The goal of this capacity builder’s training was to equip faith-based and community organizations with the knowledge, skills, and tools to successfully manage Federal grants. The capacity builder measured the outcome in two ways: first, in a post-training survey, participants were asked to agree or disagree with the statement, “I gained new knowledge about managing Federal grants.” These outcomes were self-reported, and if the capacity builder wanted to get more objective assessments about whether the organization did, in fact, learn something about managing Federal grants, they might have administered a brief survey or quiz prior to and after the workshop.
Let us suppose that 54 percent of recipients reported that they gained new knowledge on the topic. The analysis would ask, “Is this good? What does this tell us about the training, and possibly about the participants?” On one hand, this tells us that nearly half of the participants did not learn anything new from the training. You might conclude that your training participants have all the knowledge they need of grants management, and schedule other training topics. But it is possible that your staff observes something very different—perhaps that most of the participating organizations are not tracking employee time in accordance with Federal rules and regulations, or retaining records. Now you have a different situation where your training contained very important information that the participants simply did not receive. Your next step, rather than to move onto other topics, might be to find other ways to deliver the necessary information.