February 2020
A Message from Prevention Institute

Making Connections progress reports will be due soon!
 
As you read this, you are hopefully in the midst of developing your mid-year progress report to share your achievements. This year, the progress report is in two parts:

  • Part 1: Workplan Update (which includes updates on your current year workplan progress and learnings) DUE 2/28/2020
  • Part 2: Site Profile Narrative (which will support development of a site profile for long-term sustainability and communication/messaging) DUE 3/13/2020

As with all progress reports, the information you provide will help us better understand the status of your work. It will also let us know the types of support, technical assistance and coaching you may need from us, other sites and initiative partners.

What’s new for this progress report is the development of a site profile narrative of your work (Part 2). The questions in Part 2 will support the development of a profile of your successes and short-term outcomes over the five years of the initiative. After you submit Part 2, the PI team will work with you to turn your responses into a formatted profile that will be authored by you to use in communications and sustainability activities, and which will also be included in a public-facing Making Connections National Initiative final report. We will also work with you to develop a version of the profile in a format that can be updated as your work continues beyond the end of the Making Connections initiative.

The questions we are asking you to address include:
  • Background on your population of focus, how you identified needs and strategies, how you engage the population of focus, and what you’ve learned;
  • The change and impact your work has brought about, including key accomplishments, successes, outcomes, and challenges;
  • About your team and partners, and how you collectively led the work; and,
  • Where you hope your work will lead in the future.

We hope you’ll share some quotes and photos to help make this profile stand out and show the world what Making Connections is all about.

If you have any questions about the progress report, please reach out to makingconnections@preventioninstitute.org .  
Using Evaluation Data to Promote Program Sustainability

The MC USF evaluation team shared this resource in its September 2019 e-newsletter. We thought it fitting to share this webinar once again as you prepare your progress report.

For an overview of the important relationship between evaluation and sustainability and how sustainability planning can be data-informed, click on the image below to view the webinar from minute 7:45 to minute 14:27.

This webinar hosted by James Bell Associates on July 18, 2017, provided an overview of strategies used by Children’s Bureau child welfare discretionary grantees to sustain program and evaluation activities following the end of federal funding.

 The Making Connections Evaluation emphasizes   theory-driven evaluation , which promotes development of shared vision, clear linking of strategies to intended outcomes, and a commitment to using data to inform decision making at all stages and levels of implementation.
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