measuring and reporting outcomes for your btop grant

Measuring and reporting outcomes for your BTOP grant

1Measuring and Reporting Outcomes

BTOP’s reporting system relates to a community technology logic model

Inputs Activities Outputs Impacts

You will be asked to keep track of and report your inputs, activities, outputs, and impacts on a quarterly basis for the duration of your grant in order to:

• Show the value of the services you offer• Show the changes in use as a result of your grant• Evaluate the impact of the grant on the outcomes of your clients


Inputs are the people, equipment, or facilities that allow you to offer activities. Inputs

Activities

Outputs

Impacts

Activities are things like classes or programs you offer to your clients.

Outputs for community technology projects are usually expressed as the number of clients who have used your services.

Impacts are the results of clients taking advantage of your inputs and activities, like finding a job, or learning new skills.


The BTOP reporting survey will ask questions about your activities, inputs, outputs, and impacts according to the impact types you identified in your BTOP grant application. The impact measures included in the reporting survey were informed by the grant applications. You are not expected to have impacts to report for every category or question!

Impact types are categories informed by the CCN study and BTOP’s policy goals

Computer skills enhancement•Help clients gain computer and Internet skills to enable them to independently use technology

•Can be at any skills level and includes multimedia training

Employment skills and opportunities•Help clients learn how to use computers and the Internet to strengthen their ability to become employed

•Provide access to employment opportunities

Education enhancement•Provide supplemental learning support for students challenged by limited learning resources

Access to information and services•Enable clients to use digitally accessible information for personal needs like managing health problems

•Enable clients to access government information, benefits, or services

Life skills and social inclusion• Includes special services for people with disabilities•Help clients learn to use technology for managing personal relations

•Help clients learn about and use technology for money management, finding support, interacting with the community, and daily living skills (e.g. getting bus schedules)

•teach and empower clients to use digital technology to express themselves and participate in their communities


Instructions for completing the BTOP web survey for periodic

reporting

1BTOP Reporting Survey

Web survey launch site Go to http://depts.washington.edu/wabtop/


http://depts.washington.edu/wabtop/


Launch the web survey Go to http://depts.washington.edu/wabtop/

Click launch survey.




Log in to the web surveyYour custom ID is the email address provided in your BTOP

application.


If you would like to use a different email address to login to the survey, please email [email protected].

mailto:[email protected]

Web survey features

You can save the survey and return to it later.

Clicking the save for later button will save your entries and close your survey session.

Closing the survey window without saving will erase all entries.


First reportYour first report will ask for background information on your organization.

You will not need to repeat this section for subsequent reports.


Periodic reporting

Your periodic reports will first ask for general information on your organization’s inputs, outputs, and any activities you have added during the reporting period.


Periodic reportingYou will next be asked series of questions related to impact

types addressed in your BTOP grant proposal.


There are 5 impact types we are asking you to report on:• Computer skills enhancement• Employment skills and

opportunities• Education enhancement• Access to information and

services• Life skills and social inclusion

We encourage you to report impacts in each of the these areas where your center may contribute, even if that is not your primary purpose

Periodic reporting

The survey questions about the impacts of your activities are quite detailed.

You may wish to review them at the start of your grant to get some ideas about what you should track during the reporting period.

If there are other impacts you have observed that are not listed in the survey, or if you have any client stories to share, you can also include them here.


Submitting the survey


When you reach the end of the survey, you will be taken to a review screen where you can look over all of your answers.

Be sure to click submit responses before you close the browser or your responses may be lost!

Submitting the survey

If everything looks good, click submit responses. You will receive a confirmation code for your records.

15BTOP Reporting Survey15

Revising your report

You may revise your report until the last day of the month during which your report is due.

Simply log in with your email address, and click the link to your prior submission.


Tracking toolsBTOP requires you to submit training hours in a particular way. We have created a spreadsheet to help you keep track of your training hours so they are in the correct format. You do not need to submit this spreadsheet.

BTOP tracking tools 17

Tracking training


On the training tracker tab, insert the training type, name of class, and other information to automatically calculate the training hours required for reporting

The class totals for reporting tab will automatically do the calculations into the format required for the survey.

Tracking training


You will be asked in the reporting survey to provide the average weekly visits to your center each quarter. We have provided a worksheet to keep track of your weekly visits and average them for you.

Tracking visitors


You will be asked in the reporting survey to provide the number of newly added services or equipment as a result of your BTOP grant. We have provided a worksheet to keep track of these activities on a monthly basis and total them for the reporting survey.

Tracking new equipment


• The real value in this grant program is the outcome it enables for clients, like improving their workforce skills or getting help for enrolling in government programs.

• You should carefully review the paper version of the survey to decide which client outcomes you should track. We encourage you to track as many of the outcomes as you can based on what you believe your clients will achieve during the grant period.

• Besides keeping track of the activities your center and staff engage in to promote those outcomes, you may want to design an online or paper survey and ask your clients to report their outcomes

• We will provide some tools to help you with this, but because each of your centers are unique and serve different types of clients, we cannot develop a single tool that will meet all of your tracking needs.

• If you design a tracking survey or other tool to track your client’s outcomes, we encourage you to share it with the grant administrators and make it available to other grantees.

Tracking client outcomes


measuring and reporting outcomes for your btop grant

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