Lifecycle of a Service Project (Part 4): Project Implementation
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Rotary International is pleased to present this five-part webinar series to support the Rotary family in producing sustainable service projects. The series will highlight different strategies, best practices, and Rotary resources available to help clubs and districts undertake successful, sustainable service initiatives, using real-life examples from Rotarians. In this webinar (part 4 in the series): • Learn best practices for implementing your project and leading volunteers • Understand how to define and coordinate roles and responsibilities within your project team • Learn how to manage your service project budget
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Lifecycle of a Service Project (Part 4): Project Implementation
- 1. Lifecycle of a Service Project (Part 4): Project Implementation Rotary International 25 March 2014 #Connect4Good
- 2. MARCH 2014 WELCOME TO THE WEBINAR #Connect4Good Sheena Lilly Coordinator, Regional Membership Plans Membership Development Adam Arents Promotions Coordinator Programs
- 3. MARCH 2014 SERVICE PROJECT OVERVIEW #Connect4Good www.rotary.org/webinars
- 4. MARCH 2014 During today’s webinar you will: Learn about strategies for managing your project, leading volunteers, and sticking to your budget. Understand how to define and coordinate roles and responsibilities within your project team. Learn how to manage your service project budget. LEARNING OBJECTIVES #Connect4Good
- 5. MARCH 2014 PARTICIPATING IN THE WEBINAR #Connect4Good Getting connected to audio Use the Audio pod to select Use Telephone - or - Use Mic & Speakers * To improve sound quality, please close all unnecessary programs such as email, MS Office, etc. If you have a cellular device, please move it away from your computer.
- 6. MARCH 2014 LIFECYCLE OF A SERVICE PROJECT #Connect4Good
- 7. MARCH 2014 LIFECYCLE OF A SERVICE PROJECT #Connect4Good
- 8. MARCH 2014 YOUR PROJECT PLAN #Connect4Good
- 9. MARCH 2014 YOUR VOLUNTEERS #Connect4Good
- 10. MARCH 2014 YOUR BUDGET #Connect4Good
- 11. MARCH 2014 POLL
- 12. MARCH 2014 Meet our panelists
- 13. MARCH 2014 MEET OUR PANELISTS #Connect4Good Heather Frankle Rotary Club of Simi Sunrise Simi Valley, California, USA District 5240
- 14. MARCH 2014 MEET OUR PANELISTS #Connect4Good David Bobanick Rotary Club of Mercer Island Burien, Washington, USA District 5030
- 15. MARCH 2014 Tell us about your experience
- 16. MARCH 2014 TELL US ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE #Connect4Good
- 17. MARCH 2014 TELL US ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE #Connect4Good Key features of the water, sanitation, and hygiene project in Honduras: High degree of beneficiary involvement Strategically chosen technical partner Ability to scale up and expand project
- 18. MARCH 2014 TELL US ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE #Connect4Good
- 19. MARCH 2014 PROJECT MANAGEMENT #Connect4Good
- 20. MARCH 2014 COORDINATING WITH PARTNERS #Connect4Good
- 21. MARCH 2014 COORDINATING WITH PARTNERS #Connect4Good
- 22. MARCH 2014 COORDINATING WITH PARTNERS #Connect4Good
- 23. MARCH 2014 COORDINATING WITH PARTNERS #Connect4Good Three responsibilities of local organizers: Finances Project scope Time
- 24. MARCH 2014 WORKING WITH VOLUNTEERS #Connect4Good
- 25. MARCH 2014 WORKING WITH VOLUNTEERS #Connect4Good
- 26. MARCH 2014 PROJECT BENCHMARKS AND MEASUREMENT #Connect4Good
- 27. MARCH 2014 BUDGET AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT #Connect4Good
- 28. MARCH 2014 BUDGET AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT #Connect4Good
- 30. MARCH 2014 CONTACT INFORMATION #Connect4Good David Bobanick Rotary@firstharvest.org www.firstharvest.org Heather Frankle Hfrankle@earthlink.net www.rotaryclubofsimisunrise.org
- 31. MARCH 2014 RESOURCES ON WWW.ROTARY.ORG/MYROTARY #Connect4Good Communities in Action: A Guide to Effective Projects Club Service Projects Committee Manual Project resources on My Rotary Grant Management Manual
- 32. MARCH 2014 Your service project tips #Connect4Good
- 34. MARCH 2014 Thank you for attending today’s webinar! Register for upcoming webinars and view recordings here: www.rotary.org/webinars
Editor's Notes
- SHEENA: My name is Sheena Lilly and I am fromMembership Development. I will be co-moderating today’s session along with Adam Arents from Rotary Programs. You may remember us if you joined us for the first three parts of this webinar series.ADAM: Hi everyone.As Sheena mentioned, I’m Adam and I support Rotary’s programs for young leaders. We’re happy to be here again to discuss bestpractices for implementing a service project.
