RUSS SPAIN, CCAPNICK BURROWS, CCAPSHERYL BAILEY, CCAP

The Journey To Winning The Award For Excellence in

Community Action

THIS PRESENTATION CAN BE DOWNLOADED AT WWW.EICAP.ORG/CAP2012

Agenda

TimelineApproachDeploymentSite Visit PreparationCategory ActivitiesQuestions and Answers

Timeline

October 2005 - Started Pathways to Excellence June 2007 – Completed the Pathways Self-StudyOctober 2007 – Received Pathways Feedback ReportSeptember 2008 – Formally Started Excellence Program January 2011 – First Award for Excellence SubmissionMay 2011 –Technical Assistance Site VisitAugust 2011 – Received Feedback ReportJanuary 2012 – Second Award for Excellence SubmissionApril 2012 – Award for Excellence Site VisitJune 2012 – Notified of Award for Excellence

Approach

Low Hanging Fruit (September 2008) Engaged 40 employees, 2 Board members and 1 Policy

Council member A team was formed for each category Category 7 Team was original Pathways Self-Study

Team Category Teams Reviewed Standards and Pathways

Feedback Report to determine: What we are doing Gaps in our operations The “low hanging fruit” to address those gaps

Monthly meetings with each Category group

Approach

Integration of Project (August 2009) Dissolved category teams Created two smaller teams

Fact-Finding Made recommendations to Deployment Group Assembled documentation where we already met

standards Deployment

Developed plans and implemented projects and initiatives to solve problems

Each team met every other week This approach remained active for about six months

Deployment

Application August 2010 – We made the decision to apply for the

Award for Excellence We knew that if we didn’t have the added pressure of

the application, we would continue spinning wheels and the changes we needed to make would not happen

In writing our self-study for the application we honestly assessed where we stood as an agency, up to stating that we didn’t meet a specific standard

Submitted in January 2011

Deployment

Technical Assistance Site Visit Lil contacted us and said that the review team was

impressed with our submission, however, we hadn’t met all of the standards

We were given the opportunity to have a TA Site Visit May 2011 – TA Site Visit

Added context to the submission Gave ideas for fixing existing gaps

We immediately wrote formal policies for what we had developed and implemented the “low hanging fruit” that came from the site visit

We would not be receiving this award this year without this!!

Deployment

Feedback Report We did an inventory of every Strength and OFI in the

feedback report For each OFI, we conceptualized what it would look

like for our agency If we had already done it, we crossed it off our list We developed policies and procedures for what we

conceptualized, presented them to Leadership Team and then to the Board for adoption

Submitted second Award for Excellence Self-Study in January 2012

Site Visit Preparation

We went through our responses to each standard and determined what documentation we needed to provide to support what we submitted

We provided every document electronically via Google Sites

https://sites.google.com/a/eicap.org/award/

Category Activities

Category 1 Defined Leadership System Updated Agency By-Laws Added Ex Officio Members to Board from Advisory

Groups Adopted Advocacy Issues Measured Impacts of the Advocacy

Category 2 Developed a Strategic Planning Timeline Formally Defined Sources of Information Added Output Based Metrics to Strategic Plan

Category Activities

Category 3 Formally Defined Customers Created Program Service Guides To Improve Referrals Deployed Customer Feedback Cards Standardized Community Needs Assessment Conducted Focus Groups Developed Policy for Employee Satisfaction Developed Partnership Scorecard Have a Partner Open House

Category Activities

Category 4 Developed a written Technology Plan Created Unduplicated Count Process Created Performance Scorecard based on Strategic

Plan MetricsCategory 5

Formalize Policy for Hiring Low-Income People Include Training Requests to Annual Evaluations Created Training Evaluations

Category Activities

Category 6 Developed Administrative and Financial Risk

Assessment Contracted the Development of Communications Plan Created and Implemented Awareness Surveys Developed a System to Track Internal Referrals Formalized a Performance Management System Developed a Project Management Framework

Category 7 Ensured all Policies Discussed How the Results of the

Activity will be Tracked and Incorporated into Scorecard

Contact Information

Russ Spain – rspain@eicap.orgNick Burrows – nburrows@eicap.orgSheryl Bailey – sbailey@eicap.org

Any Questions???

This Presentation and Supporting Documentation can be Downloaded at www.eicap.org/cap2012