College Student Opportunities
United Way of Franklin County is partnering with local colleges and universities to offer a session to community non-profits on October 29th to introduce opportunities to connect with college students for volunteerism, internships and special projects.
The event will be held at Wilson College, connecting liaisons from Wilson College, Kaplan University and Penn State, Mont Alto Campus with non-profit managers to talk about the opportunities available.
Noel Purdy, Executive Director of the Chambersburg Chamber Foundation will be speaking about the Foundation’s use of interns during the past year to expand program outreach, and some of the tools the she has utilized to work with students.
Over the past year, UWFC has had the opportunity to work with students from Kaplan College and Penn State University in order to bring additional help to the United Way offices. The students bring new thinking and energy to the organization and often are able to complete projects that consume too much staff time to complete.
“We’re excited to partner with the great schools in our community to bring student resources in touch with organizations, and thrilled that Wilson College offered to host this event for us.”
Measuring Success
United Way of Franklin County, Summit Endowment, and Franklin County Foundation are partnering to host a capacity building event for the non-profit community on the morning of November 12th, Measuring Success. The event and some of the preliminary work and training that led to design of the event has been funded by a community grant from Target.
The three community granting sources began working together over a year ago to plan educational events with the goal of strengthening their non-profit partnerships, offering events that would bring non-profits together and introduce emerging concepts and organization building opportunities.
The November event will focus on methods of measuring the outcomes that are created by non-profit programs. The event is the first offering of several that will introduce and familiarize nationally recognized methods of communicating program results. The reason for increased focus on outcomes measurement is because it creates a more effective tool for communicating for program donors, and expands the ability of our local organizations to apply for other grants.
United Way began working over a year ago to familiarize staff and board members with the process of outcomes measurement. The community grant from Target helped to fund materials for education sessions offered to the UWFC Board of Directors as the process began. Although Summit Endowment has been working with outcome measurement for some time, and the Franklin County Foundation has been using the tools for over a year, the concept is still in development phases at UWFC.
“Measuring program results is not an easing thing for a non-profit to do, and not easy for a funder to evaluate. It takes time, resources, and perseverance for everyone involved. Sometimes the measurement tools have to be adjusted over time, and sometimes the programs change over time because the reports lead to new ways of thinking about program delivery.”, said Amy Hicks, “It’s important that our partners are able to get comfortable with program measurement slowly. That’s why we are beginning the teaching phases now, before we ask our partners to try to work with the tools of measurement.”. Hicks added that the UWFC is planning to phase outcome measurement into their evaluation over the coming 5 years, coupled with a lot of training opportunities and coaching.
In the past, the UWFC and Summit Endowment have partnered with Franklin County Foundation and Healthy Communities Partnership to present programs about understanding and diminishing poverty, preparing for economic downturn, and building effective board leadership.