- ADAM:Today’s webinar, along with all the webinars in this series, are designed to help you organize a successful service project. We will highlight Rotarians’ strategies and experiences and offer tips to help you with your service project.You can find details about the webinar series and links to register for the next session on the Webinars page at ROTARY.ORG/WEBINARS. We’ll include a link to this page, and all of the resources we mention today, in a follow-up email after the webinar. All participants will also receive a link to arecording of this session.
- SHEENAToday we hope to inform you about:Making the best use of volunteers and keeping them engaged.Coordinating roles within projects and defining responsibilitiesStaying on budget and maintaining good financial stewardship.We also want to help our attendees learn from each other during this webinar. So during our time together, we invite you to share your tips by typing in the question pane, and we’ll also ask you to vote in a couple polls. We encourage you to participate actively in the webinar. Send us your questions and comments either through the question pane or on Twitter using the hashtag #Connect4Good. We’ll be sharing some of your questions and comments as they come in. Now we’ll take a moment to show you how you can participate.
- SHEENAYou each have your own control panel in the upper right corner of your screen that looks similar to the one here. Use the orange arrow to open or close your control panel.ADAM: For today’s webinar we have __ registrants from __ countries joining us. To maintain the highest sound quality possible, all but our presenters will be muted during the webinar. Please submit questions or comments to our panelists and to Rotary staff by using the question pane [CLICK] on your control panel.You can also use the question pane if you’re having technical difficulties. Just describe the problem you are having in the question pane, and a staff member will assist you right away.Now, let’s take a moment to practice. Please use your question pane to type in the first word that comes to mind when you think of the last hands-on service project you participated in.****** Comment on answers coming into the questions pane
- SHEENA:No two projects are the same. All will face different challenges and achieve success in different ways. However, there’s one thing service projects have in common, which is that they tend to share a common “lifecycle”. On your screen is a graphic that represents the lifecycle of a service project.As you can see, the key stages are: Planning, Acquiring Resources, Project Implementation, and Evaluation and Promotion.Each webinar in this series touches on different aspects of these key areas, and gives you best practices and tips that you can implement right away, no matter where you are in the lifecycle of YOUR project.
- SHEENA:Remember to keep your project goals, resources, budget, and timeline in mind as you begin to implement your service project.
- ADAM:Now let’s talk about the project plan. Your project plan is what helps you secure resources, partners, and maybe even grant funding. Once you have those, your project plan can help you build a timeline to keep you on track. As you consider how to measure your project’s outcomes, particularly if the project is grant-funded, make sure you incorporate that into the timeline. Measure before, during, and after you implement the project to better understand your impact.Choose a project manager to lead a team of skilled people who coordinate different aspects of the project. Some members of the team can take on multiple tasks. The project manager should keep everyone up to date on the project, and make sure that the team members are aware of the responsibilities of their roles and how they fit into the timeline. An informed, close-knit team will help make your project a success.
- SHEENA:Your volunteers carry out some of the most important work of implementing a service project. When recruiting volunteers, consider what they will be needed for, and write descriptions of the activities they will work on, so that new and existing volunteers know what they should do and what is expected of them. Additionally, every volunteer will have skills that can add to the project. Find out what their interests are, and align volunteer roles with each person’s interests and skills. This will help keep them engaged in the project and with Rotary.
- ADAM:Next, let’s talk about making and sticking to a budget. Going over budget can result in a last-minute scramble for resources, so use your project plan to develop a budget and make any adjustments as early as possible. Prices and other variables often change once the project is underway, so make sure your budget is flexible enough to account for these changes. If your project received a grant from Rotary, any modifications to budgets or implementation plans must be approved.Additionally, make sure you track vendor contracts, agreements, receipts, and communication. This information will help you keep track of expenditures, and you should share these details with the project team. Provide updates as needed to project partners, beneficiaries, and--if the project received a grant--your regional grants officer.
