October 27, 2005

3-5 PM at WBOB, Minneapolis

Attending:  DeAnn Lazovich, Lisa Stephens, Pam van Zyl York, Priscilla Flynn, Michael Oakes, Mergersa Kumbi, Liz Moe, Cheri Rolnick (by phone)

Next meeting of the Evaluation Committee will be on December 14, 2005 from 1-3 pm at SOP

I.                    DeAnn & Lisa will co-chair this committee at least until April 2006.

II.                 Review of Comments from CDC Site Visit

·        CDC’s comments are reflective of what Pam has seen from other CDC programs.  CDC people talked about resisting the prevailing wind of CDC

·        DeAnn—These comments reaffirm our decisions

·        Liz—Will explore Iowa’s template for estimating in-kind contributions

·        Pam suggested we prepare for the possibility that CDC will in future require programs to generate matching funds or a ‘match requirement’

III.               Evaluation Plan Suggestions

Elizabeth plans to write a 3-5 page description of the evaluation plan based on the materials already generated by this committee.

Ø      Timeline will be included in evaluation plan

Ø      The table of proposed evaluation questions will be included in the written evaluation plan

Ø      We need to comment on the need for another planning process in 4 to 5 years to update the current plan

Ø      We need a data review committee to collect new data to make sure new indicators and baseline data are up to date

Ø      Annual report—how do we report back?  The evaluation plan should include plans to report on findings.  Annual reports & evaluation can be anything as long as we explain why we did what we did.

Ø      We still need to develop a phone survey

Ø      FTE chart from Iowa promised during site visit. For next meeting, this group should talk about how Iowa calculates in-kind contributions

Ø      This chart/table summarizes evaluation questions, methods and frequency for next five years

Ø      What changes should be made to table presented at SC meeting on Nov 12?

o       Project Charter needs to be changed or updated

IV. SURVEY

Ø      What is a committee, a task force, and a project team

Ø      Need a new cover letter for Alliance member survey, including a diagram and explanation of the purpose of the survey

Ø      How do we help respondents to identify how they fit into the Alliance organization?  Would a diagram help?  A written description?

Ø      A diagram would help people to assess the whole structure of organization

Ø      We should administer the steering committee questions separately from the questions that all respondents answer

Question #3 feels out of order

Ø      Who do you speak for?  #6—impact on your organization? What is your org? Categories?

Section 2 of survey

Ø      Move section 2 to next to last page

Ø      Task force respondent may not understand how their project fits into the overall structure of the Alliance

Ø      We need to include a diagram and definitions of the various entities

Ø      BIG letters – steering committee members only

Ø      We should create 2 versions of this survey, one for the Steering Committee and one for all respondents

Ø      We need to be careful with numbering in terms of coding if having this entered

Ø      We should remove the Tobacco taskforce from the list unless they truly exist.

Section 2

Ø      Q6 ask about functioning of SC meeting

Ø      Right number of meetings?

Ø      Length?

Ø      Amount of information?

Ø      Improvements?

Survey administration

Ø      Should we send the survey by mail? Alternatively, should we send the survey by email and ask them to respond on the web?

o       By web, it is easier to tally the answers and we do not have to worry as much about data entry problems. We could use either Survey monkey or Zoomerang.

o       In the cover letter, we can give respondents a way to request the survey in paper form.

o       If we administer via email or web, we need to be sure that someone won’t encounter firewalls or Spam blockers

Ø      We should administer the survey in waves of most involved to least involved

o       1^st wave would be the Steering committee 1^st

o       2^nd Wave would be the task force members, project team members, and committee members

o       3^rd Wave would be Individual membership and Organizational members

Ø      We will not send the survey to the entire newsletter list of 1300 people. 

Ø      Timing—end of February or Early March