, etc.)?
What kind of skills is the organization looking for?
What is the general culture of the organization/what is it like to work there?

Asking these questions not only allows you to get the information you need but also demonstrates to the interviewer that you’re attentive to the organization’s needs.

Just as important as enjoying the work you’ll be doing is the environment in which you’ll do it. During the interview, be sure to ask yourself: Would I get along with the people who work there? And is this the kind of organizational culture I can thrive in? Keep in mind you’re interviewing them too.

Telling a Good Story
During your interview you will probably be asked to “talk about a time you had to manage a project, reach a deadline, work with difficult people, etc…” This is interviewer code for “tell me a story.” So, before you even walk into the interview think hard about a good cross section of “times you had to [insert situation here]” and prepare little stories for each one. Here’s one easy way to format your narratives:

Start with what you wanted to do, your goal.
Say what the challenges and hurdles you faced were
Give step-by-step detail of what you did to reach that goal
Describe what happened/outcomes
Describe how you were able to measure or quantify those outcomes

Emphasize your transferable skills (as you defined earlier) as much as possible in the narrative. Remember, employers typically ask about your past in order to determine your value to their organization in the future.

Here are some other general interview tips:

Listen as much as you talk.
Use your VISTA work to demonstrate your commitment and drive (i.e. the sacrifice of living at poverty level for you personal values/beliefs).
Do not bad-mouth your VISTA host organization or complain about your supervisor. Be creative and say there were 'differences' but you worked amicably towards your goals as a VISTA (see Conflict Course Navigation).
Bring documentation of your work. If you have DVDs, manuals, research, websites, reports, marketing materials, etc.
Do not make the focus of your interview your resume. That was the entry point for getting the interview.
Answer questions between half-a-minute and two minutes.

Don't forget about signing up for another year!
You are only allowed to participate in AmeriCorps programs for 3 years, but that can include all forms of Americorps (VISTA, NCCC, VISTA Leader, PeaceCorps)

Encourage your host organization to sign up for another year of DASCorps help
Want a change of scenery? Search for another DASCorps job throughout the country
What to try out a leadership position? Call up the Transmission Project and ask about extending your time with the DASCorps as a VISTA Leader. (You get paid $200 more a month!)

Further Resources:
Translating Your Experience - How to talk about your service in a job interview.
Resume Tip - How to list service experiences on your resume.
Bolles, Richard Nelson. What Color is Your Parachute? California: Ten Speed Press, 2008.
Job Star
Corporation for National and Community Service - Resource Center

The DASCorps Survival Guide: Conflict Navigation

Bill Brown — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:39:21 +0000

There some who say that this topic should be called ‘conflict resolution’. Others say it ought to be called ‘conflict management’ since conflicts almost never definitively resolve. Whatever you want to call it, you’ll no doubt be in the thick of it throughout your VISTA year.

Unfortunately there are no formulas or equations that will guarantee successful conflict management/resolution/etc. However, there are some good ways to approach conflicts that will usually result in more open communication, less pent-up frustration, and better results for the task(s) at hand.

What Are Some Common Conflicts for DASCorps members?
Each organization, workplan, and supervisor is different. However, there are some common and specific areas where conflicts arise across the board:

Lack of defined Role(s) for VISTAs and others within your organization
Lack of understanding of individual responsibilities
Workplans radically change throughout the year
Lack of clarification on what ‘the work’ actually is
Entrenched ideas and ‘the usual way of doing things’ coming up against new ideas and ‘new ways of doing things’
Mitigation of VISTA importance and role
Frustration with organizational management
Poor communication
Misunderstanding VISTA recommendations

This section will go through some basics of how to work your way through conflicts via negotiation as well as some other tried and true methods.

Negotiation
In life and in business, very rarely are we the highest or only authority: parents, teachers, bosses, coworkers, spouses. When we need something, either the good of ourselves, or the organization, or the relationship we need to communicate with others and receive their permission, or buy-in or support. We do this through negotiation.

TIP: Great negotiating is not about power or cleverness (though they help); instead, the secret to good negotiating is preparation, listening, creativity, and being able to see through the other person’s eyes. Above all, good negotiating is about turning confrontation into cooperation: converting conflict into creative problem solving.

The following 6 Step Method is adapted from William Ury’s “Getting Past No: Negotiating your way from Confrontation to Cooperation”. In addition to the following framework, it also contains many more methods and advice for recognizing obstacles and overcoming them.