- SHEENA:Before we continue, take a moment to participate in a poll. Which of these aspects of project management have you found most challenging? Sticking to your project plan or timelineStaying on budgetLeading volunteersCoordinating with partnersOtherPLEASE SELECT ALL OF THE OPTIONS ON YOUR SCREEN THAT APPLY TO YOU:[DISCUSS POLL RESULTS]
- SHEENA: Thanks for participating in the poll. Remember, type in your questions or your own project implementation tips at any time using the question pane. Now let’s meet our panelists.
- SHEENA:I’m excited to introduce Rotarian Heather Frankle. She has been a member of the Rotary Club of Simi Sunrise in Simi Valley, California since 2006, and immediately became involved in International Service. Heather’s fields of expertise are in grants, training and strategic planning. She has been a member of the District 5240 Grants Committee since 2009, serving in the roles of Matching Grants Committee Chair and Global Grants Committee Chair. Heather is the recipient of the District 5240 Dr. John Padilla Humanitarian of the Year Award in 2010 and 2012.Because of her humanitarian work in Honduras, she was invited by the Honduran government to be an international observer of their presidential elections in 2009. Heather and her husband Nick have been married 48 years. They have two children and enjoy world travel, gardening and opera, but their passion is Rotary service. Nick will be District Governor in 2016-17.
- ADAMOur second panelist is Rotarian David Bobanick. David has nearly two decades of experience in non-profit food recovery and distribution. Since joining Rotary First Harvest in 2001, David has quadrupled the amount of produce collected and distributed annually and significantly expanded Rotary First Harvest’s strategic impact and partnerships at both the local and national level. David has developed Rotary-based hunger relief programs in other states and serves in an advisory capacity on several state, national and international committees focused on hunger response initiatives and currently serves as President of the Rotarian Action Group for the Alleviation of Hunger and Malnutrition. David is past President of the Rotary Club of Mercer Island, and currently serves as an Assistant Governor for Rotary District 5030. David attended Penn State University, and has participated in non-profit Executive Leadership Institutes at the University of Washington and Stanford University.If you have questions for our panelists at any point, type them in the question pane. We’ll ask as many of your questions as we can later in the webinar.Thank you for joining us today, Heather and David!
- ADAM:Heather, please tell us about the projects you’re involved in.
- HEATHER:The Microcredit Project was made possible by a Competitive Matching Grant awarded by the Trustees of The Rotary Foundation. It is the first and only microcredit revolving loan program approved by TRF for a developed nation. Simi Sunrise is the Host Partner and District3720 in the Republic of South Korea is the International Partner. It was supported by a partnership of 21 Rotary clubs and 11 Rotary Districts. It was piloted in the city of Santa Paula where 17% of the population was living in poverty. It has now expanded to serve all communities in two local counties in which there is a Rotary club that is willing to help with outreach and community education. The grant targets low income, Hispanic women. In conjunction with Women’s Economic Ventures, our Cooperating Organization, it offers classes to help potential beneficiaries learn about business ownership. Loans are then offered to eligible graduates of the program. In 2014 the loan cap was increased from $10,000 to $25,000. We anticipate that 10 loans will be made this Rotary year.
- HEATHERLike the microcredit project, the water, sanitation and hygiene Global Grant is large and complex. The beneficiaries live in two communities in Honduras, El Varillal and Las Mercedes where there is insufficient water, few latrines, limited educational opportunities and high unemployment. The Host Partner is the Rotary Club of Real de Minas – Tegucigalpa. After completing a multi-phase community assessment there was a joint decision that the first problem to tackle was providing sanitation and hygiene education to the communities. This project has at least three distinguishing characteristics. First, a high degree of beneficiary involvement resulted in an agreement that they would provide the money and paid trained employees to maintain the water system after Rotary completed the grant. The beneficiaries in both communities signed a MOU with Rotary and our cooperating organization which detailed the responsibilities of each entity. Second, with the help of a regional Water and Sanitation Rotarian Action Group coordinator, we selected Water Missions International as the Cooperating Organization. Working with WMI, we presented to the Rotary Foundation a design-build budget with WMI functioning as a general contractor to deliver the project within budget. They also ensured the project capable of meeting World Health Organization standards for safe water. Third, we will be using this project as Phase 1 of a multiphase series of Global Grants. This project will install 85 of the needed 400 latrines and functions as a pilot program to test how two different latrine models meet beneficiary expectations, affect soil and water quality, and enable improved hygiene. The results will be used to plan our second Global Grant in two years that will be focused on sanitation and hygiene.
