By Stephen Smoot
Across the nation, Community Action organizations endeavor to serve their communities. A federal Community Services Block Grant supports their work in localities throughout the nation. Annually, the National Community Action Partnership honors those who strive to continually get better at efficient administration and execution of services.
One of the most proficient in earning recognition in recent years has been Eastern Action, whose services support families and individuals facing challenges across the Potomac Highlands.
“It’s a big honor that we received last night,” shared Eastern Action’s Chief Executive Officer, Matt Hinkle.
Hinkle explained that the national organization created a program called “Pathways to Excellence.” The organizational website describes this as “more than just a recognition program.” It adds that “it’s a roadmap for building a more efficient, resilient, and results-driven agency.”
The program grounds its efforts in a slate of “Standards of Excellence, which reflect the best practices of high-performing Community Action Agencies.”
As Hinkle describes, the awards come in four tiers: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. Each tier represents a higher level of both work and achievement to meet program goals.
The bronze category represents an entry point to the program, requiring an agency to complete “formalizing the board’s commitment to Excellence, forming an Excellence team, building consensus on the organization’s context, and learning about the Standards of Excellence,” shared the website.
Hinkle stated that achieving silver status means that the agency has studied two of the seven standards categories that have Standards of Excellence within them. Mastering two of the Standards represents meeting 25 percent of the goals that the national organization urges local agencies to aspire towards.
The core of the work lies in conducting a self-study to honestly reflect the progress of the agency. Objective peer reviewers from other agencies, carefully selected to avoid conflicts of interest, examine and evaluate the self-studies. Hinkle stated that he had peer reviewed a study himself, but could not reveal that fact to the agency that he evaluated.
The self-study and evaluation, says Hinkle “explains opportunities for improvement and what we do well.”
Gold tier achievement, for which Eastern Action was awarded last December and for which it was honored last week, requires a self-study of all seven categories of the Standards of Excellence that require attention paid to 35 different attributes.
Hinkle pointed out that the organization did not come up with the standards themselves, but use criteria for excellence formulated by Malcolm Baldrige. Those seven categories include leadership, strategy, customers, measurement, analysis and knowledge management, workforce, operations, and results. Each of these gets evaluated by an objective set of criteria designed to use the development of efficient and effective organization to produce the best possible outcomes.
“They used Malcolm Baldrige’s work to create Standards of Excellence. It has credibility beyond Community Action’s world,” noted Hinkle. He explained that Eastern Action had developed many of the criteria in-house already, but had not yet organized a systematic process to ensure repeatable results.
Organizations with effective staff that cooperate well can function in this manner, but success depends on the personnel more than the process. Best practice policies, however, will help to make sure that the level of work remains the same even as personnel over time change. Incoming personnel understand immediately the standards they must meet.
“The biggest benefit,” Hinkle stated, comes not from the recognition, but from the “downstream effect.” Meeting the standards by setting systematic policies makes Eastern Action a more attractive grant awardee, “securing new funding to expand our programming,” he said.
To receive the award, Eastern Action was represented by Hinkle, Becky Yokum, Susan Knibley, and Anthony and Tina Bonner. Said Hinkle, “we were the seventh agency that’s earned this” out of approximately 1,000 agencies nationwide.
Eastern Action, however, will not remain content to rest on these laurels. One more tier awaits. Platinum recognition comes when an organization can “demonstrate excellence via s self-study and onsite review confirming your CAA exceeds the Standards of Excellence to be recognized nationally with the Award for Excellence.
Stay tuned. If the past is an indicator, Eastern Action will soon achieve this milestone as well.
