Welcome back from the long holiday weekend! I hope it was peaceful and delicious. When I returned to work today I jumped into a new search for funding opportunities. I am always amazed at the variety of funding out there so I will strive to reflect that diversity in my weekly blog.

After spending the holiday vacation time with my two wonderful children I decided to highlight help for youth in our communities. This week’s pick: Garth Brooks - Teammates for Kids Foundation

This foundation accepts requests from non-profits that specialize in working with children in need. Teammates for Kids grants support on-going work in the areas of health, education and inner-city services. The foundation has no stated minimum or maximum grant amount however the majority of the grants fall between $10,000 and $50,000.

The grant application form is brief and clearly defined with a sample application available for review. Deadline for submission is February 1, 2007. For more information, visit www.teammates4kids.com.

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Whew! It has been a whirlwind of travel for me this month at the Improve Group! The first week of November I had the fabulous opportunity to attend and present at Evaluation 2006, 20th Annual Conference of the American Evaluation Association in Portland, Oregon. It was three days packed with sessions presented by evaluation gurus, mavens and colleagues on their experiences, perceptions and philosophical musings about the future of evaluation at home and abroad. I was surprised by the amount and enlightened by the descriptions of international participatory evaluation studies in Brazil, Spain, India and Kenya presented at the conference. Other highlights were listening to Michael Quinn Patton talk about his newly coined method “Developmental Evaluation” to evaluate programs that in this day and age of fast change, are in a constant state of flux; and Ernest House expound on the ever-increasing bias in drug testing as drug companies perform their own research and use this scenario as an analogy for the future of evaluation if we as evaluators lose our moral and ethical codes of conduct and succumb to client bias. With all these ideas swirling in my head, I was also able to discuss these issues at length with fellow researchers and evaluators from the Twin Cities, as we all gathered for a dinner of Thai food in downtown Portland. My own presentation was on overcoming the challenges of cross-site evaluations, using our evaluation of Girl Scouting in Detention Centers in 2005 as a model of success.

The week following the trip to Portland, I headed south to Missouri for a PAVE site visit. Nice to have a bit of warmer weather for a day or so! Leah and I had the opportunity to observe anti-violence programs for middle school girls and talk at length with the dedicated staff that put the programs together. But that’s not the end of my November travels, for the week after that I flew to Washington state and then to South Dakota for more PAVE site visits! An emergency landing in Spokane, WA was the only delay through all that flying about. In addition to meeting and talking with more wonderfully dedicated people during these visits, and I got to see the Washington Sound (close enough to the Pacific Ocean for me!) and after Brooke joined me in South Dakota, take a slight detour to view those awesome South Dakota Band Lands.

It was very nice to see the Minneapolis skyline during our descent on that last trip from South Dakota! I arrived home but not for long as my family and I then drove to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. It was a relaxing and filling long weekend of good food and family! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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In my job for The Improve Group I am always looking for interesting grant opportunities. I also write an article called “Upcoming Grants and Request for Proposals” for our quarterly newsletter The Improve Groove. During my research I come across many note-worthy grants and awards available to both individuals and organizations looking for funding, which I will be posting weekly on the Inside Groove. Our blog allows me an opportunity to share some of these unique discoveries with you.

Check our blog weekly to see what interesting announcement is highlighted. If the RFP or grant includes evaluation, planning or research, please contact the Improve Group to partner in your proposal efforts.

This Week’s Pick: The Office for Victims of Crime in Washington D.C. offers grants of up to $10,000 to organizations and coalitions operating for at least 1 year that have not received federal VOCA victim assistance grant funding and that have an annual operating budget of $50,000 or less. All applicants must also have a history of serving crime victims. Allowable items to include in a request funding are:

• Develop newsletters, brochures, program materials
• Purchase training materials
• Train advocates/volunteers
• Recruit volunteers
• Pay for local travel for advocates/volunteers to receive training
• Purchase computer equipment and/or office supplies
• Pay for membership with national/state crime victim organization
• Pay for public service announcements (newspaper, radio, or television) regarding available crime victim services
• Pay for telephone service
The application deadline is open. For more details on this opportunity please visit http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/fund/expandingoutreach/welcome.html

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Thursday and Friday both Deborah and Leah were lucky enough to attend a conference in Washington DC for recipients of the Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) and Professional Development in Arts Education (PDAE) grants. There were amazing presentations; one of the most striking issues that kept coming up is how do you live, work and do business creatively when you are a school district operating under tremendous pressures and constraints. FAIR school, here in Minnesota, was featured in a video demonstrating its arts/social studies/science infusion project.

