LSI, National PM FGPSCP, 2021-12-9

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LSI

National PM FGPSCP

2021-12-9

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>>: Good afternoon and thanks for joining us, before getting started, let's review 

the zoom features we are using for this event. The audio for this event is broadcasting by

phone and online. This event is lecture only; the microphones are muted to reduce 

background noise.

To adjust the audio through your computer, go to the bottom left of the screen, 

click small arrow next to audio setting and select speaker. Some viewers get better audio 

when streaming, while others get better quality by phone. So, if you have any audio 

difficulties you may want to try a different connection method.

There are several Zoom features we will use today. At the top of the screen, click 

the view options button and select exit Fullscreen to display the chat panel on the right 

side of the slides. My mistake, you will not be using those today.

If you need some technical assistance for this event, please email us at 

AmeriCorpswebinarssupport@lsidc.com. The chat panel is disabled for attendees, it will 

be used by presenters to provide links and resources. You can ask questions in the Q&A 

panel. 

Select the Closed Captioning icon for live captioning in English. If you wish to 

view captioning in Spanish, select the stream text link posted in chat in view them in your 

browser. We are recording this event, so let’s start the recording and turn over to our 

presenters.

>>: Today, national performance measure for the funding opportunity for the 

foster grandparent and senior companion replacement opportunity. As always, more 

information can be found@ourwebsiteamericorps.gov and please go to funding 

opportunity page. Here is some that has been recently announced. Applications are due at 

5 PM Eastern on February 3 we are now accepting applications and today we are going to 

be focusing on our time on national performance measure at AmeriCorps.

This is just a one part of a series of webinars that AmeriCorps seniors will give.

You can see information about how to register and get connected to information. For our 

agenda today, we are going to do a couple of things, we are going to spotlight some 

competition basics and then we will dive into a national performance measured 

specifically.

For those of you who have attended our other openers, you know we haven't been 

able to get there without talking about our national performance measure so we will start 

by going from the highest level and then diving deep into our specific performance 

measure, we will also take a look at our AmeriCorps work plans and talk about how we 

can allocate our volunteers across those work plans before finishing up our webinar with 

a brief recap.

National performance measures our agency a uniform set of measures used across 

programs and allows grantees to assess your effectiveness to state quarters. It allows 

AmeriCorps to tell a unified story about the impact of our programs. Let's get the basics 

out of the way, why do we have performance measure. You can say the effectiveness of 

the grant, and parks, accountability to our peers, they are all good answers.

All in all, we are a federal program and we do take a road of steward’s taxpayer 

dollars seriously, that comes with certain responsibilities including the responsibility to 

recollect data, measure your impact, and use information to improve and raise your 

impact. Why do we measure performance as I have stated one reason is accountability?
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To say that the program or project is getting results. Performance measurement 

helps you communicate achievements in a way that funders and stakeholders are finding 

meaningful and compelling. Another is the change that you felt would happen is actually 

occurring. Performance measurement is a systematic way to collect reliable information.

You can also use performance measurement data to spot and correct problems. 

Are you reaching the population you attended? Do some people require more or less 

attentive service to show a positive outcome? Even when an intervention is exactly as 

planned, the intervention and to make it more effective finally, performance measurement 

is a way to get feedback. So, you know if you’re making a difference in helps you decide 

how to make the most effective use of your limited resources.

What are some of the benefits of using our national performance measure?

AmeriCorps can focus on national priorities. Secondly, national progress measure 

provides a data for strong agency to tell the story of National Service. AmeriCorps will 

collect high-quality data. To ensure that AmeriCorps can allocate the data and report with 

confidence, guidance for national performance measure includes definitions and 

descriptions, target populations, output and outcomes.

Before I really dive into performance measure, I want to briefly express how 

AmeriCorps structures are measured growth there are a couple different components and 

we will walk there all of the different components in a bit. As you can see from our 

visual, it's like a pyramid and they start out pretty broad done at the bottom with the focus 

area and then they get more specific as we move up the pyramid.

Let's talk about each and we will start at the bottom with the focus area. There are 

several AmeriCorps focus areas for FGP and SCP. Foster grandparent and senior 

companion. The primary focus is education, economic opportunity, and healthy futures

the objective is a general category within each focus area. If I'm taking a look at the 

education focused area, it can be translated into two slightly more specific objectives 

must school readiness and K-12 success.

