Identifying and Promoting Best Practices
Identifying
Best Practices | Current
Initiatives in Faith-Based Best Practice Identification
Key Steps in Promoting and Fostering Best Practices
Page: 1 | 2Direct Training and Distribution Method
A second method for promoting and fostering best practices among FBCOs is to take the new or existing best practices you have identified and distribute them through providing direct training and technical assistance.
Father Joe's Villages, noted earlier in the guidebook, has a best practice approach to addressing the needs of the homeless. Over the past seventeen years, it has frequently offered tours for interested parties. With the Compassion Capital Fund (CCF) grant, Father Joe's Villages established the Village Training Institute (VTI) in 2002. VTI provides free workshops and mentoring on best practices and specializes in working with homeless populations in addition to other capacity building training for smaller faith-based and community organizations.
In order for FBCOs to arrive at the point where they are incorporating best practices successfully, you will need to implement four key steps:
Step One—Match Supply with Demand
The first step in the process of promoting and fostering best practices is for you to determine which best practices to promote and to whom they will be promoted. Not all best practices will be a good fit for all the FBCOs served by an intermediary. Therefore, you will want to match each best practice with those FBCOs most in need of that type of practice.
Step Two—Define Elements of the Practice
for Incorporation
In order to incorporate a best practice successfully, it will be important to help FBCOs to determine which elements of the practice are best suited for incorporation and if the organizational structures needed to support the best practice are in place. The following is a list of key questions that can be asked in order to help intermediaries determine those elements of the practice to incorporate and if the support structures are adequate:
- Are the elements of the best practice clearly defined?
- Does it appear that the elements of the best practice to be incorporated will work within the organizational context of the FBCO?
- Are the human resources needed to support the elements of the best practice in place?
- Are the financial resources needed to support the elements of the best practice in place?
- Are the technology and management systems needed to support the elements of the best practice in
place?5
It is also important to note that many best practices are relatively simple and can be easily incorporated into an organizations structures and processes. For example, use of a new software program or making a modification to data collection can be relatively easy to adapt and implement
Step Three—Incorporate the Best Practice
You must help FBCOs in facilitating the change from current practice to best practice. Training and technical assistance play a key role in this step as the knowledge needed to incorporate a best practice is most effectively transferred through face-to-face communication. Again, the guidebook, Delivering Training and Technical Assistance, part of the National Resource Center's Intermediary Development Series, can be a helpful resource in implementing this step.
Step Four—Evaluate the Success of the
Best Practice
The final task in promoting and fostering best practices is to evaluate whether the best practice has been successfully incorporated into the FBCO. You will want to develop you own time-frame for conducting follow-up evaluations based on the time needed to incorporate the best practice and duration of implementation needed before results are produced.
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Identifying
Best Practices | Current
Initiatives in Faith-Based Best Practice Identification