 In the Spotlight
A look at innovative communications
practices
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The ABC's of Successfully
Disseminating Research Findings
The Irvine Foundation recently
completed a major dissemination effort to share results from a two-year
evaluation of CORAL, an eight-year, $58 million initiative intended to boost the
educational performance of low-achieving students in five California cities. The
evaluation was conducted by Public/Private Ventures (P/PV).
According to Daniel Silverman, communications director, the way Irvine
disseminated the evaluation stands as a good example of how to use research
findings to advance a foundation's mission.
Here's a summary from Silverman about how Irvine undertook this work and what it
hoped to accomplish:
A core reason that foundations evaluate their grantmaking is to inform their own
future grantmaking. In addition, many foundations are now embracing the use of
evaluations to inform the broader field — other funders, as well as grantees and
practitioners. The idea is to make sure others don’t have to “reinvent the
wheel” or make the same mistakes.
Keeping this in mind, rather than just produce one overall evaluation report on
CORAL, the researchers at P/PV produced numerous reports aimed at specific
audiences. The After-school Toolkit targets practitioners, the overall report
(Advancing Achievement) targets researchers and other funders, and the summary
(What Matters, What Works) targets policymakers and advocacy organizations.
In order to reach these many diverse audiences, we worked with the Williams
Group and P/PV to create a rigorous dissemination strategy. Williams Group
created a dissemination strategy outlining the various audiences, the various
channels to reach them, and who would do the outreach. Some of the outreach was
done by the researchers (P/PV), some was done by the report designers (Williams
Group) and some was done by Irvine.
In summary, this is one example of how to be rigorous and thoughtful about
outreach to targeted audiences. If you say you are going to produce and
distribute materials – in this case evaluation learnings – to a set of targeted
audiences, you have to be ready for quite a bit of work on both the production
and dissemination. It might not always be worth it, but for high-profile, major
initiatives it could make sense. Doing this successfully requires early planning
between the program staff, the evaluators and the communications staff. All
three have valuable insights and you are unlikely to have a comprehensive plan
if you don't plan it together.
Click here to see the various products
produced for the CORAL evaluation dissemination:
- What Matters, What Works: highlights findings and implications of the
CORAL evaluation
- Advancing Achievement: reports extensively on outcomes of the CORAL evaluation
- Supporting Success: suggests strategies and investments to improve program
quality
- After-School Toolkit: provides techniques and templates for implementing
quality programming
- Gaining Ground: links CORAL approaches with academic progress among English
learners
- Launching Literacy: shares early lessons from the CORAL initiative
- Midcourse Corrections: reports on CORAL's midpoint evaluation and redirection
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