Applying the classic principle of “show, don’t tell” makes content more engaging and relatable. While numbers and statistics are essential, here’s how we paired the data with personal stories to more deeply convey the impact of a grant program.
As evaluators, we love numbers and data. But often, the numbers alone don’t do justice to what was actually achieved.
In the case of the CIRCLE Grant, we needed pictures and video to tell the story.
The Community Innovation and Resilience for Care and Learning Equity (CIRCLE) Grant program provided over $21 million in funding to childcare providers and other community, education, and governmental partners to pursue innovative solutions to challenges worsened by the pandemic.
The funded projects achieved goals focused on making childcare more affordable; filling gaps in infant and toddler care; strengthening providers’ financial stability; boosting workforce preparation; and contributing to the health and learning of all children, including those with disabilities and developmental delays as well as dual-language learners.
The funding was part of over $275 million from the federal American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act received by Colorado. Gov. Jared Polis and the Colorado General Assembly, which created the CIRCLE Grant program through Senate Bill 21-236.
The Colorado Department of Early Childhood selected Early Milestones Colorado to administer the grant, which then contracted Marzano Research to conduct an evaluation of the program.
A key evaluation challenge was how to account for the complexities of the CIRCLE Grant program and the many ways success would be defined across the 226 grantees.
“The evaluation had to acknowledge the diversity of grants within the program and the varying ways to define ‘success’ across grantees,” said CIRCLE Grant Evaluation Lead Carrie Germeroth. “It was important that the evaluation hold at its core a responsibility to advance progress towards equity. So, to compliment the more traditional mixed-methods evaluation approach, we came up with the Innovation and Equity Profiles.”
Identifying which of the 226 grantees to select for developing the Innovation and Equity Profiles was difficult, as each had a compelling story to tell. Ultimately, 18 were selected.
We took a case study approach with each profile to document in-depth grantee implementation processes, challenges, barriers, successes, and lessons learned. The profiles highlight innovations and strategies to increase equity across the state that have the potential for scale or replication should additional funding be available.
CIRCLE Project Innovation and Equity Profile Criteria
Innovation: Projects that display new or novel strategies to solve existing child care challenges. These proposed solutions may represent opportunities to scale new approaches or share learnings that could be applicable across the field.
Equity: Projects that focus on a particular population or equity opportunity. These proposed solutions may represent opportunities to introduce or deepen diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and/or remove barriers for historically marginalized children, families, and the workforce to access early care and learning across the field.
Like the 226 CIRCLE Grant projects, which are community-driven solutions, the profiles were grantee-driven concepts. We met with each grantee from the beginning and asked, “How do you think we should tell your project story?”
In partnership with grantees, we developed a storyboard for each that included identifying who would be in the profile and the best way to engage each speaker. For example, some needed language interpretation and others were more comfortable with written testimonial only.
We engaged Xseed design and production to help us capture the stories and turn them into short videos. The interviews for each video were captured in person when possible, but many of the interviews took place virtually via Zoom. We overlooked no detail—we scheduled interpreters, provided a standardized Zoom background for the virtual interviews, suggested what interviewees could wear for the videos, and sent all interview questions ahead of time so interviewees could prepare.
The result was 18 profiles of community-driven solutions to address high-leverage systemic challenges in early childhood across Colorado.
The numbers and data on the reach of these projects is impressive, but the stories of individuals behind the numbers are where the true impact of the CIRCLE project comes to light.
