When to Retire a Program, Part 2: The Community Program
This post is the second in a 3-part series on retiring old programs. To read Part 1, all about knowing when to retire a long-standing program, click here.
There are two guiding principles I try to keep in mind when planning and evaluating an education program: first is the old adage, “work smarter, not harder;” and second is the truth that education is predicated on access. Essentially, if we are not smart about how we provide access to our collection and programs, then we are simply wasting everyone’s time.
But pulling the plug on a program that provides free educational opportunities to underserved populations is easier said than done, and it’s not all that easy to say. In fact, up until Covid wrecked and gutted my department, I was still committing a lot of human resources each year to one particular community outreach program with the local library. But, as we are returning our department to pre-Covid staffing levels, I’ve been forced to think critically about every program we offered in the past, and whether we could afford to bring it back. And, although I hated to admit it at first, our library outreach program - as it used to exist - just can’t make the cut. But that doesn’t mean I’m cutting off the free access and educational programming to that audience.
Retired Program #2: Community Outreach
When initially deciding if the library program could come back, I had to first get honest about what it really looked like before.
Thinking Critically About a Program’s Reach and Logistics
Before Covid, our local library’s central office organized after-school enrichment programs with a variety of community partners that were repeated at each branch. Generally speaking, these programs were themed on a monthly basis; for example, in February, the programs all centered around Black History Month or celebrating Black Excellence. Our department would work with the library’s central office, who would assign us a day and time to present a 30-minute program at each of the library’s branches. On months we participated, we had an educator visiting one to two library branches about 10-12 days a month, which accounted for 2-3 days a week, for an entire month.
While on the surface, this looks like an excellent partnership - we were present in the community, we were using our resources as a prime tourist destination to give back to our city, we were offering value to populations that don’t often visit our site, and we were meeting our mission of education. That’s win, right?
Well, it would be, except that we were creating a new program each month we participated, which meant that one of my educators was spending several hours in research and planning prior to the month of programming. Then, they were essentially absent from our site for the entire month, while they went from one branch to another.
Truthfully, I didn’t mind this arrangement, even though it was very one-sided. However, many times our educator showed up to do a program for 5 or less children. The last month we did participated in this program, in February 2020, we saw 84 children over the course of 12 library visits. Although this was right before Covid, it would be another few weeks before our city began to really shut down for the pandemic. These numbers were average for this program from 2017- early 2020.
While offering programming to 84 children is admirable, let’s see if the numbers hold up, or if this program was unsustainable.
Think Critically About the Resources a Program Requires
Ok, if you’re a social studies person like me, this next step may not be your favorite, but I think we can all agree that some simple math is not the end of the world. Moreover, it is essential if you are ethically stewarding your human - and other - resources. So, grab your calculator and take a deep breath…
Completing each of the distinct library programs we participated in required one working hour - for set-up, the program, and clean-up, in addition to the travel time, which in our city averages 25 minutes one-way from our museum. Therefore, we averaged two working hours for each one of these library programs. So, for 12 programs, our department logged 24 working hours, not counting the time to research, plan, and prepare for the program.
To put that in perspective, I know that I can facilitate a 2-hour field trip for up to 30 students with one staff member; therefore, I could accommodate the same number of library participants (84) in one 2-hour field trip with 3 educators, which would equate to 6 working hours (3 staff members x 2 working hours each). So, if I paid 12 staff members for 2-hours (resulting in 24-working hours), I could facilitate a program for 360 students. (In truth, I wouldn’t need that many staff members for a group of that size, but I’m trying to make a mathematical point here.) When it comes down to crunching the numbers on whether a program is a good use of my team’s working hours, the reality was that the library program was resulting in less than 25% of the participation we could get with the same amount of work in other programs. While in the past low participation numbers like these didn’t matter to the same degree, as our institution is attempting to “bounce back” after Covid, we need to be strategic and smart about how we use our resources, including most especially our human resources.
Think Critically About What You’ll Loose When You End a Program
Once it became clear that this particular outreach program is not a good use of my department’s resources, I had to consider what exactly I’ll loose by letting go of this program. In this case, by ending this particular outreach program, I stood to loose:
Our connection with the library, another important nonprofit educational resource in the community
The only programming we offer to some of our area’s zip codes
The reciprocal marketing that comes from outreach endeavors
One of our opportunities to meet our mission of equitable access to our collection
Next Steps
After giving careful consideration to what we stood to loose and what we stood to gain from ending this program, the next step was to get creative. This is my favorite step, by the way! To start, I made particular note of what I needed to get back (staff time) and what I didn’t want to give up (community partnerships and interacting with locals). This lead me to the program elements I need to make sure are included in whatever new community outreach program we begin:
It needs to be easily replicated and scalable. We need to do the work once, and then set the program on repeat, without the need for in-person staff each time.
It needs to be connected to the library. We need to utilize the library as a way to disseminate the program.
It needs to be able to be counted, because tracking the number of participants is still very important to our reporting efforts.
As I’ve been considering these three elements (and as I’ve been talking with a colleague with whom I’m planning a conference presentation later this year), I’m working on a plan for activity kits, which we will create and assemble, then deliver to the library branches, to be handed out to families as they come in, or even used by the librarians in their programming. Obviously, unlike the other two programs I’m retiring this year, I have yet to finalize my replacement program plans. I’m also considering how I might be able to tie such a program into the 250th Anniversary of the United States, and clearly, I will need to coordinate such a plan with the library’s central office. We have not have the chance to talk in depth about this new plan, so it’s all very up in the air at this time.
But I think that the fact that I don’t have a firm follow-up plan for the old library outreach is fine. Sometimes, we need to end one thing, even before we have a firm idea of where we’re heading next. Sometimes taking the time to sit in the creative, brainstorming space for a while is good.
What About You?
Click one of the icons below to send me an email or a DM and let me know if you’ve ever retired an old program and what you replaced it with. Also, by the way, have you ever created activity kits and sent them out via the local library? Was it successful? What pitfalls should I be watching for? Let’s use this little corner of the Internet to create a community for sharing ideas and encouragement !
