After the staff or board of a Center for Independent Living (CIL) consider the five elements of developing effective outreach, it is important to take the information collected and incorporate the information into an action plan for implementation.
a) Target a specific cultural group, neighborhood, or community.
b) Assign an outreach team and team leader for specific group targeted.
c) Collect and review information and materials about the target group.
d) Develop a time line of outreach objectives and desired outcomes.
e) Develop a budget (for bigger projects).
f) Implement initial outreach efforts.
No outreach effort can be considered successful without conducting an evaluation of the of the CILs efforts to reach an unserved or underserved group. Adaptations of Crimando and Riggar (1988) identify three types of evaluation that can be useful:
a) Formative Evaluation:
Formative evaluation is a series of activities performed to improve outreach through the design and implementation process. For example:
i) Have an expert review and comment on the content validity of the outreach objectives and effort.
ii) Make changes in the outreach approach based on various information and data collected.
iii) Try a smaller scale outreach ‘’tryout’‘ and revise the effort according to feedback gathered from the target group.
b) Process Evaluation:
Process evaluation answers the question: How successful was the design of the outreach effort?
i) Takes place during and after the implementation of the outreach effort.
ii) An outreach evaluation (usually one page) is a useful method for gathering feedback from the participants in the outreach effort.
iii) Make changes to the outreach effort based on feedback from the completed evaluations and interviews.
c) Outcome Evaluation:
Outcome evaluation answers the question: Did the CILs outreach efforts have the intended effect on the group, neighborhood or community? Outcome evaluations measure the impact that the outreach effort reached and the unserved or underserved persons with disabilities who have benefited.
i) Review data collected from 704 Reports to verify increased outreach efforts to a previously unserved or underserved group (e.g., disability group, minority group, geographic group).
ii) Calculate a cost benefit analysis which may be useful in future grant proposals for outreach efforts.
iii) Evaluate the success based on the satisfaction level of the persons reached through the CIL’s outreach effort.
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