While reading the Stuart Foundation project I highlighted for myself five major factors that make Child Welfare Program:
1. Defining clear goal and coherent strategies ,
2. Asking beneficiaries what they expect from the program,
3. Observing and learning innovative approaches form other organizations,
4. Comprehensive approach to solve the issue, and
5. Using of relevant indicators.
But I think the key of the success was the availability of the resources to implement this great idea of comprehensive support for 18 years old children who leave foster care centers. If the organization will not have enough resources to implement its comprehensive approach is would be difficult to have such a great impact. So here is my question. We observed a successful example of the program that definitely costs a lot. Do you think it is possible to reach an excellent performance and make a difference with projects that have very small budgets and limited activities?
Hi Zhanna,
ReplyDeleteYes, I think it is possible, but I personally think that depends on the goals and the capacity of the organization. If you have the goal of ending national hunger, you may need a larger budget in order to have real impact.
I tried to think of ways in which excellent national performance could be accomplished with a small budget; but even using free tools like social media does not guarantee success. Many of the examples of social media in our Kanter and Fine text seemed to produce large-scale success because of external factors (such as the Michael Vick Dogfight scandal), because of the compelling emotional appeal of the story (such as the saddening natural disasters of Haiti and Japan), or because of existing organizational networking capacity (e.g. the organization was already well known) such as the Royal Opera House and their Twitter Opera.
If the organization has smaller capacity, the goals may have to be smaller to achieve impact with a small budget. I can give you an example From the Appalachian Library. Our annual Book Sale and Ice Cream Social has a very small budget; we spend $220 on entertainment (music and puppet show), purchase food and drinks to sell at the event (this varies a great deal from year to year), and rent a truck to transport the books to an outdoor facility (U-haul donates, but it would cost about $50). If we are lucky, the donations we solicit from community business will cover our costs (in the past they always have!) On average, we make about $4,500 in profit which is used for children's programming. The Library's Reading Buddies Program from 2010 was so successful that our Director received the Finger Lakes Library System Outreach award, which can be awarded to any of the thirty-three libraries (some of which are large and have larger budgets!) in the system for their outreach efforts. We made a difference in our small community even though we aren't well known or have a large budget.
Here is an article about the Apalachin Library and what they've done in the past for the community if you're interested!: http://owegopennysaver.com/index.php/2011/02/26/apalachin-library-seeks-donations-for-ongoing-expansion/
I think the success of the Child Welfare program could be repeated with a smaller budget if the goals were smaller, say in a small community like the one the Apalachin Library Serves. The Impact maybe be smaller in numbers (fewer children's lives impacted) but I think all children deserve care, and helping two or three is just as important an impact as helping 40, or 100, or 300.