About Effective Practices
What is an effective practice?
What is the Effective Practices Collection?
What are the criteria for effective practices?
What are use indicators?
Do I have permission to use effective practices?
How can I submit an effective practice?
Who has contributed to the success of the Effective Practices Collection?
What is an effective practice?
An effective practice:
- Is an action or series of actions by a grantee, program staff, national service participant or technical assistance provider that helps to solve an essential problem facing a national service program and the community it serves, and leads to a positive outcome. An "action" sometimes involves the use of tools, techniques, or step-by-step procedures and includes these components as integral parts of the definition of an effective practice.
- Addresses an issue shared by program staff or members across local programs or operating sites.
- Can be replicated in or adapted to serve more than one locale.
- Can be described and documented in terms of the problem(s) it solves, the context in which it has been successful, evidence of the success of the practice, and level of outcome or impact it helped to achieve.
Effective practices come from all streams of national service (AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and Learn and Serve America) and service partners (such as volunteer centers and nonprofit organizations), addressing all service emphasis areas (education, environment, human needs, and public safety), as well as program and volunteer management.
What is the Effective Practices Collection?
The Effective Practices Collection offers good ideas, proven practices, and findings from evidence-based studies that can lead to greater program success. Effective practices in the collection reflect the broad experience of program practitioners, technical assistance providers, resource specialists, and empirical researchers, and relate to the Corporation for National and Community Service issue areas of education, environment, public safety, and other human needs, along with service-learning and common program management topics (such as recruiting, volunteer management, and sustainability).
The Effective Practices Collection as a whole was funded by the Corporation for National and Community Service to promote information sharing among national service programs; however, individual practices are not officially approved by the Corporation. Be mindful that an effective practice may or may not be appropriate to your program.
Within each practice, we indicate how well-established or well-studied the practice is and we identify its source. Wherever possible, we link to published materials or supporting documentation. Utilize the practices as informal guidance, or as one source of information available when working through an issue or concern. Use common sense and good judgment; apply and adapt the effective practice at your own risk. As necessary, seek guidance from your state office; program, training, and grant officers; program directors; and supervisors.
What are the criteria for effective practices?
Using the above definition, an effective practice can be described and documented to indicate the:
- Problem(s) it solves
- Context in which it has been successful
- Evidence of success
- Level of outcome it helped to achieve
The Effective Practices Collection seeks to include the widest range of information possible. Using a set of objective criteria, Resource Center staff will review all submissions for appropriateness and relevance to our definition of an effective practice. In addition, to keep the site easy to use, we may decline submissions that duplicate effective practices already in the collection. Keep in mind that the site is not a compendium of ideas "approved" by the Corporation, although we indicate how well-established or well-studied an effective practice is and its source. Finally, we will not accept commercial promotions or submissions that advocate activities prohibited to national service members or programs.
What are use indicators?
Each effective practice in the collection provides an innovative solution to a common problem in national and community service, and can be replicated or adapted by others in the service field. To assist you in implementing these effective practices, we provide use indicators, which are defined as follows.
Use Indicators:
Do I have permission to use effective practices?
The purpose of the Effective Practices Collection is to provide free and easily accessible information that supports the efforts of national and community service programs. Our content is available to the public for non-commercial use that furthers this goal.
When using our content for orientations, trainings, guidebooks, or presentations to service program staff, members or volunteers, please acknowledge the Resource Center as the source of information.
Please also take a moment to notify the Resource Center by sending an e-mail to resourcecenter@etr.org. In your message, please include the name and mission of your organization, and the manner in which you intend to use our content.
How can I submit an effective practice?
At this time, we are not accepting new effective practices. If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail us at resourcecenter@etr.org.
Who has contributed to the success of the Effective Practices Collection?
We would like to thank the members of the Effective Practices working group for their valuable contributions to this project: Jewel Bazilio-Bellegarde, Bill Bentley, J. Edison Betts, Jr., Jim Ekstrom, Charles Ellmaker, Tara Fuller, Wade Gatling, Carol Hafford, Mary Hegeler, Susan Hillyard, Susan Labin, Denise Lee, Margie Legowski, Erica Marsh, Michael Mercil, Forest Monsen, Magdalena Montagne, Zac Mutrux, Steven Padilla, Carlos Pedraza, Lance Potter, Sheryl Robertson, David Rymph, Jill Saito, Susan Schechter, Erik Schmidt, Marcia Scott, Gretchen Van der Veer, and Angela Ward.
