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Steven Covey, author of Seven
Habits of Highly Effective People, tells a story something
like this:
Suppose you were to come upon someone in the
woods working feverishly to cut down a tree.
"What are you doing?" you ask.
"Can't you see?" comes the impatient
reply. "I'm sawing down this tree."
"You look exhausted!" you exclaim.
"How long have you been at it?"
"Over five hours," he returns, "and
I'm beat! This is hard work."
"Well why don't you take a break for
a few minutes and sharpen that saw?" you inquire. "I'm
sure it would go a lot faster."
"I don't have time to sharpen the saw,"
the man says emphatically. "I'm too busy cutting!"
The
man in Covey's story had been cutting wood for over five hours;
COTS has been “cutting” homelessness for over
fifteen years. The work often is crisis-driven, with
inadequate resources to meet basic needs for all who would
like our help, and frequently involves life and death issues.
We’ve
accomplished a lot in the fifteen years plus that COTS has
been “cutting homelessness”: we’ve saved
countless lives, provided over 300,000 bednights of shelter,
and helped thousands of people rebuild their lives.
In
2002, we asked ourselves this: how much more could we accomplish
in years to come, if only we had the time and resources to
undertake a focused, professional evaluation of motivations,
processes, and measurements, to enable us to move to a higher
level of effectiveness? And how much more effective
could other agencies become, if we were able to share with
them what we learn in this evaluation? In other words,
we asked how can "we sharpen our saw" at
COTS, and share this with others?
A
dear friend of COTS, a major donor, provided us with $200,000
for our program development, evaluation, training and export
("PDETE") project. We have had wonderful results,
amazing successes because of this project, and are now in
a position to begin sharing what we have learned. Our "saw"
is much "sharper" now!
This
section of our website will provide detailed information about
the PDETE process itself, as well as materials that we hope
will be helpful to our co-workers in other agencies: program
narratives, program logic models (detailing resources, activities,
outputs, outcomes and data indicators), forms, audio and video
resources, and sample grant applications.
We
don't suggest that these materials are anywhere near perfect--we
just offer them as a starting place, hoping that we can save
you some time and resources, and perhaps give you the opportunity
to learn from our mistakes--as well as to "sharpen your
saw." We welcome your feedback on our offering,
and your improvements.
In
coming weeks and months, we expect to be posting the above-named
materials. Please be patient with us, as there's a lot
of material!
Best
wishes from the COTS Team!
John
Records
Executive
Director
Resources
(under construction, some links not active)
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