Jumpstart: How Evaluation Is An Effective Organization

ReferencesRobert D. H. & Associates (2005). THE JOSSEY-BASS HANDBOOK OF NONPROFIT LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

At the center of any successful nonprofit organization there is an effective chief executive and board of directors. These leaders must work as a team with a vision and specific skills, to effectively produce resources in order to accomplish the organization's goals. The majority of the decision making authority and leadership is shared amongst board members; however, critical management skills and day-to-day operational decisions rest within the authority of the chief executive. However, members of the board must also be sufficiently skilled in management in order to assess the work of its director to assist in the implementation and evaluation of strategic decision making.

To help program directors meet these challenges, the Administration on Children, Youth and Families developed a series of evaluations that explain program evaluation-where the teacher evaluates each child that enters into the Head Start. Good program evaluations help to improve program operations, measure program performance and effects and document important lessons for other programs. With this information, program managers are better able to direct limited resources to where they are most needed and most effective.

“Before designing specific performance measure, we first have to make a distinction between the measures themselves and the operational indicators used to represent them” (Poister, Aristigueta, Hall, 2015). Therefore the most important indicator will be the output of Employee Development and the Training of teachers along with planning and coordinating the implementation of the education program to achieve successful ratings in early childhood care the head start education programs. The first internal operation to monitor the training program is to prepare the faculty to correctly and efficiently implement the head start education program. Some of the key indicators to successfully implement an effective and efficient educational program is employee development, performance indicators and Customer satisfaction and retention. Training and teaching administrators, staff and teachers should become eager to find and implement the best tools to encourage and help transform the learning experience. There is a growing consensus in the Head Start that improving students learning

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) introduced five core competencies for healthcare professionals, to improve the United States healthcare system: provide patient-centered care, work in interdisciplinary teams, employ evidence-based practice, apply quality improvement, and utilize informatics (Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, 2003). IOM insists that should all five competencies are met, quality patient care can be achieved. Thus, healthcare organizations need to continually seek quality improvement in order to enhance patient care. The organization need to revamp their current charting system, in order to improve patient care.

1. A key point that I took away from the Outcome Evaluation of Washington State’s Early Education and Assistance Program was the importance in identifying the tools used to determine the quality measured. This will ensure that the audience is able to view what progress was made or not made. As I complete my Capstone Project I will be specific and connect the aspects of quality measured by the system and tools used. This will permit me to measure the quality

This tool is sponsored by the United Way of America. This tool is designed for United Way organizations but can be applied to nonprofits for internal evaluation purposes. This tool can be used to: (1) gauge your organization’s current status relative to the Standards of Excellence, (2) identify areas of strength where your expertise could be shared with others; and (3) determine where to focus your organizational development and improvement efforts (“United Way”, n.d.). This tool is marketed towards United Way organizations but can be applied to nonprofits for internal evaluation purposes.

In July 2014, Steven Nardizzi wrote an article, “Measuring Charity Effectiveness: Manage Your Mission, Not Your Rating” for Huffington Post, in which he stated “furthering our mission and broadening our impact was only possible by ignoring conventional wisdom about how nonprofits should be run” (Nardizzi, 2014). Nardizzi went on to state that nonprofits should disregard the pressure that ratings organizations generate for charities to decrease expenditures relating to fundraising and administrative costs. Instead, Nardizzi shared, WWP had chosen to appropriate funding to its efforts relating programs, staff, and infrastructure and fundraising. By doing so, WWP warranted that it could continue to develop in a manner that accomplished its mission while meeting the needs of its various constituents. Nardizzi did acknowledge that they could improve within certain areas such as “measuring and reporting our impact, holding ourselves and our industry to the highest of ethics and profession, informing government officials about the appropriate ways to measure charity effectiveness, and starting a public dialogue about these issues” (Nardizzi, 2014). Nardizzi’s position on the complaints did not acknowledge any misdoings on the part of WWP. Instead, he defended the organization’s choice to disregard charity rating systems—describing them as schemes that do not work. While it is true that nonprofits must endeavor to advance their missions and strengthen their impact, those who provide financial or other types of support should examine external, independent sources of information, and not as Nardizzi suggests, rely up information exclusively form the

When one talks about ‘Nonprofits’ many things come to mind; People often use phrases such as 501c3’s, charitable, ambassadors of the poor, and tax free organizations to umbrella the whole nonprofit sector. However, what large portions of our country fail to note is that there are differences within the nonprofit branch. There are two man categories of Nonprofits: Public, and Private; within those categories there are differing distinctions that allow for the separate identities of these organizations to in function and scope.

