RUSS SPAIN, CCAP NICK BURROWS, CCAP SHERYL BAILEY, CCAP The Journey To Winning The Award For Excellence in Community Action THIS PRESENTATION CAN BE DOWNLOADED AT

Agenda Timeline Approach Deployment Site Visit Preparation Category Activities Questions and Answers

Timeline October Started Pathways to Excellence June 2007 – Completed the Pathways Self-Study October 2007 – Received Pathways Feedback Report September 2008 – Formally Started Excellence Program January 2011 – First Award for Excellence Submission May 2011 –Technical Assistance Site Visit August 2011 – Received Feedback Report January 2012 – Second Award for Excellence Submission April 2012 – Award for Excellence Site Visit June 2012 – Notified of Award for Excellence

Approach Low Hanging Fruit (September 2008)  Engaged 40 employees, 2 Board members and 1 Policy Council member  A team was formed for each category  Category 7 Team was original Pathways Self-Study Team  Category Teams Reviewed Standards and Pathways Feedback Report to determine:  What we are doing  Gaps in our operations  The “low hanging fruit” to address those gaps  Monthly meetings with each Category group

Approach Integration of Project (August 2009)  Dissolved category teams  Created two smaller teams  Fact-Finding Made recommendations to Deployment Group Assembled documentation where we already met standards  Deployment Developed plans and implemented projects and initiatives to solve problems  Each team met every other week  This approach remained active for about six months

Deployment Application  August 2010 – We made the decision to apply for the Award for Excellence  We knew that if we didn’t have the added pressure of the application, we would continue spinning wheels and the changes we needed to make would not happen  In writing our self-study for the application we honestly assessed where we stood as an agency, up to stating that we didn’t meet a specific standard  Submitted in January 2011

Deployment Technical Assistance Site Visit  Lil contacted us and said that the review team was impressed with our submission, however, we hadn’t met all of the standards  We were given the opportunity to have a TA Site Visit  May 2011 – TA Site Visit  Added context to the submission  Gave ideas for fixing existing gaps  We immediately wrote formal policies for what we had developed and implemented the “low hanging fruit” that came from the site visit  We would not be receiving this award this year without this!!

Deployment Feedback Report  We did an inventory of every Strength and OFI in the feedback report  For each OFI, we conceptualized what it would look like for our agency  If we had already done it, we crossed it off our list  We developed policies and procedures for what we conceptualized, presented them to Leadership Team and then to the Board for adoption  Submitted second Award for Excellence Self-Study in January 2012

Site Visit Preparation We went through our responses to each standard and determined what documentation we needed to provide to support what we submitted We provided every document electronically via Google Sites

Category Activities Category 1  Defined Leadership System  Updated Agency By-Laws  Added Ex Officio Members to Board from Advisory Groups  Adopted Advocacy Issues  Measured Impacts of the Advocacy Category 2  Developed a Strategic Planning Timeline  Formally Defined Sources of Information  Added Output Based Metrics to Strategic Plan

Category Activities Category 3  Formally Defined Customers  Created Program Service Guides To Improve Referrals  Deployed Customer Feedback Cards  Standardized Community Needs Assessment  Conducted Focus Groups  Developed Policy for Employee Satisfaction  Developed Partnership Scorecard  Have a Partner Open House

Category Activities Category 4  Developed a written Technology Plan  Created Unduplicated Count Process  Created Performance Scorecard based on Strategic Plan Metrics Category 5  Formalize Policy for Hiring Low-Income People  Include Training Requests to Annual Evaluations  Created Training Evaluations

Category Activities Category 6  Developed Administrative and Financial Risk Assessment  Contracted the Development of Communications Plan  Created and Implemented Awareness Surveys  Developed a System to Track Internal Referrals  Formalized a Performance Management System  Developed a Project Management Framework Category 7  Ensured all Policies Discussed How the Results of the Activity will be Tracked and Incorporated into Scorecard

Contact Information Russ Spain – Nick Burrows – Sheryl Bailey – Any Questions??? This Presentation and Supporting Documentation can be Downloaded at