We got to have some fun while in Washington - we ate with family at the beautiful B. Smith restaurant in Central Station. Pictures to be posted soon!

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In April, the Improve Group will be presenting on two topics at the national American Educational Research Association conference. The first is about how evaluation can support students, parents and program participants to become more active in shaping the organizations that serve them. The second presentation will examine the role of censorship in evaluation work. I hope our readers who will be attending the conference will come see us!

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In October I attended a session and the Minnesota Council of Non-Profits/Foundations conference on how to build on assets in rural communities. The session’s panel shared some interesting examples of how their rural communities had uncovered new resources to help meet their needs. For instance, one non-profit organization described how they had been able to secure a phone system donation from a local company that had upgraded to a new phone system; another organization described how they had been able to shape a fundraising event around board members' landscaping expertise.

I felt there were even more possibilities to be uncovered when considering the assets of rural communities, especially in the challenge of retooling your thinking to seeing positives in (what you thought) were negatives. I was reminded of this session the other day during a discussion with clients from northwest Minnesota. They were describing some of their successes in bringing together service providers to take a regional view of the service system. They have found innovation, efficiencies, improved communication, new ways to share expertise, additional power to secure funding and many other advantages from working together. This struck me as a great example of how a negative – funding-strapped individual organizations – could become a positive – an innovative and effective system of care.

I can think of another example from a project I worked on this year for the University of Minnesota extension service. The small town of New York Mills, Minnesota, used their small town charm, resident energy, precious local dollars and beautiful Minnesota countryside assets to support an arts center and artists’ retreat program. Events associated with both provide fun learning and social opportunities for residents young and not-so-young, support local and national artists, and draw regional, national and even international attention.

I personally find it a fun, and important, challenge to really try to creatively rethink what assets communities have, and how to build on them. In many ways, the process can be similar in a rural or urban community and can be a great reason to bring community members together.

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Hi everyone! I served as an Election Judge in my precinct for the first time this November 7th. I worked the polls from 2pm until about 9pm and my duties included trading receipts for ballots, handing out the I Voted stickers, helping voters insert their ballots into the counter and answering a lot of general questions from voters. I had a lot of fun throughout the afternoon and enjoyed meeting my neighbors. All the voters were really excited to be there and the patriotic spirit was definitely high! I particularly liked the end of day activities. It was neat to see how the booths and the new AutoMark machine pack up nice and tight and that most of the supplies just get stored in the ballot counter. There were a lot of counts and forms for me and my fellow judges to sign, which made me feel very official and important. My favorite part was adding up the voter totals and seeing how many people we registered throughout the day. We registered a whopping 114 new voters, which is incredible for a midterm election and had a total of 1014 votes counted (over 65%)! Thank you Precinct 4 - 7!

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This week, I missed a significant amount of work to be home with my kids, both of whom were sick. Because this week I happened to have deadlines, I did some work from home in the evenings and when the kids were occupied, so probably worked a total of 25 hours (as opposed to my typical 40) this week.

It made me wonder if anyone has studied the economic costs of caring for ill children. I thought epidemiologists, economists, particularly those interested in labor markets, and policy makers might be interested in the issue.

I found a few articles related to chronic or severe long-term illnesses and disabilities. Several articles, on the other hand, tried to quantify the economic benefit of vaccinating children against the flu.

One study found a $4 positive benefit of the flu vaccine per child, and a $35 positive benefit per child if everyone in a group setting like daycare was vaccinated. The study used very interesting assumptions, including about participation rates in the workforce and likely family behavior (they assumed it would always be a female caregiver who stayed home with an ill child).

In addition to finding a positive financial benefit, the study indicated that if the flu vaccine is found to also prevent ear infections (an issue I am personally interested in!) the financial benefit would go way up.

Just a little bit of musing as we head into the weekend. I hope everyone here in Minnesota has a chance to enjoy the slightly warmer weather.

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It was trick of treat day, October 31st, and the Improve Group staff was unaware of the fact that they were being haunted. Yes, a tiny Elvis had appeared accompanied by a lovely fairy princess. These cute apparitions were actually Leah Goldstein Moses’ children – 1 year old Adrian and 4 year old Claudia. They were visiting with their grandmother, Janice Goldstein and showing off their fun Halloween duds. I was especially happy to see Adrian wearing the “later-years” Elvis costume I had made a while back for my youngest son Nick. He is now 4 years old and has long outgrown it.

All of the staff’s children are very comfortable visiting the Improve Group offices. We even have a Parent’s Room equipped with toys and snacks along with video and computer capability for those days when on-site child care is needed.

After a quick snack of their own the small creatures disappeared. Yes, Elvis has left the building.

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