- ADAM:Thank you Heather! Those are both impressive projects. David, please tell us about Rotary First Harvest.DAVID:Rotary First Harvest is a project of Rotary District 5030 that connects farmers, truckers, volunteers and food banks for hunger relief. Our "core work" is primarily as a non-profit produce broker - finding donations of produce that might not be fit for retail market, then arranging with a trucking company to haul it from the farm to one of our food bank partner organizations. We also place AmeriCorps*VISTA volunteers in communities in the Western United States to build highly localized gleaning and produce recovery programs specific to an area's needs and attributes. Twice a month, we arrange Rotary First Harvest "work parties" to help repackage some of the produce we receive in bulk so that it is easier for our food bank partners to handle and distribute. These work parties provide an opportunity for Rotarians in our area to have a hands-on connection both with our work and with hunger relief in our community.ADAM: Describe project management at Rotary First Harvest. DAVID:Connect and collaborate. We don't have a lot of resources available, so we look for ways to leverage under-utilized existing resources, for example, a truck returning empty from a commercial delivery. There are many ways to find those resources, and Rotarians tend to be very effective in helping to identify them for us.
- ADAM:Heather, please tell us about your strategies for managing your grant projects. HEATHER:My strategy for project management is to promote collaboration, and my goal is consensus from the outset. We begin every project with an open discussion about the stewardship of finances, scheduling frequent conference calls, and approaching problems with a positive attitude to make sure that everyone agrees about these three things. Having defined roles for the project team is another important ingredient for success. The project team is your brain trust. Each grant needs to be looked at closely to determine what talents and skills are needed then the right people have to be asked to join the project team. Large, complex grants are too much for one person to handle. Let me give you an example using the microcredit grant. Finance, boots on the ground outreach, social media and the management of on-going critical relationships were the areas we felt needed the involvement of the project team. Two Rotarians help organize and review bank statements and invoices to make sure we are within the budget and within the scope of the grant. Rotarians in several cities within the target area lead local teams to coordinate outreach. Another Rotarian is responsible for social media. I manage the relationship with our Cooperating Organization and funding partners. To sum up, I don’t think that there is a fixed formula a successful project team. The roles are different for the water and sanitation grant than they are for the microcredit grant. The key people must have the skills and talent to meet the requirements of the role they are being asked to fill.
- SHEENA:David, Rotary First Harvest is involved in every step in the process of getting food from farms into the hands of people who need it. How do you manage those partnerships? Can you describe the work it takes beyond signing agreements and contracts?DAVID:Our elevator speech is that “RFH connects farmers, truckers, volunteers and food banks for hunger relief.” We connect almost as a non-profit broker, finding opportunities and connecting existing resources to move food from field to food pantry. Managing partnerships is done on an ongoing basis, and we have a sophisticated database that allows us to track every step of a donation. With a staff of only four people, we need to leverage existing relationships to develop new ones, so having good relationships is vital.Our Harvest Against Hunger program was created specifically to develop new partnerships between hunger relief programs and their local farmers and volunteer groups. We don’t try to coordinate all those relationships, but use the VISTA to build systems that work specifically in the areas they’ve been placed. We find that local relationships are almost always the strongest.
- SHEENA:Heather, how do you approach the partnership between clubs and districts in your projects?HEATHER:For the microcredit project, Rotarians in district 5240 reached out to potential international partners with whom they had established relationships over the past years. I also reached out to clubs in 5240 and other clubs and districts in California. The result was a collaboration of 11 Rotary districts and 21 Rotary clubs. Subsequent to the grant, I have sent semi-annual updates to all of the partners so that they could both learn how beneficiaries have been helped and understand some of the difficulties we are encountering along the way. This microcredit project is truly a mini-pilot because many of the developed countries are watching and learning from us so that they can replicate what we are doing in their own countries.The Current Project is a large Water, Sanitation and Hygiene grant in Honduras. The idea for the project began at a Project Fair in Honduras in January 2012.I had weekly conference calls using Go To Meeting with Victor Gutierrez, one of the Host partners, Stew Martin our Water and Sanitation Rotarian Action Group Coordinator, and executive staff from WMI for over a year. We have agreed to share all information using the file sharing service box.com and are storing quarterly reports and photos there so that all can access them.
