July 2009 Newsletter

The Architecture of Project Design and Presentation

 

In the June 2009 newsletter, and in Proposal Development, we looked at the human dimension of project design; we talked about participatory needs assessments, consensus building, and donor input. This month we will look at management tools that will increase the likelihood that your project will have human-scale impact.

 

Beginning Logframes

The Logical Framework (logframe), also known as the Theory of Change, is a powerful tool that aids in project planning, budgeting, project management, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for assessing impact. Different groups and organizations take different approaches, so logframes come in a variety of styles and configurations. In working with donors and stakeholders, your logframe will allow you to communicate to others exactly what you are trying to accomplish, and convey to them if you are making progress toward your goals.

 

In Proposal Development we used a participatory needs assessment to define the problem, and then researched activities that would provide solutions in order to come up with a project concept. Your project concept can be laid out in a simplified logframe matrix that allows you to organize:

§ the project goal

§ outcomes that fulfill the goal

§ outputs that fulfill the outcomes

§ activities that fulfill the outputs

§ inputs necessary for the activities

 

 

This rest of this article has MS Word tables and is best viewed as a PDF document.

 

Condensed version of the article.

Expanded version of the article.

 

Project Start-Up: A Checklist

August 2009 Newsletter

 

Project Start-Up: A Checklist

In the June Newsletter we reviewed developing a project concept and working with donors, in the July Newsletter we looked at project design, Logframes, and submitting your proposal.

 

Congratulations! Your proposal was successful and you received news of a grant award. Now comes the time to launch the project: where to begin? There will be a two to three month delay prior to receiving the funds – this is good – there are a number of things to do in preparation: Donor contract completion and project preparation.

 

Donor Contract Completion

This can be the simple matter of signing the donor’s contract, but in some cases, this can be a time of intense negotiation with the donor. They may require additional documentation. Some donors will request that a separate bank account be set up for the project and that an independent financial auditor be contracted.

 

Project Preparation

But this newsletter is about the actual hands-on aspects of project start-up. It may have been six months or a year since you designed the project and wrote the proposal; this is the right time to review it and refresh your memory about the details. The narrative portion of the proposal, the logframe, the schedule and the budget will each provide you with their own unique level of information.

 

Next is getting organized: Here is a checklist to help you get started.

 

People

Are you fully staffed for this project – or will you need to hire more people?

Is the project management staff on-board?

What is the time frame for hiring and how easy will the positions be to fill?

Do you have a clear description of the people you need to hire?

Who in your organization will be in charge of the search and the hiring process?

Will new-hires need specialized training?

Will this be contracted out or do you have the training capacity?

Can new-hires shadow existing staff as part of the training process?

 

Community

Have you stayed in contact with the beneficiary community?

Will they need to be re-approached?

Who should do this – and in what time frame in relation to project start-up?

Is the community prepared for the project?

Do you have clear communication with the village leaders, elders and with women’s groups too?

Have you consulted them about how much time they have available for participating in the project?

Do they feel that the benefits of your project outweigh their time lost from other activities?

Do you have a champion of your project in the village who can answer questions and provide follow-up when you aren’t there?

Do you have a strategy for using workshops as your delivery medium – or do you prefer to work with individuals?

Do you have an exit strategy in mind? At some point, if the project is to be sustainable, the community needs to take complete ownership.

 

Partners

Does your proposal call for partnering with other organizations?

Who in your organization should arrange this – and in what time frame?

When would be a good time to call a meeting of all the partners and project staff?

 

Inputs

Will you need to purchase any specialized equipment that has a long lead time for ordering?

Have prices remained stable for equipment?

Have prices remained stable for other materials you may need?

Did your proposal have a plan for price increases?

 

Activities

Do you need to begin activities (interventions) immediately upon receiving funding – or was preparation time included?

Do any of your activities have a long lead time for preparation?

If you need to hire new staff and prepare for activities do you feel that your schedule accommodates this?

If it doesn’t, can you ‘borrow’ staff from another project on a temporary basis?

Do you have descriptive information for existing staff and new hires about the project and their role in it?

