Skip to main content

Asking Plenty of Questions Will Make Your Program Better

This post is really about program design questions, again. Whether you are designing a new program or trying to improve an existing program certain questions need to be asked. There may a be a few types of questions that you haven't really considered; efficiency, effectiveness, and impact are the topics of the day then.

Think about the best possible use of your resources. The program that will have the biggest impact matters, of course. How do you get the most benefit from a certain investment? You are thinking of your programs and projects as investments aren't you?

Effectiveness and efficiency are worth asking questions about. This is even more true in a cash-strapped nonprofit than in a large business with vast financial resources. Thinking about efficiency and effectiveness as criteria for designing or improving a program will only make your organization more effective.

For example, I want to start a program that educates people about how and why to recycle, and how to do it without much hassle. My goal is to increase the number of households in DC that recycle from 43% to 58% in three years. What should I do to make the most use of my time and energy? What marketing or promotional tricks would give me the best shot at the biggest increase in recycling rates? What methods, or what program, would give me the best results for my investment or time and money?

Those questions speak to effectiveness and efficiency respectively. Every program design and every program improvement really needs to be subjected to the same two questions. Being hard-nosed about your answers will only serve everyone's long-term interests.

I was reading a blurb in the Chronicle of Philanthropy newsletter this week. There was a piece on a walk for charity thing that basically questioned the effectiveness of doing that sort of fundraiser, versus pursuing another option that would also raise money. That short article led to another question worth asking about any program design or improvement effort.

Short post this time. Next week I'll get into some tools for designing innovative programs that are both effective and efficient.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Crowdsource and Experiment Our Way to a Fairer Economy

Economic and social inequality should be treated as design challenges that, like designs in architecture or packaging can be solved by applying some creative thinking. That's hardly a new idea, but the recession and ongoing concerns about economic inequality make crowdsourcing seem like something worth talking about.  Crowdsourcing as an Economic Justice Tool: Most people have an idea of what  crowdsourcing is and how it works - you let a group work on your problem or challenge and see what they produce. Can they produce a better answer (whatever that means) than an expert or a small group of experts? You can't answer that question until you have some real-world examples to draw upon. That's where social experiments and simulations can prove useful. Maybe there should be specific crowdsourcing projects and a place to organize all of them. We could start crowdsourcing campaigns around a range of topics: New ways of using barter to meet peoples' needs Using buying co...
Post a Comment
Read more

Setting Good Social Change Goals: The Problem of Police Brutality

No one in the United States can say they are totally ignorant of the issues surrounding last week's death of Black Minneapolis resident George Floyd at the hands of a police officer. This post is not about the incident, which has been covered in great depth by others. This post is about setting goals to pursue in the wake of Floyd's high-profile death.  What do protestors want, exactly? This is probably unknowable right now. Sure, they call for justice or for an end to police brutality, maybe in those exact words. Each one of those goals has a huge problem. Let's see why. What does justice look like exactly? Will you know when justice has been served? Theoretically, some felony convictions for the involved officers would work. Right? Maybe.  The goal of ending police brutality is far more problematic. How can we ever achieve a state of affairs where no cop ever abuses any suspect? That is what an end to police brutality might look like. Achieving perfection is a bit too amb...
Post a Comment
Read more

Exploring A Challenge

If you want to solve a problem, have to stop and think about the problem first. Logical, right?  Whether you want to tackle racial inequality, gun violence, climate change, or homelessness in your city you need to explore the challenge. Take notes, ask questions, do some interviews, reflect. This post introduces a couple of techniques you can use to focus on a new (to you) problem. You can use the tools here to help you shift your focus, or reevaluate whether you're focusing on the right thing.  Say your interest is climate change. Maybe you've decided that getting people to consume less stuff is the key to reducing the effects of climate change in the future. If you don't know much about the problem, here are a few key points: 1. The world is warming up with alarming speed, mainly because of human activity.  2. We may not be able to prevent some major changes like a 1-meter rise in sea level and permanent drought 3. Some would argue that adapting to those changes is more...
Post a Comment
Read more