As my colleagues at the Improve Group know, each month I can be found crunching numbers in my role as Treasurer of the Minnesota Public Health Association (MPHA). I’ve been Treasurer since June, and have really enjoyed my increased involvement with the organization. Part of what drew me to the MPHA in the first place is their annual policy forum series. Every year, MPHA tackles a new public health topic by bringing together leaders in our community for a series of four to five policy forums. This year, the forums focus on evidence behind a number of Public Health controversies. The series will kick off on at 7:00 am on November 13 with a forum titled Unhealthy Influences: The Impact of Advertising on the Health of Children. This topic is of particular interest to the Improve Group right now because of our needs assessment and evaluation work with Statewide Health Improvement Program (SHIP) grantees. SHIP aims to reduce tobacco use and obesity through environmental and policy changes, and we know that advertising to children is one factor that can contribute to youth tobacco use and unhealthy eating. For more information about registration for the MPHA policy form, please click here.

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This week my co-worker Samantha Hagel and I set out to our perspective schools as 5-year veteran volunteers for Art Adventures, a program of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA). The goal of this great program is to spread art education, observation and appreciation across the state through in-classroom, hands-on experiences.

Pictured above is Ms. Dorothy Blackmon’s 3rd grade class at Expo Elementary in Saint Paul. The kids were excellent at exploring the art pieces from the set I presented called Family, Friends and Foes. You can see by the looks on their faces that it was a fun and productive morning. This week the class will take a field trip to MIA to see the original pieces.

My son, Nick, and I are in the photo on the bottom left sitting next to a painting by Francisco de Goya. You can probably tell by my face that I love it as much as the students do.

Look for Samantha’s Art Adventure’s experience in an upcoming blog.

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Catherine Jordan, Executive Director of AchieveMpls with Dr. Leonard Sax

Thanks to AchieveMpls and their funding education partner Comcast I was fortunate to attend an afternoon session on factors leading to the current loss of ambition and resilience in today’s male youth. Our presenter was Leonard Sax, MD, PhD, a noted family physician and research psychologist and the author of author of the book "Boys Adrift: What's Really Behind the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys."

After speaking to parents and teachers through his years of practice, Dr. Sax repeatedly heard the message that the girls seemed to be more driven that the boys. Girls were also matriculating to college at a higher rate and graduating in bigger numbers. It led him to wonder what was happening with our boys.

Dr. Sax’s research came to focus on 5 factors he felt were affecting the culture of underachievement in boys and men:

1.) Changes in education in the last 30 years - Teaching practices that set boys up for failure
2.) Video games - Game pursuit causing boys to separate from the real world
3.) Medications - Prescribed drugs causing irrevocable damage
4.) Endorphin Disrupters - Chemicals found in everyday objects bringing harmful physical changes
5.) Decline/disintegration of the masculine ideal - Role models for manhood lacking authority & intelligence

As a mother of two boys, ages 12 and 8, I found the talk a bit unnerving and very helpful. The presentation gave a glimpse into what to look for in the schools and teachers that are educating my sons (teachers understanding of differences in how boys learn), along with enforcing parenting objectives that will help the boys grow in a healthier direction (ex: less video games, more physical action).

I would encourage parents to lake a look at the written works of Dr. Sax which include the well-received book, “Why Gender Matters - What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences."

If you would like to learn more, Dr. Sax has a very insightful blog: http://www.boysadrift.com/blog.php. On his blog he sites many articles and studies on the topic of gender in education.

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Education Week has weekly chat sessions on topics of interest to educators. This week's chat, on social networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, etc.) and how they can be used to reach out to students and monitor behavior, caught my eye; I've been mulling around ideas for using social networking in evaluation.

The live chat will be broadcast tomorrow at noon central time (1:00 PM eastern). One of the panelists, Conn McCartan, is a Minnesota Principal who recently disciplined students related to online behavior.

If your organization has been thinking about the pros and cons of social networking, this might be a good resources.

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In our work for the Waiver Review Initiative, we have learned that many communities struggle with identifying good employment options for people with disabilities. In particular, they often have providers that are excellent at one aspect of employment (such as a facility that offers work training) but don't have many options they can offer other than those few providers.

A workshop at PACER center on Nov. 5 is designed for both families and professionals to identify creative roads to employment for youth with disabilities. More information can be found here. The concept of customizing opportunities for various individual needs is one that is permeating all of our work. One of the seven areas that we review is the community's "person-centered" approach to working with people; how much the services, supports and opportunities reflect the person's individual needs and wants.

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by guest writer Greg Ritter of The Ritter Group

As an organization moves into major gift fundraising a common problem is determining who belongs on the prospect list. We may think first about contacting the people with the most wealth. But writing a letter to Bill and Melinda Gates or to Warren Buffet will probably lead to disappointment. Organizations usually imagine a large gift "coming out of the blue," when it's most likely going to come from someone they already know.

In development practice ability is only one of the three ingredients that will most often result in a major gift. Linkage to our organization or to one like ours is just as important. Lack of linkage will most likely shoot down our letters to Bill, Melinda and Warren. These first two ingredients, ability and linkage, are almost givens in major gift fundraising.

Prospects either have the ability, or they don't. They are either linked to us, or they aren't.

When these two ingredients are both present, we can supply the third one, interest. By making a strong case for giving, we complete the recipe for a major gift.

Asking for Major Gifts is a workshop that will show how to spot prospects in your data base and how to use helpful resources as close as your public library, the web, and CD ROMs to spend the most time with prospects who can really make it happen.

Click here for more information on this course and for a registration form.

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A friend passed this opportunity along to me; what a great opportunity!