Do you have project activity ‘how-to’ manuals so that field staff will be fully prepared?

 

Administrative Support

 

If you have staffers who will be joining this project, a meeting will be in order to review the project and look through this checklist. Checklist items can be delegated. Important things to determine:

§ Does the group feel that the project schedule is still appropriate for the project?

§ Is there enough lead time prior to start-up?

§ Have any bottlenecks appeared in hiring or purchasing that will impact the schedule?

§ Are there any cost items that could be a problem? Can you devise a plan to solve this?

§ Are there any new external factors that will affect the project?

§ Are there any new beneficiary factors that will affect the project?

§ Who is in charge of:

o Hiring?

o Logistics?

o Project Management?

o Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting

 

If difficult challenges are discovered prior to signing the donor contract, project details may be able to be re-negotiated such as schedule modifications, or dropping non-essential activities in order to free up cash for price increases. Donors can be quite reasonable in modifying projects prior to signing, especially if external factors are to blame and the overall project cost doesn’t go up. A sound suggestion would be to propose changes to a donor only once; so go through the project very carefully at this stage.

 

On The Ground

The field staff should be as close culturally to the project beneficiaries as possible; the two-way flow of information will be much better. They will be able to convey information without making cultural gaffes, and they will be able to sense any resistance to receiving information. They are the front-line ambassadors of your organization and you need to give them the courtesy of making sure they are fully prepared to do their job.

 

There are five necessary things to do to help prepare them.

 

1. Provide them with sound training; sound training on participatory practices, engaging with communities, leading workshops and training on the activities they will be implementing. If they are going to be teaching kitchen hygiene – they need to be fully versed in kitchen hygiene.

 

2. Provide them with mentoring. Let them audit workshops led by a more experienced staff member. Introduce them into their project community with their mentor. Encourage their mentor to follow up frequently in the first month and slowly taper off.  

 

3. Provide them with the tools, materials and access to information that they need to do their job. They should have a binder with complete information on the activities they will be introducing to their community. In the early stages they can study the materials new to them, later they can refer back to it. Then they can add new information of their own as they learn more. Make sure that they have access to the posters and handouts that they need for workshops. They may need large sheets of paper, markers and other ‘classroom’ materials. They should be able to have access to the Internet so that they can download additional materials.

 

4. Ensure that they fully understand the mission of your organization, the expected outcomes of the project and the importance of their role. Encourage them to feel included in other areas of your organization: donor relations, project management, grant writing, reporting. They are a part of the implementation team and need to understand where they fit in and how important they are.

 

5. Make them part of the project concept team too. They will know more about beneficiary need than anyone else in the organization. They will be able to help grant writers know if a proposal is a good fit for field staff and beneficiary. They will be able to help with budgeting and scheduling, and be able to suggest practical ways to accomplish activities.

 

Monitoring, Observation, Reflection, Lessons-Learned, & Adapting the Plan

Do you have a plan for evaluating, during the course of the project, if the information is being adopted – or if there is resistance? This knowledge can help you adapt your strategies to be more effective – and certainly will help with future project design. Do you have measureable outcomes that can help you to see if you are on track – or if you need to adapt your plan based upon lessons learned?

 

Reporting

Good reporting is key to maintaining your strategic partnership with your donors. Current donors and potential donors like hearing stories from the field; make sure that your field staff capture human-interest stories that are succinct, compelling, feature what the donor is most interested in, show progress, and have a core message. Be sure to capture some great photos. People in action. People smiling. More on reporting next month…

 

In Review

Here are the highlights of good project start-up:

Donor Contract Completion

Project Preparation

People

Community

Partners

Inputs

Activities

Administrative Support

Field Staff

Monitoring, Observation, Reflection, Lessons-Learned, & Adapting the Plan

Reporting

 

Next Month: September 2009 Newsletter

Reporting: Marketing for New Funding

 

Please feel free to contact me with questions.

