Abstract

Your program staff and national service volunteers have worked hard to make your program successful. When it comes time to submit a progress report to the Corporation, you will want to do justice to their efforts by fully communicating your program’s achievements. This effective practice, submitted by Project STAR in May 2009, offers tips to help you report performance measurement results for your national service program.

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Issue

Writing progress reports is an important part of program management but can be a daunting task — for both first-time and repeat authors.

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Action

Project STAR suggests strategies for writing progress reports in three areas: general guidelines, reporting on performance measures, and completing narratives.

General Guidelines on Writing Progress Reports

The first set of guidelines describes effective practices that can be applied to writing progress reports for any grant-funded project.

• Give yourself plenty of time to write the progress report. Give yourself enough time to write a complete first draft, get feedback from a colleague whose opinion you trust, and revise the draft report before submitting it. Begin writing the progress report at least one month before it is due.
• Treat report writing like a meeting or appointment that you would not want to miss. Don’t just put the progress report on your to-do list. Instead, schedule time in your calendar or appointment book. Find a time and place to work on the report without interruptions or distractions.
• Keep all performance measurement results and other data together in one easily accessible location. This material should be at your fingertips when it is time to write the report. This may include a combination of electronic files and paper copies. Make sure you have a handy file available for both kinds of information.
• Use a journal or notebook to write down reminders about important things that happen during the reporting period. Look back at these notes when you write the progress report to recall important information that you will want to include in the report. If you use e-mail as a tool for day-to-day communication about the program, you may also want to review e-mail messages covering the reporting period to remember important events and accomplishments.
• Do not compose the progress report in eGrants. Instead, write the report in a text editor such as Microsoft Word and then copy-and-paste the text into eGrants. Composing in a text editor allows you to save a copy on your computer, spell-check your text, and view and edit the text in a large window.
• When working in eGrants, complete every field of the progress report. Do not leave anything blank. The reader will not know if a field was left blank by choice or because you forgot to fill it in. If you believe a field is not applicable to your program, then write a brief explanation why. Avoid writing "not applicable" or "NA."
• Don’t bury the reader in too much detail. Identify a list of your program’s important accomplishments for the reporting period and build your progress report around these accomplishments.
• Let your CNCS State Office or State Commission know right away about important achievements. You don’t have to wait until the progress report is due to notify your program specialist or program officer about these achievements. You can send them an e-mail message right away to let them know about your accomplishments.

Guidelines for Reporting on Performance Measures

The next set of guidelines address the section of the progress report dealing with performance measures. These include Senior Corps work plans, AmeriCorps performance measurement worksheets, and the VISTA project plan.

• Strong performance measurement progress reports begin with well-written performance measures. Carefully review your performance measures at the beginning of each program year to make sure they are clear, complete, and concise. A wealth of material designed to help you strengthen and clarify performance measures can be found in the Project STAR section of the Resource Center. You can also get assistance with performance measures by calling Project STAR at 800-548-3656 or by sending an e-mail to star@jbsinternational.com.
• Use a checklist or template to report performance measurement results. These tools can ensure that you include all the key components in your performance measurement report.
  *AmeriCorps Reporting Checklist
  
  *Senior Corps Reporting Checklist
  
  *Senior Corps Guiding Questions and Sample Work Plan Report
  
  *VISTA Reporting Checklist
  
  *VISTA Reporting Template and Example


• In addition to reporting your results, describe how you measured the results. Briefly describe how data were collected and analyzed, including who was responsible for these steps. Provide enough information for the reader to understand how you obtained the data and calculated the results. Specific information to include:
  *Name and/or description of measurement instrument
  
  *Who administered the instrument
  
  *Who completed the instrument
  
  *When and how often data were collected
  
  *Number of completed instruments returned
  
  *Whether data were collected as planned
• Include numbers and other concrete information in reports whenever possible. If the original performance measure target is a number, then report a number; if the original target is a percentage then report a percentage. When reporting a percentage, always include the raw numbers that were used to calculate the percentage. For example, “70 percent (56/80) of tutored students improved reading ability from pre-test to post-test.” Including raw numbers provides context to the report and tells the reader how much data you collected.
• Report the return rate for surveys. The return rate is the number of completed instruments that were returned (actual respondents) compared to the number of blank instruments originally distributed (possible respondents).
• If complete results are not available for mid-year and interim reports, then report any data currently available and/or describe activities that lay the groundwork for performance measurement. Performance measurement activities can include developing data collection tools, training data collectors, and working with program sites to obtain cooperation in data collection activities. Also, indicate when you expect to have complete results.
• If you do not reach your performance measurement target, explain why this shortfall may have occurred and state how you will address this challenge going forward. Missing a target does not necessarily mean your service activity was not effective, especially if the gap between the target and your results is not too wide. However, you need to provide a reasonable explanation for why you missed a target and outline a plan to remedy the situation. Reasons for missing a target may include: targets were set unrealistically high, challenges were encountered with recruiting and retaining members, difficulties were encountered with service delivery, performance measurement instruments were weak or poorly designed, or data collection strategies did not result in enough data being collected.
• Look for opportunities to reuse your performance measurement data. Data and results can inform decisions about how to improve your program. You can inspire your volunteers and other local stakeholders by sharing results with them that show the program’s efforts are bearing fruit. Results can also be incorporated into grant applications to show why your program is worth funding.

Guidelines for Reporting Performance Measures in the Narratives Section

The last set of guidelines address three parts of the narrative section of the progress report where it may be appropriate to include additional performance measurement information: challenges, stories, and other accomplishments.

• Challenges: In addition to acknowledging challenges related to managing your program, you can describe any challenges you encountered related to planning and implementing performance measurement. Be sure to mention the steps you are taking to deal with these challenges.
• Stories: Use the stories narrative to put a “human face” on your program and to describe the personal experiences of volunteers and service beneficiaries. You can also include stories related to performance measurement results described elsewhere in the progress report.
• Other Accomplishments: Your performance measurement efforts may have uncovered some “unexpected” results. If so, then you can describe unexpected results here.

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Context

Project STAR offers training and technical assistance in the area of performance measurement, with years of experience helping Corporation-funded programs develop and utilize performance evaluation.

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Source Documents

Related Practices

• Collecting data for performance measurement: general guidelines
• Creating a meaningful evaluation report

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