Here that we get into the specific measures which are reflected in outputs and 

outcomes. Every national performance measure must be paired with a single outcome. 

For each performance measure applicants must select one output and one of the 

associated outcomes. At the top, you see two examples among one of the outputs in one 

of the outcomes.

Let's dive into our outputs. It is through outputs and outcomes that we are able to 

measure performance. We know performance measure is the ongoing systematic process

of tracking your programs or projects outputs and outcomes. Outputs are the amount of 

service provided. They measure the completion of activities and document the fact that 

individuals receive service, products were crated, or programs were developed.

They often answer the question, how much service to be performed or what 

products we develop, they do not answer the question, what changed as a result of the 

service provided or product developed outfits reflect the changes of benefits that occur. 

Outcomes can reflect changes in individuals, organizations, communities, or the 

environment. This could include attitudes, knowledge, behavior, or condition. 

For example, charges within an organization may include and enhance system to 

better community. In general, the most compelling outcomes address changes in behavior 

or conditions. However, what makes a chance compelling is not just the type of change 
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but the magnitude or amount of change. And of course, the chain should be reflected in 

the activities intended purpose. Let's talk just briefly about the type of outcomes we may 

see, including changes in attitude or belief, knowledge or skills, behavior or condition.

Outcomes regarding attitude and belief involve a change in thought or feeling. For 

example, a caregiver feels she has more social support after receiving services. Outcome 

in measuring knowledge and skill involve a change in understanding or ability. What a 

person learns. For example, a student improves reading ability after attending tutoring.

Outcomes addressing behavior involves actions in changes. Such as conduct or habits, 

often in specific context.

 For example, a student improves class participation outcomes regarding 

condition involve a change in a situation or circumstance. For example, a family's 

transition into a safe affordable housing after receiving referrals and counseling or a 

community receives a new afterschool program because a youth organization has been 

able to build its capacity to provide services.

Let's review our specific performance measure requirements as it relates to your 

application. First you must send me a work plan that results in an output were outcome 

specific in the national performance measure. All unduplicated volunteers or volunteer 

service years must be placed in a work plan. The maximum cost per VSY in all 

performance measure may not exceed the allowable costs per VSY.

I want to highlight our key document, again all of these can be found on our 

website. In particular I want to highlight two of our documents. The tools we would use 

for performance measure are in appendix B for national performance measure and 

subtractions additionally there is a workplan that allows us to develop those performance 

measures. Of course, the most important document is the notice of funding opportunity.

You also see appendix B, our national performance measure instructions. 

Again, and summarizes performance measure requirements. Let me highlight 

appendix B are national performance measure instructions. Again, this is the tool that we 

often use when selecting our performance measure. These instructions include all of our 

performance measure as you see, they organize in terms of our focus area we do have 

some instructions at the beginning, this is where you can go and learn about them more

in-depth.

I would just take a minute to highlight our work plaintiff element template which 

is designed to help you plan your performance measure of this worksheet can help 

organize how you fit your performance measure together with the volunteer activities.

Just a quick note, I recommend you use these worksheets and instructions to map out 

your work plan and then complete your work plan prior to transferring information into 

our key current system as much as we love our technical systems, they can be a little 

cranky at sometimes it. 

Our suggestion is working outside the system prior to entering into the system.

All of this information about our performance measure R and R national performance 

measure instructions. But I want to take a moment to walk through them. These sections 

must be completed for all of our work plans. First there is a description of community 

need. This description must be completed for each output you select this need statement 

should explain the compelling need that will be addressed by your volunteers.
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Then we have outputs as we mentioned earlier in the presentation. Outputs are the 

immediate results of the volunteers’ activities. They usually count numbers, number of 

children served for example. The output is selected using the pull-down menu in the egrants system. There is a cervix activity or activities. They test those volunteers will 

perform.

The service activity description should explain what the AmeriCorps Senior 

volunteers are doing in a way that shows how they will achieve the outputs and 

outcomes. Here you can say who the beneficiaries are, what the volunteers are doing with 

the beneficiaries go state how often volunteers will provide the service and how long it 

will take place. For each output you will select an activity.

