Years of experience in the grant and evaluation realm have taught Sheila Bell a number of things. Chief among them: good intentions can’t reach their potential without fully formed plans.

Project SEEKS SES is an initiative that started off with good intentions. The ACHD identified post-pandemic social and emotional challenges with school-aged children and aligned with the AIU to facilitate a grant-funded project to address these challenges. 

Since then, the AIU has followed through with thorough plans, identifying needs in the 10 participating districts in the grant. The projects to address those needs will be tracked by Bell and the AIU’s Evaluation, Grants & Data team, who developed a logic model template for grantees to use as part of their project planning processes.

“A logic model is a visual representation of how a program works,” said Project SEEKS SES coordinator Shannon Fagan. “It is a map of what you hope to achieve, who you will serve, what you will do, the change you want to achieve, how you will measure it and how you know if you met your goal.”

Before fully implementing their projects, Bell and Falon Weidman are working with each district to train them on what makes a good logic model and how to create one. Putting together a logic model before implementation is important so projects can establish outcome measures to track their success, and to give the districts a scaled-out view of what they’re hoping to achieve.

“It’s important to create a logic model before you start so that you can plan it out and head off any roadblocks that you might not see initially. You want your implementation to be as successful as possible,” said Bell. “It just puts everything into a neat package, and then as you move forward, the logic model can keep everybody on the same page.”

The following logic models will be reviewed by the AIU every 6 months and reviewed by the ACHD bi-anually. As data is gleaned, the models and the projects will be fluid in making sure the school districts are getting their intended results.

“The really critical piece of a logic model is how you use it. It’s actually a document that you can build off of and go back to over and over for communication purposes and to make program refinements,” said Bell. “You want to make sure that it’s a document that’s meaningful and you can change it as the program changes.”

Over the years, Bell said grant evaluation has changed. In the 90’s, Bell said she started to notice a change, when funders started requiring more data on the success of a program, instead of just looking at the amount of people the program served. That data is important not just for the current funders, but for future funding. Oftentimes, grant-funded programs can be fleeting. But by tracking data, districts can make a more compelling case to future funders.

“Collecting data to show how many people you worked with and what they were able to achieve because of the work you’re doing can help find additional funding. It can also show where the need is,” Bell said.

“It can be challenging to sustain grant-funded programs, so you often have to talk to different types of funders. And you want to have as much information as possible as to why it’s worth their time and why it will make a difference overall.”