- SHEENAHeather, What tips can you give for local and international project partners to work together most effectively?HEATHERThings will always go wrong. There will always be surprises. Keep a sense of humor and humility! Most problems can be resolved with a little creative thinking, some empathy a lot of communication. Another thing that I’ve learned is that silence can mean many things. Listen to the silence. It is trying to tell you something. Don’t be afraid to explore what you don’t understand, but do so gently. Neither partner has all of the best answers and neither will have a good experience if one partner thinks that they know everything. Be prepared for some give and take.SHEENABuilding on that, what are the key differences you’ve experienced in being the local on the ground project organizers and being an international project partner? And what project management skills are needed for those roles?HEATHERI have a new and profound understanding of what it means to be the host partner. It is an incredible amount of work to implement a large and complex grant. My respect for the job that our host partners do has really increased. What they say about walking a mile in another man’s shoes is true.
- HEATHERThe local on the ground project organizer has to keep his eyes on three factors if he or she is going to end up with a quality project – money, scope and time. The three have to be kept in balance, and to do that you need regular and meaningful communication with all partners, regular project visits that consistently involve the beneficiaries in planning/re-planning, implementation and evaluation, as well as accurate, methodic record keeping. Global Grants may take many years to implement so organizing the yearly records and experiences are important to make sure that effective reporting can be done to TRF. In a very real sense the local project organizer is the steward of our donors’ money. Because planning is never perfect, it is very likely that changes will need to be made to the implementation plan. My rule of thumb is to ask your grants officer for permission to make changes before you do anything. Never be in the position of having to beg forgiveness!
- ADAMThat is valuable insight, Heather. Thank you. To our audience, please remember to continue to submit your questions through the question pane. David and Heather will answer as many as possible later in the webinar.David, Does your project team have defined roles? And what responsibilities do they have?DAVIDWe have a proper board of directors, which obviously has some very specific roles for oversight, management and strategic direction. Since RFH is a District project, we also have an Advisory Council comprised of a lead member (or champion) at each club in our District. These folks will help to organize individual club member participation in our projects and will keep clubs informed of our activities.Additionally, we have several work party captains who help to organize volunteers at our monthly work parties.ADAMWhat other roles do volunteers have in your project?DAVIDVolunteers are involved at every level of RFH’s work, from providing leadership and strategic direction as Board members or serving as our “message champions” within Rotary clubs to helping to repack thousands of pounds of bulk produce at monthly RFH work parties.ADAMHow do you determine which duties or roles to assign to new and existing volunteers?DAVIDWith our core work, most new volunteers come to us as participants at a RFH work party. This is where they can meet other Rotarians who have been involved with RFH for many years and learn about our work.Our Harvest Against Hunger volunteers arrive via a different process: At the top, we have AmeriCorps*VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) who commit to serving for one year to help build local produce recovery models in communities along the Western US. These are highly committed young men and women who are on the vanguard of developing new models to connect farmers and volunteers with local hunger relief efforts.
