Kylie Hutchinson's guest appearances

Kylie Hutchinson

EvalNetwork

Podcast Archives - Glass Frog Solutions

The Small Nonprofit

Sheila Robinson

Anne Connelly

Alberto Cairo

Kathleen Kelly Janus

Amy Milne

Michael Quinn

Chris Conroy

Matt Barnett

Kishshana Palmer

Nikki Bell

Andrew Taylor

Beth Kanter

Laura Beauparlant

Charmaine Hammond

Mike Silver

OwlTail

How are you going to make this program sustainable after we stop funding you?Most people who have written a grant have been asked that question, and guess what, most people just improvise the answer.There’s a lot to unpack about program sustainability. Is it a fair expectation to ask from nonprofits? If nonprofits do want to sustain a program, what factors should they consider.Today’s guest on the podcast, Kylie Hutchinson from Community Solutions, has spent many years researching and trying to understand more about this subject. She even has a book specifically on this topic. Give it a listen, and know that next time when you’re scratching your head trying to answer that million dollar question about program sustainability, you’re not alone. Myths that Kylie want us to leave behindLet us run the pilot, then we will think about sustainability.  If you want your program to sustain, start planning for sustainability now. There’re many external factors that will help shape that, and although those factors can vary from program to program and organization to organization, it is never too early to think about sustainability, given that sustainability is aligned with your organization’s strategic goals.Sustaining a program means sustaining all parts of it all the time. Sometimes, like right now during the pandemic, even with the best intentions, it’s unrealistic to sustain all parts of a program. Instead, Kylie advises to focus on sustaining the core components of the program that can reignite momentum for the whole program.  Kylie’s tips on program sustainabilityShow and talk about your impact. No matter how great your program is, no external stakeholders will know unless you tell a compelling story about your impact. Showing and talking about your impact is instrumental to bring attention to why your program deserves support and should be sustained. Build community support through partnerships and collaboration. Kylie recognizes that partnerships and collaborations take work and require capacity, and sometimes it is very tempting to roll out a program all with internal support and no external collaboration. However, having community partnerships is like gaining legs for a table that is harder to shake down. Do the upfront work of collaborating now and your program will be stronger in the long run.Find your program champions in your community. Program champions are usually those who are at an arm-length with your organization (so not your board or staff) and believe in your impact. They have the connections and resources in local communities that you roll out your program, and so can contribute to your program needs in a practical way (like connecting you with a local media) or in a reputational way. These champions can have a huge impact in supporting your program in the long run.My favourite quotes from this episodePost your favourite quote on social to share with us!“Don’t wait till you have a month left in your funding, start planning for sustainability now.”“Ask yourself what are the embers of your programming absolutely need to maintain? So that when you are in a position to start rebuilding, you can blow on those embers and get your services back to where they were.” Resources from this EpisodeThe Good PartnershipOur friends and sponsors at Keela asked me to put together a guide of fundraising tips I wished every small nonprofit knew. Go ahead and download the guide here: https://www.keela.co/consultant/the-good-partnership (and don't forget that Keela offers our listeners 40% off their first year's subscription).

How are you going to make this program sustainable after we stop funding you?Most people who have written a grant have been asked that question, and guess what, most people just improvise the answer.There’s a lot to unpack about program sustainability. Is it a fair expectation to ask from nonprofits? If nonprofits do want to sustain a program, what factors should they consider.Today’s guest on the podcast, Kylie Hutchinson from Community Solutions, has spent many years researching and trying to understand more about this subject. She even has a book specifically on this topic. Give it a listen, and know that next time when you’re scratching your head trying to answer that million dollar question about program sustainability, you’re not alone. Myths that Kylie want us to leave behind<ol><li>Let us run the pilot, then we will think about sustainability.  If you want your program to sustain, start planning for sustainability now. There’re many external factors that will help shape that, and although those factors can vary from program to program and organization to organization, it is never too early to think about sustainability, given that sustainability is aligned with your organization’s strategic goals.</li><li>Sustaining a program means sustaining all parts of it all the time. Sometimes, like right now during the pandemic, even with the best intentions, it’s unrealistic to sustain all parts of a program. Instead, Kylie advises to focus on sustaining the core components of the program that can reignite momentum for the whole program.  </li></ol> Kylie’s tips on program sustainability<ol><li>Show and talk about your impact. No matter how great your program is, no external stakeholders will know unless you tell a compelling story about your impact. Showing and talking about your impact is instrumental to bring attention to why your program deserves support and should be sustained. </li><li>Build community support through partnerships and collaboration. Kylie recognizes that partnerships and collaborations take work and require capacity, and sometimes it is very tempting to roll out a program all with internal support and no external collaboration. However, having community partnerships is like gaining legs for a table that is harder to shake down. Do the upfront work of collaborating now and your program will be stronger in the long run.</li><li>Find your program champions in your community. Program champions are usually those who are at an arm-length with your organization (so not your board or staff) and believe in your impact. They have the connections and resources in local communities that you roll out your program, and so can contribute to your program needs in a practical way (like connecting you with a local media) or in a reputational way. These champions can have a huge impact in supporting your program in the long run.</li></ol>My favourite quotes from this episodePost your favourite quote on social to share with us!“Don’t wait till you have a month left in your funding, start planning for sustainability now.”“Ask yourself what are the embers of your programming absolutely need to maintain? So that when you are in a position to start rebuilding, you can blow on those embers and get your services back to where they were.” Resources from this Episode<a href="https://www.thegoodpartnership.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Good Partnership</a>Our friends and sponsors at Keela asked me to put together a guide of fundraising tips I wished every small nonprofit knew. Go ahead and download the guide here: <a href="https://www.keela.co/consultant/the-good-partnership" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.keela.co/consultant/the-good-partnership</a> (and don't forget that <a href="https://www.keela.co/consultant/the-good-partnership" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Keela</a> offers our listeners 40% off their first year's subscription).

