Measuring and Reporting
It is important to measure and report successes at the end of the year to help create institutional memory and to allow green living program (GLP) partners—steering group members, reps and others—reflect on their achievements and challenges.
Perhaps most important of all, you need to measure and report on the financial savings that have been generated from the good work of the GLP. Although this can be difficult to do, you should put as much effort as possible into conducting audits and surveys, reading meters and checking utility data and recycling rates. If you can get hard data, do your best to create a believable way of calculating the financial effects of the programs’s work. This is essential for long-term funding.
At the end of the year, you should also do the following:
- organize your files
- revise your budget
- update your website with recent events, files and information
- take the time to synthesize how the year went
- record what you have learned
- record suggestions for the future
- share successes from the year
More on each of the following methods of measuring and reporting successes is provided in this section.
- Recording at the End of the Year
- Analysis, Measurements and Program Evaluation
- Providing Results and Seeking External Advice
Recording at the End of the Year
You will really want to keep records and have thoughts recorded at the end of the year before the reps leave because they will have the chance to look at the year in a more holistic way than they have at any point during their term. They will be able to assess their personal and the group's work. They will also be able to provide valuable information about personal contacts they made, projects they did or did not finish and other items. This information be extremely helpful for next year’s rep to know about.
Final Report for Reps
We suggest having all reps and captains fill out a final report to capture their thoughts on the year. It also helps to give the final reports to the incoming reps the next fall to let them know what happened in the previous years.
Recording Progress
Just as it is very useful for the reps and captains to record their thoughts on their own progress, it is very useful for the coordinator to record the progress of the program. This will help future coordinators understand the history and development of the program. Recording the GLP's progress might include personal feedback questionnaires, lists of your achievements, a timeline of your activities and a collection of media.
Analysis, Measurements and Program Evaluation
After you have been able to read through all of the final reports and have had a chance to rest yourself, it is time to fully analyze how the first year went. Maybe there were some great successes (wahoo!) and maybe there were some let-downs too.
Now is your chance to think through what you can do the second year that you were not able to do the first year. You are in a much better position now. You have partners, you have built a name for the organization, and you have a better idea of how things actually can come together.
Program Evaluation and Development
Use the final reports and your analyses as a way of evaluating the program to help you develop the GLP for the next year.
Monitoring the GLP as an Organization
Here are a couple ways to monitor your GLP as an organization on campus:
- student employee reviews
You should conduct midyear (perhaps in person) and end-of-year reviews (perhaps in writing) with the reps, if not more frequently, to get an understanding of their development, which in turn will give you a sense of how the program is doing.
- feedback from campus
Consider conducting a campus survey as it will help you gauge the effectiveness of your program and campaigns.
Providing Results and Seeking External Advice
It is important to give concrete results and numbers to both the reps and the steering group. Concrete results and examples enable everyone to understand the progress to date.
Consider seeking opinions from other administrators, other campuses or outside nonprofit organizations when analyzing your own progress as an institution as well. You could bring in a consultant who is external to your program or your campus to conduct individual or group feedback sessions and to give an unbiased review of everyone’s thoughts on the development of the program.