- ADAMHow do you recruit so many volunteers?DAVIDPrimarily through announcements at Rotary, Interact and Rotaract meetings. We’ve seen a tremendous increase in the past year in the number of Rotaract and Interact members volunteering. The fact that this is a hands-on project that provides tangible results within days makes it easy for them to appreciate their impact.Harvest VISTA recruit volunteers in those communities where they are placed – typically by word of mouth, community groups, school groups and religious groups. Again – this is highly tangible work that makes it easy for volunteers to enjoy and benefit from their efforts.SHEENAWhat benefits and challenges has Rotary First Harvest experienced working with so many volunteers?DAVIDOccasional logistical challenges can arise, since we never know the exact number of volunteers who will be participating at a given work party. For example, we had 179 volunteers at our most recent work party. That’s roughly 40 more people than we typically have or had planned for. While we did make it work, it created additional stress for staff and lead volunteers to make sure that volunteers felt needed. Suffice it to say, we packed a lot of produce that day!The broader benefits are really to Rotary: Clubs in our District use RFH work parties to introduce new members to local community service, invite potential new members to see Rotary in a less formal or structured environment than a typical meeting, and provide a way for young families to volunteer together. I love it when the kids of Rotarians come up to me and thank me for letting them help!SHEENAWhat do your volunteers say keeps them engaged?DAVIDFeeling that their work is important, makes a difference and is appreciated. They also welcome the opportunity our work party provides to visit with Rotarians from other clubs within our District. Our volunteer work is quite physical, but everyone always seems to leave on an “endorphin high”!We also are very cognizant of the atmosphere we create. It is fun, convivial and open. We start each session by talking about what we’ll be doing and why it is so vitally important. We also honor first time volunteers to make them feel welcome and appreciated. The donut break in the middle of the session is also a big hit. This is when we have a little time to visit with one another while the produce rooms are restocked. SHEENADonut breaks do make happy volunteers! Thank you, David, for sharing so much about Rotary First Harvest’s volunteers.
- SHEENAHeather, in any project, not just large ones, measuring baseline and outcome data and creating benchmarks is important to tracking the progress and success of a project. How did you incorporate measurement into your project designs, and how do you carry them out during the implementation of your projects?HEATHERBaseline measurements let you know what existed before your project began. They define the scope of the project. Outcomes let you know if you reached your goals. When we designed the current water project, we took water samples. Those samples defined what the water quality was before the project began. After the new water filtration system has been built, we will compare the water samples to not only the baseline measurements, but to World Health Organization standards. The project will not be deemed complete until those standards have been met. Improving the water to that standard is the outcome we have committed to achieve. Although this sounds pretty straightforward there is always a lot to be learned. We learned that in future water, sanitation and hygiene projects we will have a more complete understanding of the impact of the grant if we take medically supervised measurements of disease prevalence before, during and after the grant is completed. When I do new WASH projects they will probably encompass two areas of focus – Water and Sanitation plus Disease Prevention and treatment. SHEENAWould this work similarly for projects not funded by a global grant?HEATHERMeasurement of outcomes is meaningful for any project, whether it’s what you did to prepare for a holiday dinner, a club fundraiser or any project that you undertake. It’s one of the components of all of our District Grants.
- ADAMThank you, Heather. That’s a great point you bring up that projects often overlap areas of focus. And it’s important to consider how one can measure the project’s impact in those different areas.David, What tips can you give for staying on budget and managing a project’s finances?DAVIDI recommend budgeting as conservatively as possible. In other words, budget expenses slightly higher than you expect, and income slightly lower. Consider carefully those categories you will need to track, then create a process for handling all incoming and outgoing cash. Have these systems in place prior to embarking on the project, if at all possible. ADAMDid you make your budget and expenditure information available to project partners and beneficiaries?DAVIDSince Rotary First Harvest is registered as a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization in Washington State, USA as well as a District Project, we have certain rules and regulations that we follow, including a full tax report (IRS 990). We do make our budget available to partners, funders and others. Full organizational and project budgets are almost always required in any application for funding, although the required level of detail will vary. Some funding partners will require receipts and other details of expenses in reports at the end of the funding cycle. We closely track all income and expense items using Quickbooks, then have those numbers finalized by an outside accounting firm and approved by our Board of Directors as part of a financial report at our monthly meetings.I recommend working with your partners to create a “dashboard” that will allow everyone involved to quickly assess the project’s successes and identify any “red flag” items that need more immediate attention. This dashboard should be updated on a regular basis (ours is done monthly).
- SHEENAHeather, what tips can you give for managing a project’s finances?HEATHERI have a “brain trust” that reviews quarterly reports from our Cooperating Organization with me and – key point – asks great questions. Another essential is the quarterly review that we perform before authorizing the payment of any invoices. The expenditures have to correlate with the budget that was approved by TRF. Variances have to be explained and, if revisions are necessary, they have to be brought to the grant coordinator responsible for the project before those revisions are made. Weagreed to share information with other grant partners on a semi-annual basis. Not unexpectedly, we found that Rotarians and cooperating organizations preferred written reports while in most instances beneficiaries preferred more informal, verbal updates.