Next you have the number of unduplicated volunteers for VSY and SCP this is a 

proposed number of volunteer service will be entered here. They can only be counted 

once when a volunteer is assigned to a service activity. Then we have the total number of 

volunteers which is a total number that will be engaging in the activities. If you were to 

assign them all to each activity before, he would only count one person once, here 

volunteers can be counted more than once. 

For example, if the same volunteer does two different types of activities such as 

tutoring and volunteering you can count them for both assignments in this field. Next you 

have targets, targets is the number you anticipate achieving and the third year of your 

performance. For example, if you think your volunteer will serve 50 children, you will 

enter 50 as your target. Next you have outcomes, outcomes are they longer-term, 

permanent change, or improvement expected in the community due to volunteers and 

their service.

 The outcomes can be selected using the pull down and you and e-Grants. 

Finally, we ask instrument used for tracking output. This is a tool we will use for your 

data collection. We have simple instruments that can be selected using the pulldown 

menu and e-Grants. I said I wanted to come back to allocating volunteer service years 

across our work plans. You will fill out a different work plan for each performance 

measurement that you use.

You would need to assign a certain number of unduplicated volunteers to that 

workplan. This funding opportunity requires applicants to demonstrate cost-effective 

practices in achieving performance goals through the service described in the proposed 

work plan. Applicants must include work plans that meet the following minimum 

requirement, volunteer stipends for every 6500 and federal funding, at least one volunteer 

service year must be placed in work plans that result in a national performance measure 

outcomes aforethought selected focus area.

A volunteer service here a budget term it is fairly simple to correctly the number 

of unduplicated volunteers you need. Common rules should be used to determine how to 

round onto begin volunteers in an outcome-based work plan. For example, an applicant 

requests and $300,000 in federal funding would require 46.1 VSY work plans that result 

in two national performance measure outcomes.

Again, just a quick recap, AmeriCorps expects applicants to use national 

performance measure as a part of the comprehensive performance measurement strategy 

that relies on both performance and evaluation data to learn from their work and make

chargeable and strategic adjustments to achieve their goals. Applicants are required to use 
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their edge invite performance measure outlined in this notice. You should refer to 

appendix B, the performance measure instructions which has in-depth instructions.

Finally, this funding opportunity requires applicants to demonstrate cost-effective 

practices, applicants must include work plans that meet the following minimum 

requirements and that volunteers’ assignments that are or stipend volunteers for every 

6500 and volunteer funding, at least one volunteer service year must be placed in work 

plans and result in national performance measure outcomes for the selected focus area.

>>: Thank you. As we move into time for questions and answers are we are 

going to put a quick pull up on everyone screen. If you want to go ahead and let us know 

how you should go about choosing your output and outcome targets. Let’s see what you 

guys think.

As people are responding, feel free to ask questions that you have about this 

presentation and to the Q&A box on your screen. We have a little bit a time left, and I 

note that Colin and I are both available to answer all of your national performance 

measure questions.

We have most everyone responded to the poll, most of you said that the best 

answer is C, a realistic estimate of how many people you can expect to reach and the 

realistic impact of the program on those people informed by your own research, your 

potential partners and the input of others who know your community and the filled.

A couple of the people chose B, an assumption that you will reach everyone in the 

community, and the program will have its attended effects on 100% of its recipients. Both 

are really good answers, however in this context, we are looking for see. A realistic 

estimate. We do understand that sometimes people are people and are not hundred 

percent of the impact will always happen 100% of the time.

Thank you so much for providing your responses to that poll. We will give it just 

a minute for questions. I don't see any unanswered questions so with that I will hand it 

back over to Colin and we will close out for the afternoon. I do wish you the very best 

luck with their applications and thank you very much for everyone who joined us today.

>>: Thank you so much Emily. I want to reiterate my thanks to everyone who 

joined us on this call. We are very excited about this opportunity; we are very excited to 

make these funds available across the country to further the great work that is happening

through your organizations and through your volunteers.

I do want to radiate this is just a series or one in a series of webinars. You can find 

more information about our notice, about future webinars, performance measure, and 

application instructions on our website. Thank you.