Identifying and Promoting Best Practices
Table
of Contents | Identifying
and Promoting Promising Practices Overview
Introduction
Welcome to The Intermediary Development Series—a multi-volume series designed to outline the key steps and elements necessary to help intermediaries build capacity in the faith-based and community organizations (FBCOs) they serve. This series represents more than the sharing of information. It represents a common commitment to an intermediary’s ideals—providing the most effective services in a more efficient manner to the grassroots organizations that are reaching those in our country with the greatest needs.
Who is the audience for The Intermediary
Development Series?
An intermediary is something that exists between two persons or things,
or someone who acts as an agent or mediator between persons or things.
An intermediary organization, then, exists between the people with
the resources and the organizations needing the resources—namely
finances or information.
The Compassion Capital Fund (CCF), administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, helps FBCOs build capacity and improve their ability to provide social services to those in need. In this context, an intermediary acts as a mediator between the Federal government and grassroots organizations to help accomplish these goals. This series will prove useful to both existing and emerging intermediaries (those currently funded through CCF as well as an expanded audience of potential recipients) and the FBCOs they serve.
What is The Intermediary Development Series?
Think of it as help when and where it’s most needed—a
ready reference for common priority issues and comprehensive answers
to critical questions. It was developed as a key component of the
Compassion Capital Fund (CCF) in response to the questions and concerns
consistently posed by intermediaries representing all areas of expertise
and experience levels. The following titles are included in this
eight-volume series:
Acquiring Public Grants
Building Multiple Revenue Sources
Delivering Training and Technical Assistance
Designing Sub-Award Programs
Establishing Partnerships
Identifying and Promoting Best Practices
Managing Public Grants
Measuring Outcomes
How is The Intermediary Development Series
used?
It is intended to be used as a practical guide for intermediaries
to help FBCOs in a variety of tasks including securing more funding,
providing services more effectively or on an increased scale and
also helping them operate more efficiently. As such, it’s
flexible—readers who wish to use it as a self-guided reference
for specific questions are likely to keep it nearby. Key terms (bolded
within the text) are defined in a glossary of terms included in
the appendix of each guidebook. It’s also comprehensive—emerging
intermediaries may find the volume, Delivering Training and Technical Assistance, especially helpful for
more in-depth assistance. Finally, regardless of the audience, its
user-friendly format makes it easy to share with the variety of
organizations intermediaries serve.
Who developed The Intermediary Development
Series?
This series was developed for the Department of Health and Human
Services by the National Resource Center—an information clearinghouse
designed to provide customized technical assistance, specialized
workshops and other useful tools to help increase intermediaries’
scale, scope and effectiveness. Expert practitioners were enlisted
to develop and field-test each topic in The
Intermediary Development Series, ensuring each volume would
provide accurate and, most of all, practical answers to common questions.
Identifying
and Promoting Promising Practices
By reading this particular volume in The Intermediary
Development Series, intermediary organizations will be equipped with the knowledge and information needed to be able to identify, validate and promote best practices among themselves and the faith-based and community organizations they serve.
In their most basic form, best practices can be said to be no more or no less than practices that have been tested and found to work “on the street” for a number of practitioners. After reading this guidebook, intermediaries will better understand the key elements required to identify and promote promising practices including:
- Understanding what best and promising practices are
- How to identify existing best and promising practices
- How to identify and validate new best practices
- How to promote best and promising practices among the FBCOs they serve.
This guidebook will also help organizations answer these key questions:
- Why are best practices important?
- What are the differences between research validated best practices, field tested best practices and promising practices?
- How do you identify existing best practices?
- How do you identify and validate new best practices?
- What are some current examples where best practices for FBCOs are being identified?
- What are some useful tools for teaching others to identify and incorporate best practices?
Table
of Contents | Identifying
and Promoting Promising Practices Overview