[Sean]

Our program is starting from scratch. It’s a 3 year pilot project that aims to support youth involved with the hospital system. We’re currently in the process of planning how to track program engagement.

[Cecilia]

We’re just starting to build one now. It’s been hard because programs have changed so much over the years (new titles, different times of years, put on hold for a time and then restarted, etc.). We’ve got a lot of organizing to do before we can start to think about building out a database. But the suggestions in this thread are super helpful for when we get to that point.

[Hoi Ching]

From my past experiences, the database took time to build. The data such spreadsheet contain are accumulative. There was once I helped with updating the latest data, as well as counter-checking with the previous cohorts, such inventory provided a more comprehensive overview of the participants’ demographics. It also effectively reflected the change in participants’ backgrounds, learning preferences and intentions over time. I think that this kind of well-structured inventory increases information transparency, which is undoubtedly beneficial to the program development of the organization in the long run.

[Paul]

I would say I am in the process of building one for my program. My program is unique and funded by the City of Toronto, so the portal we use captures the referral, assessments, questionnaires, program delivery, attendance, post-program survey etc.

However, we use some in-take forms to capture the data we later upload to the City’s database. I built an offline sheet to keep track of referrals, conversations, attendance and other critical qualitative data.

I find creating an inventory, even if it’s for those in my team helpful as it assists with knowledge management and effective followups.

[Sonya]

The individual delivery partners for the national Indigenous youth internship program I helped review do maintain an inventory, of sorts, of the program data it collects, to be able to report on their progress towards meeting expected results of the project management framework (PMF).

For each expected result (by ultimate outcome, intermediate outcome, and outputs), they list the indicators, baseline data (typically a quantitative number representing number and/or percentage related to that indicator), targets, data sources (interns, community members, participants in community activities supported by interns, program teams, overseas partners, programming team), and data collection methods (including things like interns final narrative report, end of project evaluation survey, pre- and post-internship self-assessment questionnaire, pre- and post-internship career assessment activity, project manager’s reports, interns’ reports, partners’ narrative and monthly reports, end of project survey and/or focus groups, internal reports, interns monthly and annual reports, overseas partners annual reports, and intern pre-departure and re-entry evaluations.)

Individual delivery partners may have more detailed data inventories they developed and use in-house to deliver and evaluate their own project delivery (for things like registration forms, training session evaluation forms completed by youth interns, work placement evaluation forms completed by youth interns, etc.) beyond this PMF that they report on and provide to their national funding department.

[Sonya]

*performance measurement framework (PMF)

[Meera]

We use a portal to input all the registration forms by creating a youth profile. Once the youths profile is created we are able to add their names to events they have attended. For reporting wise, we are able to see how many youths we have served over the year and youth attendance for each event we have hosted.

[jayal]

In the program that I work full-time with, we have external research team of evaluators who developed and conveyed data needed by funder to the program Manager and other program supervisors, and discussions/engagements with myself and other co-workers. This is part of the reason I became very interested in evaluation process and provided feedback and considerations at different stages in terms of applying resilience framework, and working collaboratively to help give input to usability of forms for collecting/reporting. And discussions of what details/information is necessary and why.

[Marco]

We do not have an inventory of all the program data our program collects. The data we have is in different files and hard copies (e.g. attendance sheets). Creating a process document with clear instructions and steps that program staff need to follow would be helpful for creating a data inventory that consists of all the program data we collect. Having a master spreadsheet that all staff know how to use for data entry would also be helpful.