Nonprofit organizations broadly described operate to achieve missions that serve the common good. Graduate study in the field of nonprofit management focuses on the development of leadership skills for nonprofit managers and provides education in areas such as general operations, human resources, strategies, and fund development (Nachmias, 2008). Students of nonprofit management also develop proficiency in other matters such as nonprofit legal issues, organizational development, donor relations, financial management and fund-raising, volunteer, and human resource management, and pro-gram evaluation, to name a few competencies (Nachmias, 2008).Many nonprofit management programs have a theoretical component, and most programs rely on experiential learning as a vital element of a graduate student’s education. Future studies of community impact should include analysis components from the fields of nonprofit management education, service learning, capacity building, and nonprofit evaluation, and take into consideration specific factors that may affect study outcomes.

Program evaluators have to make a determination in the planning of their evaluations as to what success means or looks like. They also have to be ready for data gathered that was not intended or expected. Each of the evaluation models discussed help to paint a picture of the worth of a program whether subjectively or objectively using qualitative and quantitative methods of data gathering. The result is the review of program efficiency, effectiveness, and impact and that all wraps up into whether the program did what it said it would all while showing a return on the investment both in non-exorbitant spending and sustained behavior change that positively moves the needle toward an organizational

The CEO of a nonprofit must distinguish himself not only as a financial manager but as a financial leader also by improving the nonprofit practice (Young, 2007). The CEO is commonly expected to collect data, produce reports, analyze findings, as well as offer financial solutions for short and long term objectives along with other daily operational duties. However, a CEO distinguishes him or herself as a financial leader by developing a business model that meaningfully impacts organizational productivity, sustainability, and propel nonprofits futuristic vision while remaining integral to its mission (Bell, 2016). This is accomplished in several ways such as, vigorous budgeting, attaining a net financial outcome, exploring futuristic expectations, performing financial projection assessments, evaluating income diversification options, etc. and work well with the organizational board.

The struggle between the mission and the effort of an organization is one that not only impacts higher education. Nonprofits face this issue more than any other entity. In his book Begging for Change: The Dollars and Sense of Making Nonprofits Responsive, Efficient and Rewarding for All, Egger encourages organizations that they must move beyond the “who” and the “what” and get to the “how” and the “why.” Egger, R., & Yoon, H. (2004). Begging for change: The dollars and sense of making nonprofits responsive, efficient, and rewarding for all (p. 91). New York: HarperBusiness. Robert Egger, is the Founder and President of L.A. Kitchen, which is a nonprofit that recovers local grown damaged fruits and vegetables to fuel a culinary arts job training program for the city’s prison reentry program and for children who aged out of foster care. Egger created this model during his 24-year tenure as the president of the DC Central Kitchen, the country’s first “community kitchen.” Egger explains his experience and inspiration in working in food lines in DC and being astounded that food

In a nonprofit organization, managers are concerned with “generating some social impact” (Daft, 2013). Stakeholders for nonprofit organizations include the community, taxpayers, the government, private donors, employees, and volunteers. Each one of these stakeholders poses a challenge for managers. For instance, in a nonprofit organization, there is a “continual struggle to pursue vital social missions in the face of

Bay State Medical Center’s mission statement is to improve the health of the people in our communities every day with quality and compassion. This mission statement is very clear and I am sure that every hospital has this very same mission in mind for just being in the system of health care. Bay State Medical Center also has forecasts for the future of Health Care and look at themselves with a vision for the Hospital of the Future. This vision is named “Vision 2025” according to their online website and they look to the future of the hospital with goals of having surgical precision, robotics and patient simulation and how medical students will be trained. Currently every health system is looking at a