Jara has a wealth of experience and knowledge from working with many types of organizations at different stages in their evolution. She’s very engaging...She’s good at hearing questions and answering in a way that’s satisfying and understandable. On top of this, she’s a pleasure to work with and is always well-prepared.
— Tanya Kleinman, Assistant Director, Center for Civic Partnerships

Center for Civic Partnerships:
How can the sector have a greater impact?

Background: The Center for Civic Partnerships (the Center) describes itself as “a support organization that strengthens individuals, organizations, and communities by facilitating learning, leadership development, and networking.&rdauo; It operates the Organizational Learning and Evaluation Program (OLE), a program funded by The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF) with the purpose of enhancing the capacity for organizational and evaluative learning among its grantees.

Situation: In developing its annual OLE conference, the Center seeks workshop leaders who meet a stringent set of criteria. As Tanya Kleinman, Assistant Director, stated: “We get a broad range of workshop participants who represent different levels of knowledge and experience, and who have a variety of learning styles. Presenters must not only have a high level of expertise in the subject area, but they also have to make the topic useful and accessible for people who are brand new to the subject, as well as for those who have had prior exposure to it.”

Assessment—meeting the learning objectives of workshop participants: The jdcPartnerships’ workshops focus on the development and application of logic models, a tool with which jdcPartnerships has in-depth experience. As Tanya explained, the Center selected this topic for several reasons: “We believe it’s a good tool that has many uses. We use it for our own programs and know that organizations can get a lot of value from using it. Organizations are aware of this tool because funders are increasingly asking nonprofits to share their logic models. As a result, and because of the positive outcomes they experience from use of this tool, workshop participants consistently ask us to include this topic.”

Immediate outcomes: Asked about the outcomes of the workshops, Tanya stated: “They are always very successful. Jara has a wealth of experience and knowledge from working with many types of organizations at different stages in their evolution. She’s very engaging and excels at managing the room and the available time. She’s good at hearing questions and answering in a way that’s satisfying and understandable. On top of this, she’s a pleasure to work with and is always well-prepared.”

Longer-term outcomes: While the immediate outcomes of a workshop are important, longer-term follow-up provides an optimal measure of impact, but often isn’t feasible. In addition to the annual OLE conference, the Center coordinates a focused Organizational Development Services (ODS) program for the executive directors of TCWF’s grantees. jdcPartnerships has also led a workshop for this group. Tanya commented that, through its close contact with ODS participants, the Center has been able to observe first-hand how participants incorporate the learning from this workshop into their organizations” ongoing work and that they obtain sustained benefits from this.

For more information on:

Logic models

OLE workshops