1. Don’t Rush In: Prepare
The secret to negotiating is mapping out the lay of the land: both your positions and theirs. Many people think that they can wing it; but that often results in failure.
Knowing what you want, want they want, and how far each of you are willing to go to achieve it can determine the outcome of a negotiation before it even begins.

Using the attached Negotiations Preparation Worksheet will help you organize the following principles of preparation:

Interests are the reasons you’re negotiating in the first place. They aren’t what you want, but why you want them. If you’re asking to create outreach brochures, your interests might be to gain new participants, attract a certain demographic, or raise awareness of the organization in the community. Because negotiations are a two way street, you want to figure out their interests as well: maybe they don’t have the money or maybe they prioritize a different project.

Options are pieces of agreements. Maybe you can’t get money to print up complete brochures, but you can place a full-page spread in the next newsletter; maybe you could get another necessary purchase donated and thus free up some funds. Negotiating is about pushing the boundaries and being creative: how many different ways can you achieve your goals.

TIP: When thinking about options, Invent First, Evaluate Later: suspend your judgment and list out all ideas that come to mind. You might find that even wild ideas can be made rational.

Standards are your measures of success in negotiating. Avoid negotiations where the only standard is a contest of wills: someone wins and someone loses. Instead, good standards are Return On Investment (“if we reach out to 1,000 new people, we’re guaranteed to get 10 new volunteers”), fairness/equal-treatment (“the other program has an outreach budget”), or the way an issue has been resolved before (“the program manager has always set budget priorities”)

Your BATNA (Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement) is your optimum walkaway alternative. Knowing what you’ll do if you can’t reach agreement is your leverage to be kept in your back-pocket. Most BATNAs fall into three categories:

Go On Strike (“I can’t move forward on this project unless we get more volunteers”).
Go To War (“The other program managers are behind me on this.”)
Bring in a Third Party (“This was one of the goals submitted to the Transmission Project. Let’s see what they recommend.”)

Knowing the other side’s BATNA is just as important as knowing your own. They may need you moving forward with the project more than you think. The goal then becomes developing an Option that is better than their BATNA—and leading them towards it.

Proposals are options that satisfy your own interests, are better than their BATNA, and based upon fair Standards. It’s best to have three proposals in mind:

What do you aspire to? Don’t offer a tepid proposal just because you are afraid of failing. What would genuinely satisfy your interests and meets enough of their basic concerns that there is at least a chance that they would agree?
What would you be content with? What proposal, though not perfect, would be good enough.
What could you live with? Based upon your BATNA, what would be marginally better than that. During negotiations, use this as a reminder to ensure that you don’t accept something even worse than your BATNA.

2. Don’t React: Go to the Balcony
The first step is not to control the other person’s behavior. It is to control your own. Instead of hotly reacting to attacks, step away from your emotions and into a coolly objective mode.

Listen to their initial arguments and identify how they’re reacting: are they attacking you (“You didn’t finish the last project you started! Why should I give you this money now?), stonewalling (“I can’t do that. It doesn’t make sense. No.”) or passing the buck (“I can’t make that decision without the board’s approval”). Instead of getting mad or getting even, focus on your goals.

3. Don’t Argue: Step to Their Side
Before you can really negotiate, you need to create a favorable climate. They’re expecting you to attack or to resist; so do the opposite. Listen to them and acknowledge their points.

Put yourself in their shoes and get them in the habit of saying “Yes” by restating their opinions (“I see your concerns. Are you saying that spending the money now would mean that we wouldn’t have it in reserve for an unexpected cost?”)
Acknowledge their authority and competence by asking them for help (“You’ve done really well managing the other programs and I have this problem and want you to help me solve it?”).

TIP: Change the nature of the discussion from you-against-them into collective problem solving: you are both working together to overcome the challenges that lie between you and your goals.

4. Don’t Reject: Reframe
Instead of rejecting their ideas (and causing them to dig-in against you), direct their attention towards the challenge of meeting both your interests. Take whatever they say and reframe it as an attempt to deal with the problem (“So you’re saying that our budget is really crunched this year. Why is that?”) Ask open-ended, problem solving questions (“Why is it that you want that?” or “What if we were to…?”). Change the dialogue from “you” and “me” to “we”.