- SHEENA:Heather and David, you have provided our audience with some great ideas on how to successfully implement projects. Heather, we’d like to hear more about your takeaways after working on both the microcredit and the sanitation and hygiene projects. What did you learn from the experience?HEATHER:That’s an interesting question because I am always learning something from every grant I participate in. These are the first things that come to mind:Involving beneficiaries takes time and effort. The results far outweigh all other considerations. Beneficiary involvement ensures buy-in and thus, sustainability. This was especially true with our water and sanitation project. Not only does it produce financial and social sustainability. It produces innovation. Let me share a quick example. The beneficiaries weren’t sure what kind of latrine they wanted to use, so we proposed a small study – a kind of pilot. We would install two types of latrines at public sites. The communities could use them for a period of time and then inform us by majority vote which they preferred before we began residential construction. This pilot caught the eye of a doctor on staff at the Cooperating Organization. He is now proposing that we use the “pilot” to study how the two types of latrines affect soil and water contamination and if there is a difference in the two models regarding fecal contamination to hands. The study will be extending science and will help us not only on this project. The results will be available to help other Rotary grants produce better projects.Involving project partners with different skills and specific responsibilities builds stronger teams with more resources and more ideas. This does two things. It leads to innovation and increases our knowledge of how to construct projects that produce the intended benefits. And it leads to divergent thinking and gives everyone on the team practice in listening to what is said and what is not said. Developing these skills helps to move the entire team to stronger collaboration and consensus. It makes us better leaders and better followers.Lastly,Things will always go wrong. The key to success is how you deal with them. No single idea is the only right idea. Rely on your team – what I call “the brain trust” - to come up with new ideas. Keep a sense of humor. Keep TRF informed. Ask permission don’t beg forgiveness. Laugh! Toast small successes! Enjoy the process and never forget that what we are doing will change lives one person at a time. Maybe that means your life, too!SHEENA:David, what is one key lesson you learned over the years that helps keep Rotary First Harvest a success?DAVID:Actively build ways to allow people to be actively involved and engaged in all aspects of the project, depending on their interests and abilities. For RFH, it means involving Rotarians as Board and Advisory Council Members, hands-on volunteers helping to pick and repack produce and Rotarians who can use their business connections to support the project. This helps to broaden and increase the connection points to the project, and creates "natural" avenues for sustainable support and leadership development.SHEENADavid and Heather, it has truly been a pleasure listening to your stories and advice.
- SHEENAFor more information on their initiatives, contact David and Heather by email or visit the webpages shown on this screen.
- SHEENAVisit the Rotary website to find resources and more for ideas on how to manage a service project.
- ADAMHeather and David have given us a lot of details about their experience managing service projects, and now we want to hear from you – please share your tips for implementing projects with the other attendees joining us today. Use the question pane to type in your tips. Again, you can also share your tips on Twitter using the hashtag #Connect4Good. [READ SOME TIPS THAT THE AUDIENCE SUBMITTED THROUGH THE QUESTION PANE]
- SHEENAWhile your service project tips are coming in, let’s go to your questions. We’ve already received a number of great questions, and we will answer as many of them as we can over the next few minutes. Anythat we can’t respond to during this webinar will be answered by email afterward.The first question comes from ______. [Read questions, flagged in RED, and direct to the appropriate panelist for response.][Intersperse questions with Service Project Tips, these will be flagged in YELLOW.]
- SHEENA:We’re nearing the end of our time for today’s session, and we want to thank you for attending. There is one more webinar left in the Lifecycle of a Service Project series, and we encourage you to sign up at the web address shown here on your screen: rotary.org/webinarsThe final webinar will focus on evaluating and promoting your service project. You can find recordings ofthe first three webinars of the series on the same page – just click “On Demand” to view this and other past webinar recordings. After today’s webinar ends, you will see a survey on your screen. Please take a minute to complete the survey, since we will use your feedback to help us develop the final part of the series. Please share the recording with others who may have missed today’s webinar, and encourage them to sign up for the last webinar in the series as well. Within a few days, you’ll receive an email with a link to a recording of this webinar and information about some of the resources mentioned during today’s presentation.Another thank you to our panelists, Heather Frankle and David Bobanick, and all of our participants. We hope to see you for the next service project webinar!