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PROGRAM ASSESSMENT STRATEGY
BGCP has partnered with the Community Network for Youth Development (CNYD) to review and improve its program effectiveness. At the core of all CNYD's work is their Youth Development Framework for Practice. The research-based framework was developed in partnership with Dr. Michelle Gambone of Youth Development Strategies, Inc. and Dr. Jim Connell of the Institute for Research and Reform and adapted from their Community Action Framework for Youth Development to reflect youth development in a youth-serving organizational context. Local youth workers, agency leaders and funders provided crucial input during the adaptation process. The Framework is a road map for youth workers, organizations and policy-makers that identifies desired long-term outcomes for young people and explains the youth development practices that need to be in place to achieve these outcomes. Specifically, the Framework focuses on five supports and opportunities that young people need to experience in a youth development program in order to move towards these positive long-term outcomes. Program effectiveness can then be measured by participants' experience of these five factors. The five supports and opportunities are:
- Safety : Students need to feel both physically and emotionally safe to maximize their development
- Relationship Building : Students need to establish healthy and positive relationships both within their peer group as well as with adults
- Skill Building : Students not only need to develop skills, but they also need to understand they are improving their skill sets
- Community Involvement : Students need to have both a knowledge of their community as well as seeing themselves as important social actors within this context
- Youth Participation : Students need to feel like they have a voice in determining the programming in which they participate
The Framework then goes one step further by identifying the links between these supports and opportunities and the organizational practices necessary to support quality youth programming. The nine organizational practice areas are:
- Low youth to staff/volunteer ratios
- Safe, reliable, and accessible activities and spaces
- Flexibility in allocating available resources
- Range of diverse, interesting, and skill-building activities
- Continuity and consistency of care
- High, clear, and fair standards
- Ongoing, results-based staff and organizational improvement process
- Youth involvement
- Community engagement
As depicted below, the Youth Development Framework for Practice provides a clear path from nine clearly-defined organizational practices to the desired outcome of young adults who have achieved economic self-sufficiency, healthy human relationships and positive community involvement. It has become an invaluable tool for organizational change, program design, staff development, program assessment and strategic planning and decision-making within organizations and across the youth services community.
Funded by a $60,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation, BGCP sent six full-time staff members to a series of nine eight-hour CNYD trainings from October 2003 to March 2004 to understand the Youth Development Framework as a tool for structural improvements. These team members familiarized the rest of the club with the framework and were the catalysts in administering the CNYD surveys to club members.
After undertaking this labor-intensive exercise during the spring of 2004, CNYD reported the results, and, in turn, BGCP staff reported the results to members. The reports were followed by in-depth focus groups examining how students interpreted the questionnaire (as this frequently differed from adult interpretations).
The questionnaire and focus group data then serve as a compass for BGCP staff to guide in the creation of actions plans for improving services offered. During the spring of 2005, the process will begin again to test the effectiveness of the changes. Thus, BGCP is committed to this continuous method of youth-informed organizational evaluation and subsequent improvements. A CNYD team will be created to ensure all BGCP clubs continue with the important work we have begun.
Quarterly Reports
BGCP began a process last year of quarterly reporting for all program areas. Each program staff has to communicate, every quarter, what his/her goals were and whether or not they were achieved. In addition, he/she sets new goals for the upcoming quarter. The results are reviewed with members of the Board, unit directors, and senior management. The purpose of these reviews to improve program planning and design, not to audit staff performance. The reviews are designed to make BGCP a learning organization, one that learns from its successes and failures and continuously strives to improve its impact. Using a sports analogy, it is not whether we win or lose the game but how we play the game that matters. The quarterly reports are a tool to ensure effective planning and execution, a vehicle to help us achieve our mission.
The quarterly reports complement the CNYD program assessment effort nicely. Both tools provide valuable input to staff to improve program design and effectiveness. And both tools give funders greater confidence in our ability to execute and a sense that we are having real impact. Together, these initiatives should lead to longer term greater BGCP impact.
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