Point K: What Do You Say?

by Simone Parrish

Years ago, I got an unusual message through the innonet.org feedback link.  The writer had some intemperate comments about a change we had made on the website.  After I had sent her the information she had been looking for, she replied, "Please excuse my rudeness earlier—I didn't think anyone would actually read what I wrote."  Welcome to Point K: When you send us feedback, we not only read it; whenever possible, we act on it.

Last November, we invited everyone who has registered on www.innonet.org to join a User Advisory Group (UAG).  Over one hundred people signed up to receive several short surveys about Point K.  The feedback we have received has been validating, challenging, and fascinating.  It has told us things we didn’t know, and confirmed things we knew but couldn’t back up with hard data.  Here’s a sampling of what we learned.

November 2005: Getting Started

• The Point K help pages are okay, but more real-life examples would be useful. 
• The registration process has dramatically improved since the “My Workstation” days. 
• Getting started in Point K is harder than it should be. 
  

Our response: We have changed the structure of the Point K portal page, added explanations to the FAQ, and created step-by-step how-to documents to help new members of the Point K community find their way around.  We know there’s still much work to be done here, and we’d love to hear more suggestions.

December 2005: Finding What You're Looking For

• Only 61% of people surveyed find the arrangement of Point K Resources satisfactory. 
• 78% of respondents said they would like more nonprofit capacity-building resources. 
• Over 80% of respondents want more evaluation resources, such as data collection templates, sample Point K work products (logic models and evaluation plans), and white papers on best practices/lessons learned. 
  

Our response: It's clear that you want more from the Resources section, and we want to give it to you. Check out the new Advocacy Evaluation Resource Center, the NeighborWorks® America’s Community Development Evaluation Storymap, and a selection of new evaluation capacity building resources. 

January 2006: Perceptions of Evaluation

• UAG members feel generally positive about evaluation, associating it with words like "helpful," "worthwhile," and "opportunity" far more strongly than words like "mysterious," "defensive," or "judged."
• From a functional perspective, UAG members see the highest value of evaluation as its contribution to strategic planning.
• Evaluation was also seen as a strong and valuable contributor to the process of program design, planning, and management.
  

Our response: It’s great to hear that so many of you feel so positive about evaluation!  One of Innovation Network’s primary goals is to demystify evaluation and make it practical.  Your feedback also helps us take our products and services in new directions—for example, developing training materials specifically around using evaluation for strategic planning.

April 2006: How You Get Your News
The spring marketing survey  went out to the entire Point K membership (not just the UAG).  The people who answered gave us great feedback about how they stay informed about nonprofit and philanthropic issues. 

• The most popular news sources are print journals like the Chronicle of Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Quarterly.
• A somewhat lower proportion of Point K users rely on websites and email lists for such news.
• Very few respondents get nonprofit/philanthropic news from blogs, or indeed read any blogs at all. (One respondent said succinctly, “I hate blogs.”)
  

Our response: Until we see a greater community interest in blogs, innonet.org will remain blogless.  We have also consolidated two news pages, "In the Mix" and "What's New" into one page: "New and Noteworthy."  (After all, we aren’t the Philanthropy News Digest.)  We’d still love to let the Point K community know about your special events and new publications, so contact us if you’d like us to post something. 

June 2006: The Tools at Point K

• About half of the survey-takers in June have used the Logic Model Builder and/or the Evaluation Plan Builder since the debut of Point K in May 2005.
• Most of them expressed a wish to spend more time at Point K, but said that other priorities have interfered. ("I've gotten WAY too busy to be able to sit down to do this. I really LOVE the services that Point K offers. I expect to log back into the site soon.") 
  

Our response: Helping to integrate evaluation into everyday management activities is a key part of our work.  We have heard over and over again that the greatest barrier to evaluation is time. This is clearly a gap in our expertise: we have not yet discovered a way to fit more than 24 hours in a day, but we’ll keep you posted.

October 2006:  Working Together at Point K

• The single most-requested improvement to Point K is better printing options: you want to export your work to Word or PDF. 
• One in three members of the UAG who have used Point K tools have shared their work with fellow staff members, board members, clients, and program officers. 
• Other future collaboration features that survey respondents are interested in include:
  • "Send this page to a friend" capability
  • Viewing/searching the work of other Point K users (this would be voluntary, of course!)
  • A peer review and rating system for logic models and evaluation plans
  • A similar system for rating resources; and
  • Bulletin boards/online forums for discussing planning and evaluation issues. 
    

Our response:  Your feedback gives us the data we need to build our case for additional Point K funding, so we can continue to develop the system to suit your needs.  We will look into the feasibility of each of these options, and keep you informed of our progress.

Thanks to the UAG's participation, we have a clear idea of what you value most about Point K, and what you would most like to see us doing more, differently, or better.  We hope to continue the surveys next year (under a new name—the Point K Community Committee).  If you would like to join the Community Committee, please contact us.