 

Sincerely

 

Tim Magee

Tim.Magee@csd-i.org

CSD Online Classes Capture True Field Experience
November 2009 Newsletter
Cursos en Línea sobre desarrollo—en español

Save Money On Professional Development: Take CSD Field Courses Online.
Every month we had been receiving emails from destinations like Africa, India and the Middle East about attending our Field Courses. It can sometimes be challenging for these colleagues to find a way to attend courses on a different continent. We decided to make our courses accessible to more people internationally—and the outcome was our Online Learning program.

A module of two courses (from our Impact Short Courses program) is being offered online in January, 2010. In the first course, each student will work to develop a community-centered development project from the ground up—carrying it through needs assessment and design development. In the second course, they will transform it with the real management tools of logframes and fact sheets into a project ready to share with a donor. 12 classes, 12 concrete steps. Your output is a fully designed project—with a complete set of documentation—and ready to launch.

OL 2.1. From the Ground Up: Designing Community-Centered Projects with Sustainable Solutions
January 12 – February 22, 2010: 6 Weeks
From the Ground Up will give you an insight into contemporary methods of developing community-centered, impact-oriented projects. You will leave the course with practical field tools and develop a range of skills: needs assessments, project design, community workshops, and discovering evidence-based activities. The course is designed to be used as a vehicle for you to develop a real project, in real time, during the course.

OL 2.2. Project Architecture: Planning for Impact
March 9 – April 26, 2010: 6 Weeks
Prerequisite for this course: OL 2.1: From the Ground Up
This course will take the project concept developed in OL 2.1 and transform it with a powerful set of management tools into a project for presenting to donors. Logframes, detailed budgets, schedules, and compelling fact sheets: these tools will communicate to donors, staff, and stakeholders exactly what you are going to accomplish, and lead the effective management of the project once funded.

The Courses also Provide the Following Resources
Documents on course topics by contemporary experts.
Books, posters and manuals available online for download.
Internet development links organized by sector.
Class blog for sharing your project stories and photos from the field.
Class forum for posting questions to your classmates.
Access to tools and resources on the Center site that are only available to students and CSD members.
There are no books to buy—all course materials can be linked to, or downloaded from the course site.

To learn about course fees and to sign up for the courses please visit OL 2.1. From the Ground Up and OL 2.2. Project Architecture.

CSD Online Classes Capture True Field Experience
Are you a donor, development staffer, or student who wants to learn more about what works in designing impact-oriented projects?

These courses give you the same hands-on experience as attending one of our Field Courses—for less money—and with a smaller carbon footprint. But in our Field Courses, we actually work in villages—difficult to do online you say?

We have found a solution: Each class assignment is a concrete step in developing a project for use in the field. Some of the assignments are done within the communities you serve: take your assignment into the field, do it as a solution-oriented activity together with the community, and thereby finish a component of your class project. And there you have it: an online field course with tangible, concrete results.

We will supply two levels of mentoring. Each week’s assignment will be accompanied by a clear, professional example of what we want you to achieve that week. It is yours to use as a template for your assignment—and for developing future projects. We will also provide comments, suggestions and encouragement for each one of your assignments individually. We want you to develop high quality project components, and we also want you to understand the hows and whys.

Who should attend? Southern and Northern development students, field staff, grant writers, project managers, directors, and donor staff. You will only need to have functional knowledge of Word, Excel, email, and the Internet.

The classes are designed to be fun and interactive: you will be collaborating with colleagues from around the globe.

If you are a donor in Chicago, an INGO Grant Writer in Wellington, or a student in Manchester—rather than an NGO Staffer in Nairobi—where will you turn for a project idea? We will show you how to connect to a tangible project—or we can set you up with a real-life, virtual project.

If you already have a grant award with defined goals and objectives—use it as your class project. These two courses will magnify project impact by introducing you to evidence based interventions, lesson plans for effective workshops, and by fine tuning your logframe.

A special rate is available for organizations who would like multiple staff members to take the course and focus as a group on strengthening a single project. This is great for team building and seeing how different departments can work together to create impact.

If you have questions about the Online Learning program, please contact January.Course@csd-i.org .

Sincerely

Tim Magee
http://www.csd-i.org/