Attendance: Kate Klibansky, Stacie Haines, Kristen Grant, Nathan Robbins, Will Sedlack
Staff: Kirsten Brewer, Michael Ashmore, Maryalice Crofton, Jake Hurner, Kelsey Preecs
Guest Speaker: Amanda Dwelley
The Climate Corps Task Force welcomed Amanda Dwelley, expert in equity evaluation, to their meeting. She has taken a look at the Maine Climate Corps program and provided the Task Force with a framework for thinking about best practices in tracking and reporting vis a vis equity and led us in a discussion about priorities and goals for reporting.
Notes from Presentation
Summarize current reporting process:
- Who is involved in reporting? Sponsor/grantee, Host Sites, Maine Climate Corps Administrator
- Who sees/reviews results? State Service Commission, Legislature. Maine Climate Council: subcommitees and working groups.
Discussion: Who is important audience?
- Community needs to see the work and support the outcome.
- Congressional and Federal Executive Branch
- Future grantees
- Other Potential funders
- What is the story you want to share?
Context of project/program:
Policy Context - What need or gap this fills in federal and state programs or funding
Report from grantees - Who they involved and served
Admin responsibility to package what grantees report with broader context.
Most valuable for stakeholders - Three Benefits:
1. Outreach/beneficiaries.
2. Benefits to members, workforce
3. Community resilience, through volunteerism, capacity exists after the program moves on. Community collaboration is key
Reporting is an opportunity for reflection and discussion, beyond just getting the data.
Have Team debrief 4 questions. What were we trying to accomplish? Where did we hit (or miss) our objectives? What caused our results? What should we start, stop, or continuing doing?
Align reports with goals, metrics, EM&V Plan, at call for program concept/design/application. Let people write their own goals.
A lot of qualitative data being gathered. What would be most effective? what do you actually use? What to remove/prioritize?
Early stage report process: can we do a walk through the process to answer questions along the way to see if people are interpreting the questions correctly. Help the reporter understand the context of the report, why the funder (or whoever) is asking.
Do more live evaluation conversations. Take people behind the curtain and asking questions with the end product in mind – target audience, more funding, more members, etc.