Reframe their tactics:

Go around Stone Walls (“Take it or leave it” or “I need to know by tomorrow”): ignore it; treat it as an aspiration (“We all have our aspirations, I guess. But we should be realistic. Why don’t you think this is a reasonable outreach budget?”); take it seriously, but test it—get called away at the last minute; turn it to your advantage (“To meet your deadline, I’ll have to set the budget higher since I won’t have time to fully research the cost of hiring a printer”)
Deflect Attacks (“It wouldn’t be good for you to make a stink about this!” or “You’re irrational to ask this!” or “You’re always letting projects go overbudget!”): ignore it and move forward; reframe it as an attack on the problem (“We did go over budget last time. That’s why I’m asking for your experience in meeting our goals and our budget now. How can we do that?”

5. Don’t Push: Build them a Golden Bridge
At last you’re ready to negotiate. The other side, however, may stall, not convinced of the benefits of the agreement. You may be tempted to push and insists, but this will probably lead them to harden and resists. Instead, do the opposite—draw them in the direction you would like them to go.

Start from where the other person is and guide them towards a mutually beneficial agreement. Ask them for ideas to involve them in the process (“Building on your idea, I see…”).

Don’t discount them as irrational or crazy; instead, think of their human needs to save face or protect their authority by showing how the circumstances have changed (“The original budget was a good one, but we didn’t have the information then that we do now.”)

6. Don’t Escalate: Use Power to Educate
If the other side still resists and thinks they can win without compromising, you need to educate them to the contrary. Make it hard for them to say no but without threats or force. Educate them about the costs of not agreeing.

Ask reality-testing questions (“Do you think it’s realistic to create a program but not tell people about it?”), warn rather then threaten (“If we don’t do this, we may not have enough volunteers to run the program”) and demonstrate your BATNA (“This is integral to my being effective this year.”)

Use your BATNA only if necessary, and minimize their resistance to exercising restraint and reassuring them that your goal is mutual satisfaction and problem solving, not victory.

Putting it all together
Negotiations are a dialogue. Using these methods, your goal is to keep the lines of communications open until a mutually satisfactory decision is reached. By properly preparing, you’ll know what to expect and how to counter it. By framing negotiations as creative problem solving rather than confrontation, you’ll ensure your goals are met, even if they’re met in a different manner than expected. By concentrating on the process, you’ll ensure a happy outcome.

Some Other Conflict Navigation Methods to Try
In his management bible The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge argues that most conflict lies within the mental models people on all sides have but never explicitly say. These unsaid opinions, ideas, and concepts are usually the very things sabotaging communication and productivity. Here are two methods from The Fifth Discipline that might help open up communication and decrease tensions.

The Left-Hand Column
So you’ve just had the third in a series of unproductive conversations with your supervisor, but you can’t quite put your finger on why they are unfruitful. Sometimes, the issue may have to do with what you are talking around or not directly saying. Often the gap between what you think and what you say can be as wide as the gap between you and your supervisor.

Next time you have an unproductive conversation, try to script it out immediately afterwards like this:

Supervisor: How’s it going?
Me: Alright. Just doing some work on the afterschool curriculum.
Supervisor: Did you get my suggestions on it?
Me: Yeah. I’ve been looking at them.
Supervisor: Great. Well let me know what you think.

Now, add a left-hand column to that conversation where you plot out everything you were thinking at each point:

What was Thought:

I am swamped and don’t have time to deal with you micromanaging me
His suggestions don’t apply to our community needs and I’ll probably not include them. If only he understood local community needs better.
How can I make him see his idea of community need is wrong?

What was Said:

Supervisor: How’s it going?
Me: Alright. Just doing some work on the afterschool curriculum.
Supervisor: Did you get my suggestions on it?
Me: Yeah. I’ve been looking at them.
Supervisor: Great. Well let me know what you think.

By looking at the left-hand column, there are some tacit assumptions made such as 1. Your supervisor wants to micromanage you and 2. He has large misconceptions about the local community. By skillfully talking around the underlying issues, both you and your supervisor achieved zero progress and only escalated tensions.

But what do you after you acknowledge these thoughts and assumptions? Being a smart and rational person, you know that going directly to your supervisor and telling them that they micromanage and have gross misconceptions about community need will only make your supervisor defensive and further strain your working relationship. Also, as per the last thought, is resorting to manipulation to “make him see his idea of community need is wrong” the tactic you want to tactic?

To move the conflict toward a productive end, you may have to be prepared to meet a few requirements: 1. You are honest about your viewpoint and the data/evidence upon which it’s based 2. That the person you are butting heads with (your supervisor in the above example) may not have those same data or viewpoint and 3. The viewpoints and/or data on both sides may be incorrect.