that dreaded question about sustainability with Kylie Hutchinson

Kylie is the 2020 recipient of the Canadian Evaluation Society’s Award for Contribution to Evaluation in Canada. She has spent the past thirty years working in the not-for-profit sector as a consultant, trainer, program manager, board member, and volunteer.  There are many valuable nuggets from this video. We discuss the following during the interview: –...

Learning from Evaluation Mistakes with Kylie Hutchinson

In this episode, we chat with fellow evaluator Kylie Hutchinson about her new book Evaluation Failures: 22 Tales of Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned, which was released in September. Kylie is the principal consultant and founder of Community Solutions, a planning and evaluation firm in British Columbia. She chats with us about her reasons for writing the book, the importance of learning from our failures, and her own experiences as a professional evaluator. Also, spoiler alert: Kylie confesses that she doesn’t spend her time listening to podcasts about program evaluation and claims that she would only tune in to another podcast episode if it included a true crime narrative presented in the style of Serial. Challenge accepted, Ms. Hutchinson. If you like what you heard here and find yourself yearning for more, then please subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, Google Podcasts, or TuneIn. If you need to find us in any of the directories, you can search for “Glass Frog” (two words).  As always, thank you for tuning in! Next month, we will chat with Justin Rivers, founder of The Character Connection Initiative. Justin sheds some light on the inherent challenges of doing program evaluation at a very small nonprofit while also trying to measure something as tricky as “character development.” We hope you’ll join us for the conversation!  https://archive.org/download/glassfrog_S1E5/s1e5.mp3

In this episode, we chat with fellow evaluator Kylie Hutchinson about her new book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Evaluation-Failures-Mistakes-Lessons-Learned/dp/1544320000/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1535743448&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=evaluation+failures&amp;dpID=4138UokVgzL&amp;preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&amp;dpSrc=srch" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Evaluation Failures: 22 Tales of Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned</a>, which was released in September. Kylie is the principal consultant and founder of <a href="https://communitysolutions.ca/web/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Community Solutions</a>, a planning and evaluation firm in British Columbia. She chats with us about her reasons for writing the book, the importance of learning from our failures, and her own experiences as a professional evaluator. Also, spoiler alert: Kylie confesses that she doesn’t spend her time listening to podcasts about program evaluation and claims that she would only tune in to another podcast episode if it included a true crime narrative presented in the style of Serial. Challenge accepted, Ms. Hutchinson. If you like what you heard here and find yourself yearning for more, then please subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, Google Podcasts, or TuneIn. If you need to find us in any of the directories, you can search for “Glass Frog” (two words). As always, thank you for tuning in! Next month, we will chat with Justin Rivers, founder of <a href="https://characterci.org/team/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Character Connection Initiative</a>. Justin sheds some light on the inherent challenges of doing program evaluation at a very small nonprofit while also trying to measure something as tricky as “character development.” We hope you’ll join us for the conversation! <a href="https://archive.org/download/glassfrog_S1E5/s1e5.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.org/download/glassfrog_S1E5/s1e5.mp3</a>

E5: Evaluation Failures with Kylie Hutchinson