Long-Time Activists of Color Invited to Apply for Sabbatical Program. Deadline: December 15, 2007

The Alston/Bannerman Fellowship Program honors those who have devoted their lives to helping their communities organize for racial, social, economic, and environmental justice, and provides resources for these organizers to take sabbaticals for reflection and renewal. To qualify for an Alston/Bannerman Fellowship, applicants must be a person of color; have more than ten years of community organizing experience; be committed to continuing to work for social change; and live in the United States or its territories. Both full-time and volunteer activists are eligible to apply.

Fellows receive a $25,000 award to take sabbaticals of three months or more and are expected to stop their day-to-day work activities for at least three months and devote that time to activities that will best re-energize them for the work ahead. Past fellows have used the time and resources to travel, study, visit with other activists, read, relax, acquire new skills, explore new interests, spend time with their families, restore their health, plan, evaluate, and "just be still." Visit the program's website for complete program details.

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Eric Wong received a notice from a friend in St. Louis County about an upcoming conference in Rochester, MN (Oct. 22-23). The Midwest Government Performance Conference aims to give government staff some tools for thinking about performance in new ways.

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The American Evaluation Association (AEA) recently re-worked the Guiding Principles for Evaluators. These principles are the ethical foundation of our work. The AEA rightly notes that these principles are meant to inform but cannot account for every possible situation and that occasionally the principles come into conflict with each other.

We recently used the AEA guiding principles at a staff meeting to talk about how they guide our work. We examined many recent projects, including our work with the Minnesota Department of Human Services, the Northwest Minnesota Council of Collaboratives, and the Girl Scouts.

The principles follow, along with some example questions that evaluators can ask when using the principles to inform their work:

Systematic Inquiry: How are methods of participant selection important to the credibility of an evaluation? What about methods of data collection?

Competence: How can you decide what dimensions of competence are relevant for an evaluation? What is cultural competence and how will you know its presence?

Integrity/Honesty: How might the idea of integrity or honesty affect different stages of the evaluation?

Respect for People: What are major ways of showing respect for people in an evaluation context?

Responsibilities for General and Public Welfare: Are there limits to an evaluator’s responsibilities for general and public welfare?

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Last Thursday (July 19) we launched our new workshop series. In a session on developing good outcome indicators and tools, and another on how to conduct an evaluation as an internal evaluator, participants walked through the different stages of an evaluation and developed their own materials to use in their work. They learned how to create good surveys and focus groups, develop a logic model, and use evaluation to tell their organizations story. The picture below shows one activity in which participants used a road map to describe their evaluation goals.

Our participants said:

My learning goals were to understand the greater evaluation process and purpose, beyond just reporting what funders require – definitely met my goals!
I feel I have a much better base of knowledge in evaluation and will be using this info to improve our processes at our organization.
I learned specific logistical details about conducting evaluations.
My goals were to understanding data collection mechanisms, interpret outcome data and learn about the elements of an evaluation – all of these were met.

We will next be offering our workshops in September. If you are interested in registering, please let us know through our contact form and we will send you additional information.

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I often think of Cheerful Givers around this time of year with my boys’ upcoming birthdays just a month apart. Not very long ago the 3 of us were in need of help from local food banks and the community that serves those in difficult living situations. Cheerful Givers is one of those organizations that gives hope to families in need. They “celebrate the lives of poor and homeless children with anonymously donated birthday gift bags” which they distribute through social service agencies, homeless shelters and food banks.

A book about the wonderful achievements of Cheerful Givers titled "Do I Have A Birthday Too? The Cheerful Givers Story" was published last week. The book recounts the compassionate development of this unique organization including biographies of the founders, board chair and president. Also included are inspirational stories of the countless volunteers who have helped make this Minnesota-based nonprofit a national success story.

For more information or to reserve a copy of this book go to www.writingforthecause.com. To learn more about Cheerful Givers please visit: www.cheerfulgivers.org

In 2006 the Improve Group was pleased to donate to Cheerful Givers through our Corporate Giving Program. The Improve Group accepts applications for our giving program on a rolling basis. Twice a year we evaluate requests and select organizations for funding. We anticipate our next funding cycle will occur in June, 2007.

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The Arts Education Partnership's Critical Link newsletter had information about a new resource available for evaluators, researchers and educators:

The U.S. Department of Education announced the updated Federal Resources for Education Excellence (FREE) website. It now provides richer, more expansive resources to teachers and students alike. There are over 1500 resources to take advantage of at FREE, ranging from primary historical documents, lesson plans, science visualizations, math simulations and online challenges, paintings, photos, mapping tools, and more. This easily accessible information is provided by federal organizations and agencies such as the Library of Congress, National Archives, NEH, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian, NSF, and NASA.

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The 23rd National Home and Community Based Services Conference will take place from Sept. 30-Oct. 3 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

We had a chance to present findings from our Waiver Review Project at the 2006 conference in Minneapolis; the presentation is available at the National Association for State Units on Aging website. If you are interested in sharing new tools used in serving individuals who receive long-term care services, we found the offerings very engaging and broad.

Also recently, we received a call for paper proposals from the American Evaluation Association. Marian presented a paper on cross-site evaluation at the 2006 conference, and was very inspired to learn new theories in participatory and developmental evaluation. The conference, Nov. 5-7 in Baltimore, has an emphasis on evaluation and learning.

One final conference to note is the American Planning Association's 99th National Planning Conference, April 14-18 in Philadelphia. I have attended this conference twice, and greatly enjoyed the offerings. One of the highlights each year are the mobile workshops, where local communities get to showcase some of their special projects.

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