To untangle this mess you need to be willing to guide those frustrating conversations and situations to productive ones where both you and the person you’re conflicting with (i.e. your supervisor) are learning from each other. It requires you to clearly state your views while also trying to learn as much about (in the above example) your supervisor’s viewpoints…which nicely flows into the next section Inquiry and Advocacy.

Inquiry and Advocacy
It can be easy to fall into a reinforcing loop of simply advocating your ideas over someone else’s. When you push for Idea A and someone pushes for Idea B, you push even harder for Idea A followed by an even harder push by the other person for Idea B and on and on. This escalation continues until the issue is postponed, both parties leave angry, or one or the other of you gets personal and blurts out one of those ‘leaps of abstraction’.

One way to combat this snowball escalation effect is to make sure you are asking the other person inquisitive questions such as “what makes you think this?” or “can you clarify your point further?” or “what data are you using to draw this conclusion?” But also be prepared to answer the same types of questions yourself.

Here’s a fairly easy way to measure the general health of your organization’s conversations and meetings: the next time you have or observe a conversation or meeting with, try to write down each time a question or inquiry is asked (rhetorical questions like “how clueless are you?” excluded). Hint: it’s a bad sign of few or no questions are asked.

Here are some basic principles (also taken from Senge) to keep in mind when you are trying to both advocate your view while also actively inquiring into other people’s views:

When you are advocating an idea:

Be explicit in your logic and reasoning (don’t hold your cards close to you)
Motivate those around you to poke and question your ideas
Make sure others are contributing different viewpoints to your idea
Inquire into others viewpoints (what data are they looking at? How did they arrive at their views? Define those views)
Commit yourself towards arriving a situation where all parties learn and collaborate as opposed to wanting to ‘win an argument’

When you are inquiring into other people’s ideas:

Explicitly state all your assumptions about other people’s views and make sure that you say that they are merely assumptions
Bring and actively reference any and all data related to what you are advocating
Only ask questions if you are genuinely interested in the responses (people can generally pick up on whether you are just being polite or trying to posture)

If progress stops and people do not want to inquire into their own views:

Ask them what data, evidence, or reasoning would be needed to change their views
Ask if conflicting parties could collaborate on an experiment to provide new or refined evidence or information

When people do not want to state their views or inquire about their own or others’ views:

Directly ask what is making communication and openness difficult
Ask to collaborate on ways to mitigate these communication blocks

Why the VISTA Role is Fundamentally Inquisitive

As VISTAs, your role is to be the one within your organizations to balance and facilitate inquiry and advocacy. You should view yourself (to a certain extent) as a consultant whose job it is to build organizational capacity. You need to poke and prod and figure out all the how’s and why’s of your host organization so you can find out the best avenue for your VISTA work.

It is highly recommended to use both inquiry and advocacy to further your work. Even if there are no conflicts, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ask questions to better your understanding of what will be most effective for your organization.

When Nothing Works
So you’ve tried all methods of working through your conflict and you’re still hitting your head up against a wall…now what do you do?

This answer is thankfully both simple and definitive: Call your VISTA Leader! They are there for just such occasions. They have training on conflict mediation/management so they will have the resources and experience to help out.

Further Resources
Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline. Double Day Business, 2006.

The DASCorps Survival Guide: Project Management

Kevin Palmer — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 04:26:34 +0000

So you've just received your workplan with all your projects, programs, and goals listed out for you in more-or-less detail. You're walking into the office and getting ready to tackle that first big project... but how do you do that? Where do you start? How will you know what to do and when and by who?!? It's time to Project Manage!

What is Project Management?
Project Management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. There is an entire professional field dedicated to this discipline.

Why Project Manage?
You will have to balance resources, people, deadlines, budgets, and outcomes for each of your workplan goals. Without methods and systems for handling the many aspects of getting the job done, you will in all likelihood be unsuccessful. See the Lifeline of Your Project below for a start to finish look on getting your project done:

Typical Problems in your Project’s Lifeline

Skipping directly from "Conceive" to "Perform"
Not defining the people needed
Not revisiting the conceive and define phase even if your org has already done this (you may have useful input!)
Not tackling the close phase

I. Conceive
Your organization should have already laid out the general idea of what you are doing in your workplan. However, you should ALWAYS go back and check with your supervisor to make sure the idea has not changed or evolved from your stated goals.

