Pastoral Counseling Centers of Tennessee (PCCT) is an organization that oversees pastoral counseling at multiple locations around Middle Tennessee. Its leadership hub is in Nashville, with clinicians at satellite locations. At present, PCCT does not have outcomes to measure “success,” a grant-seeking process to procure new moneys, or an efficient reporting process between clinicians and leadership.
1. Develop and sustain “success” outcomes: How do we measure success within the organization?
- Improve accuracy and timeliness of reporting
- Measure client, clinician, and leadership satisfaction
- Develop performance metrics
- Get everyone on the same page, working towards the same clear and measurable goals
2. Refine grant-seeking process: How do we get money?
- Educate staff (grant-writing/grant-seeking process)
- Develop listservs of interest; find specific grants
- Create grant templates
- Get better info from clients (intake sheet)
3. Reform reporting process: How can we make the paperwork easier/faster/more accurately?
- Move from triple-documentation to double-documentation (Microsoft Outlook & paper form. No others.)
- Eliminate redundancies
- Closed communication loop (ie. implement a receipt system)
All three ideas are good and would help solve the problem. For #3 one thing you might could use would be google forms. You can create a form and email it out, when the user submits the data it is sucked right into an excel sheet for you. http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/02/stop-sharing-spreadsheets-start.html
ReplyDeleteThese are very broad-ranging solutions and I wish I knew more about the PCCT (who are their clients? what exactly do they counsel? what size organization are we talking about?).
ReplyDeleteIn my before Owen life I did some work with grant-writers, which is why I'd like to know specifically more about the size of the organization. It might be beneficial to hire a devoted grant-writer, who would keep abreast of current RFPs for grants, do the writing and be able to manage whatever information from clients (who are they?) is needed.
If they are too small to warrant that devoted staff member, I think your idea about grant templates is valuable. Although all grants being sought are likely different, there are huge amounts of background information, past experiences, staff bio, etc that are repeated from proposal to proposal. This is even something that can be outsourced to professional writers, then stored in-house for future use.
Another strategy could be to develop a system for surveying every grant RFP and systematically evaluating whether or not PCCT could use those funds in some way. By starting with the grants that are out there, they can develop new programs that suite those areas of available funding. Though not ideal, many non-profits employ this strategy as it allows growth and stability while expanding programatic offerings. Refining the grant process as you suggest will by necessity improve the other areas that you mention; once grants are won, reporting and outcomes have to be in place in order to keep the money.
I have the same question as Sally's. Among the description and three solutions, I couldn't get the really clear picture of the whole situation. If we could know more details about the PCCT, types of its clients, and the currect process for measurement, procuring new money, and repoting, it might be a great help for us to see which solution could be the most effective one. Process flow and cross-functional chart would be great tools for evaluating the current situation. I guess that the "standardized processes" and "simple IT system" among all functions would be a key point to solve the problem.
ReplyDeleteI think your group has received some excellent feedback from your classmates. I would add that in addition to providing more details about the client, it would be helpful if you could provide more details about your intended innovations. Under the third concept, your group mentions moving from triple-documentation to double-documentation and then lists the types of documentation that would be used (Microsoft Outlook and paper). This is a clear description of what you intend to do, and it seems like it would be feasible to implement within the time frame you have been given to complete your innovation. However, under the second concept, your group mentions educating the staff. What exactly is your plan for this? Are you thinking of putting together some sort of workshop or seminar for the employees? Are you thinking about writing a handbook or reference manual? Or is there some sort of grant writing workshop facilitated by Vanderbilt or another organization within the Nashville that you could recommend to your client? As you move forward with your project, try to be more specific about what exactly you intend to accomplish.
ReplyDeleteThe suggestions sound like three seperate solutions to three different issues.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure which is the larger issue or the more implementable without a better organizational understanding. But I have a comment that might be helpful if you elect to choose number one.
If you decide to do number one there is a great article published by McKenzie related to non profits successfully measuring their performance. If you pull me aside in class I will send it to you. The basic premise is that any success measures should flow from the mission statement. The idea is, at the end of the day, you should be measuring your success against the organizations stated goals and that these should remain consistent throughout. An example of this is that traditionally NGO's measure dollars spent in the field versus overhead, the problem with this metric is it says nothing about the success of your operation. Anyhow, let me know and I can send you the resource.
1. is a big idea and with it comes big hurdles. i would agree that this is where you need to be ultimately. But it is going to require cultural and process changes, i.e. new forms, definitions of what opens and closes a case, etc.
ReplyDelete2. i am not sure this is a defined topic yet, i am not sure where you are going with this. Yes a template sounds good, but this idea needs more clarification.
3. This is where you are going to have most success and bring you inline with your goals for #1. This process will require steps along the way and i think this is a great first step. Start small, try to change one form and see how that works.
It sounds like you are attacking several different problems (three to be exact). #1 doesn't really give me enough details of "how" you want to do each of these things. As stated, who can argue with "improve the accuracy and timeliness of reporting"? Now if you said to do this by "hiring 14 new staff people" you might actually get an argument. That's the funny thing about attacking these problems - it's hard for me to take a point of view until your proposal gets concrete.
ReplyDelete#2 has some specific proposals (that's good) but I'm not sure I know enough yet to help sort out which of the approaches may be easier to implement. That said, refining that process in all these dimensions cannot possibly hurt. But will the resources required to implement them be available?
#3 seems simple and it sounds like that kind of process improvement might be really good for them. that kind of reporting may also help them with the #1 problem, too, since they may be able to generate more data to measure their success.
I think it was hard to determine which of these three ideas is "more important" because I think a combination of the three is vital. If I were to pick one I would pick #1 or #3. If you can measure the success of the organization than grant money will automatically follow and/or if you improve the paper processing, again, efficiencies will help attract use of money.
ReplyDelete