The jdcPartnerships team spent much of fall 2010 refining our client screening process and project management approach including the development of a range of tools to manage budget, scope and communications better as our team and portfolio expands. As we went through this process, several consulting opportunities presented themselves to which we could test the application of a more disciplined approach to our “go, no-go” process. As we sorted through the various options, it became clear to me that no matter how great the checklist (i.e., our competencies, skills, content area, budget, time frame ), there were some nuances that only come from practice and intuition that inform the final decision. However, sometimes you just don’t know until you are in it. Just like a date.

The questions below are a refinement of a handout developed for a 2009 session at The California Wellness Foundation sponsored Organizational Learning and Evaluation conference designed and managed by Center for Civic Partnerships . Those highlighted are the more delicate ones to determine in a proposal submission process but the answers to which can greatly affect, in our experience, the consulting engagement’s effectiveness and client/consultant relationship.

1. What kind of evaluation consultant is the organization looking to engage?
2. Why is the organization looking to engage an evaluation consultant? Moreover, what is the timeframe for doing the work?
3. What has been organizational practice around evaluation?
4.  How strong is the program/initiative model? Can it be evaluated?
5. Does it seem like the client is “ready” to ask difficult questions regarding design, strategy and impact?
6.  How will evaluation findings be used? By whom?
7. Who is the client?
8. What has been the organization’s experience with consultants?
9. Do the organizational values and principles align with the consultants?
10. Can you imagine having dinner with the client and not compensated to do so?

In sharing these, we hope that potential consumers of evaluation consultant services develop a better sense of what the other half is thinking about during the initial relationship exploration stage.

As for our fellow evaluation consultants, feel free to add, modify or respond to the list above.

I spent the last two days catching up on some reading, primarily from fall/winter 2010. When I say reading, I mean hard copy, print publications. For me, they still have a draw and sitting on my bed or on the floor surrounded by their promise takes me back to childhood.

Amongst my pile, I noticed a small book. It was The 7 Components of Transformative Organizing Theory by Eric Mann. I remember receiving the book from a member of the Bay Area Justice Funders Network  for whom I was designing and facilitating a general membership meeting last year who had just attended the 2010 Social Justice Forum.

As happens to all of us with many things we receive, I put it in a pile to read later. Yesterday, as we remembered the life and teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. it seemed most appropriate to pick up the small booklet and make my way through it.

Following are the seven key components Mann identified:

1. Transformative organizing seeks radical social change through the strategy of building an international united front to challenge the U.S. Empire.
2. The transformative organizer is a conscious agent of change, a revolutionary educator with a plan to intervene in and make history.
3. Transformative organizing requires the leadership of society’s most exploited, oppressed, and strategically placed classes and races.
4. Transformative organizing is produced by transformative organizations.
5. Transformative organizing becomes truly transformative in the course of battle.
6. Transformative organizing transforms the organizers.
7. Transformative organizing requires a transformative political program.

Our work puts us in touch with many leaders engaged in efforts, which include components of the above. It is deeply gratifying and satisfying work.

Moving forward, as a consultant, I will be thinking about my role and that of our practice to deepen and strengthen the needs of our client partners and how organizing fits, or does not fit. And as one African American woman, in her mid 40’s, living in Marin County, California, I know we have made progress but there is much more to do.

I have been thinking about this post for a while now. Occasionally there is a new webinar, on-line application and even a post from the field that reminds me there is something not being said, understood, or valued. What could she be talking about? Unbelievably, Logic Models. 

In the spirit of transparency, I am a devotee. The art, science or perhaps better stated the craft of developing relevant, accurate models has proven to be extremely successful and productive in our work with clients. They share with us that the process has created 1) an internal environment where they are having new and deeper conversations about their impact, 2) their communciations with external partners is clearer and more focused, 3) they have a better idea of when to say no or yes to new opportunities.  In addition to our client work, we have designed and delivered numerous customized and public offering trainings, which are well received.

So, the points that follow come from a place of love for the use of modeling in the development of conceptual models for program, project and organizations.

1.  Different Model Types[1] – A Theory of Change model is a high level representation of how you believe change will occur (believe being the operable word). A Program Logic Model details resources, planned activities, and their outputs and outcomes over time that reflect intended results.  As you know, there is no consistency in the field on the definition. Resulting in confusion, unnecessary complication and often the development of a model that fails to capture either logic or intention. In short, they look like grandiose work plans.
2. The Name.  The term, Logic Model itself misses the core benefit, the process of refining the model. This includes conceptualizing, drafting, reflecting, assessing and refining. This is a disciplined practice and bring with it on-going testing of assumptions, integration of context and re-alignment.
3. The Disney Principle. Writing something down doesn’t make it real or true. The idea that a conceptual framework developed at a point in time with a group (ideally) of individuals with their own values, experiences and perceptions no matter how informed by the literature and science somehow becomes gospel is….well, it just seems, not that logical.

So as 2011 unfolds, and you find yourself tasked, and you know you will be, with developing or refining a logic model or theory of change, embrace the opportunity. Our thinking improves as we are challenged to make explicit our assumptions, values and intentions, particularly to others and perhaps even more so to ourselves.  However, let us be clear, that does not make it so, at best it makes our efforts more effective and perhaps more likely to be succesful.

 

 

 

 

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[1]  Knowlton and Phillips, The Logic Model Guidebook, Better Strategies for Great Results. 2009