When going over your organization's workplan goals ask yourself whether these goals are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Aggressive, Realistic, and Time-sensitive). By keeping SMART goals, your project will be clearly defined with measurable indicators that will be challenging & achievable within a reasonable time frame.
Some questions to ask yourself before you start:

Do you want to be everyone's friend or do you want to get the job done?
Do you like to work by yourself or with others? hint: capacity building necessitates working with others
Are you comfortable dealing with people at every level of your organization?

II. Define
While your organization may have a rough idea of what needs to be done (a supervisor may point you in a few different directions to get started), but before you go any further, document exactly WHAT you will be doing.

One of the ways to document the WHAT of your project is to create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

One easy recipe for figuring out exactly what work needs to be done and added to the WBS is to list every major task or task category then determine every sub-step or action under each. Go through your entire project until literally everything needed from start to finish is broken down by major task and sub-task or action.

Indented-Outline and Organizational Chart are two useful and standard ways of formatting your WBS.

III. Start (People Power)
Figuring out who needs to be involved in your project and getting them on-board is one of your most critical jobs.
Start by figuring out a few key roles for your project
1. Project Champion(s): typically an executive director or the person who came up with your workplan ideas, possibly board members or your supervisor. Champions will advocate for what you are doing in administrative meetings and communications.
2. Project Driver(s): almost always your supervisor or the person you directly report to. They tell you what you should be doing.
3. Project Supporters: those good folks who'll be doing the grunt work that you'll help coordinate.

Once you've figured out who has what role, you can begin breaking down their responsibilities. Luckily you've already drawn up a WBS so you can start dividing tasks by person, role, and responsibility with a Linear Responsibility Chart (LRC).

Be sure to include all external stakeholders your planning. These stakeholders could be the local community, grant/foundation funders, and outside collaborators/partners.

IV. Perform
This is the point of your project where all your previous preparation comes together. To keep track of progress, it is recommended to use a Gantt chart, which adds time management into the mix. Simply list out the activities listed in your WBS, add a time interval at bottom, and then just plan out how long each activity ought to take.

Leadership vs. Management
Leadership and management are not the same discipline. As project manager you will have to find a balance between both throughout the life of your project.

Getting your project back on track
So, it's day 14 of your project. You haven't gotten past your day 4 work and now it's your job to figure out why. Here are some tips to get you project back on track:

Figure out what changes are necessary by looking back at each step of the WBS, LRC and Gantt
Reconvene with Project Champion(s) and Driver(s) and explain where to change
Get Project supporters (co-workers) updated
Update WBS, LRC and Gantt as necessary (use different colors for revisions, but keep original documents)
Send any new or changed information out to relevant external stakeholders

Watching out for Scope Creep
Scope Creep occurs when a project moves and changes size or direction without any formal recognition by anyone involved. Example: your supervisor just got back from a conference about web 2.0 and now wants to have "Second Life presence" for your volunteer recruitment project, but says it to you in conversation. You realize this will take away valuable time and resources to your already focused project, not to mention the new idea is very hazy.

How do you mitigate scope creep?

Make sure everything is well documented so you can reference easily why an addition or change to the project is not a good idea
Keep open communication throughout the duration of the project, especially with project champions and drivers (both in Formal meetings/progress reports and informally in conversations and emails)
Most importantly, be honest

V. Close
For VISTAs, ending a project is just as important as, if not more than, starting and executing it, because this is where you really determine and set your project’s long-term capacity building.

If you have been documenting your work so far in terms of what work was done (Work Breakdown Structure), who did what (Linear Responsibility Chart), and in what timeframe (Gantt Chart), then most of the "closing" work is already done. Since your organization only has you for a year, any successful project you've completed will want to be repeated and with you gone your documentation will be all they have to reference.

Post-Project Evaluation
Evaluations are key to ensuring your project will have a positive and sustained impact at your organization. The evaluation should be somewhat formal or at least something
that can be printed, filed, and electronically referenced. Some key things to try and deliver in the evaluation include:

Tips and best practices to include in future projects
The best way to go about implementing those practices
What should be avoided on future projects
How to avoid those unwanted practices

Get the Word Out
With your project successfully completed, email everyone involved and let them know about its success and how they helped. Be sure to let others at your organization know as well as any external stakeholders such as funders, the local community, and especially the Transmission Project!

Further Resources
Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. Harold, Ph.D. Kerzner. Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Project Management For Dummies. Portney, Stanley. Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Free Management Library/Management Help
Projects @ Work
Project Management Institute