Updated: August 31, 2023
Overview
This reporting process is meant to be an opportunity for reflection among your team and your partners in coalitions and communities. Keep in mind that the written report will set us up for a conversation about your experience, your goals, and ways that the Rx Foundation could support you in the year ahead. When you are completing the questions below, we strongly encourage you to take a 360 degree look at how things are going, by soliciting input from a variety of perspectives. This might include staff and volunteers throughout your organization, different kinds of partners, and other relevant stakeholders
The Rx Foundation goals for this round of reports include learning what you accomplished, understanding your strategies and goals moving forward, and planning for additional support of the learning community. For those of you who have been part of the Building Capacity for Health Advocacy learning community for several years, we are particularly interested in what you have learned, how your plans and strategies have evolved, and how this Rx Foundation grant impacted your capacity and infrastructure for making progress toward your long-term goals.
Guidelines
The written report has 4 sections: (1) quantitative and qualitative assessment of the previous year, (2) a short self-assessment on advocacy capacity, (3) goal-setting for the upcoming year, and (4) finance report.
I. Executive Summary:
In one paragraph, give us the top-level summary of your experience and accomplishments in the past year. We recommend coming back to write this summary after completing all of the sections below.
II. Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment:
a. Report back on the objectives you set for yourself in your proposal or last annual report. Summarize your activities, related metrics, and your progress on each objective. What would you like us to know that is not captured in the objectives, activities, and metrics? (Reminder that we are not only interested in your “wins”, we want to understand what you learned, where you made progress, and how your strategies and plans have changed.)
b. If you shared or distributed a portion of the Rx funds to partner organizations, tell us about those partnerships. Did sharing the grant resources make anything possible that wouldn’t have happened otherwise? How are these partnerships building capacity or creating conditions to make progress on your goals?
c. Regarding the learning community: (1) Did anyone on your team engage with the training, coaching, or technical assistance opportunities offered through the learning community? (2) Did someone from your team engage with the quarterly meetings or Rx advocacy partners other events? Please include any reflections or feedback on your participation in these opportunities, if applicable.
d. How have your strategies and priorities for building capacity for advocacy, organizing, and civic engagement changed/evolved since the start of your grant?
e. Have there been any “ripple effects” of this grant that you can share with us? By this we mean opportunities, actions, or outcomes that were not part of your original plan or list of deliverables, but which were made possible or strengthened by your participation in this grant program. Examples might include new funding opportunities, partnerships, or community-level impacts.
f. If you were going to give advice to a colleague in this grant cohort who is taking on work that is similar to yours, what advice would you give them?
III. Advocacy capacity self-assessment:
Please follow this link to complete the ACT! Quick. As you answer these questions, please note for yourself areas in which your organization is strongest, areas where you have strong partnerships, and 1-3 areas in which you want to strengthen capacity within your organization or coalitions.
IV. Goals:
a. Detail several reasonable goals, and at least one stretch goal, for the next year [think about goals that you would like to talk about in next year’s report.] These can be different from the goals you described in the original grant application.
b. As you think about the next year and beyond, what is one goal or milestone that would represent a major “hit it out of the park”, wildly successful kind of win?
V. Finance Report:
a. Report spending to date against the budget in the format you submitted with your proposal, and include narrative explanation for any big changes in spending relative to what you had planned (a general guideline is a variance of +/- 20% or greater).
b. Submit a budget for how you anticipate using the next year of grant funds.