6.1 Disseminating
Your Results
What
is Dissemination? |
Giving Presentations
| Working With The Media
| Other Ways of Getting The
Word Out
Other Ways Of
Getting The Word Out
Writing
reports
Your final
report can be a short document summarizing the evaluation
findings with an appendix for those who are interested, or
a longer, more detailed report that covers all aspects of
the project, much like a funding proposal. Depending on your
audience, you may simply want to highlight the results, or
you may want to go into more detail about what you found.
For a
formal report, for funders or other community partners, begin
with a summary of your project, addressing the following information:
- a statement
of the problem, goal, or opportunity your project addresses;
- a description
of the community context, which lists the important features
of your community, including social and economic conditions,
history, geography, politics, descriptions of previous attempts
to address the issue, etc;
- your
expectations, or your project’s intended results;
- project
activities, or everything that was done to bring about changes;
- project
resources - the time, human and financial and in-kind resources,
and other assets available to conduct program activities;
Following
the summary, list the reasons your evaluation was done, what
questions were asked, and why those were the questions chosen.
Explain what your group wanted to learn from the evaluation
and what methods were used to conduct the evaluation.
If you
are writing a report for your funder, make sure to consult
their guidelines. They may have a particular format they would
like you to follow in presenting your results.
Creating
newsletters
Newsletters
are great tools for communicating information about your project
both internally and externally.
You can create your own newsletter, or use the networks of
another group, and write an article in their newsletter.
A well-designed
and written newsletter will show how well-organized your group
is, and will help keep your members and colleagues up-to-date
on your activities.
Newsletters
can be particularly helpful in disseminating information about
your project because they can reach a broad audience, but
they do take money and skill to do well. For more information
on creating newsletters, please see the Community Tool Box,
Chapter 4, Section 9: Newsletters people will read. http://ctb.lsi.ukans.edu/ctb/c4/c4s9
Using
the internet
The internet
is gaining importance daily as a means of sharing information
and gaining publicity. The internet is an indispensable resource
for community projects for several reasons: it provides an
access to a great deal of free and low-cost information that
will help you implement your project; and it provides an almost
unlimited network for you to use to get the word out about
you project.
Local
high school and college students may have the skills necessary
to help you set up a website for your project for next to
nothing. Get in touch with teachers and students to find out
if they can help you get your project on-line.
Accessing
professional journals
If you
have been collaborating with community college or university-based
researchers, you might be interested in working with them
to write an article for a professional journal, which would
help you to share your results with the academic community.
|
In
addition to contributing to the Guide to Local Action,
the participants in each Inclusion site also focused
on creating their own dissemination networks, to communicate
information about their individual project both within
their own community and beyond.
The
dissemination strategy developed in each site reflected
the uniqueness of their particular project. The Forest
site used several strategies to disseminate their learnings.
They took their show on the road to neighbouring communities,
where they shared their role plays with a variety of
different groups, and they also produced a video of
the role plays, so that it could be sent out to communities
that they couldn’t visit in person.
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6.2 Ensuring Continuity
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