Managing the Program

We’ve already discussed the need for you to have in-house capacity to manage your program. We’ve also mentioned that it can be difficult to secure funding for operational costs, particularly when receiving private funds from donors who want their money to go directly to those in need. Here, we’ll talk about setting your team up for streamlined program management; if your bandwidth is low, here are some recommendations for setting your team infrastructure so that you can work efficiently.

Intake. Managing the intake process can be challenging if it isn’t automated or standardized. For CBOs working as part of a collective, having a standardized intake form that uploads data to a centralized database allows money to be distributed quickly. It’s also important to consider customer service at this point in the process. If individuals are submitting forms, who should they contact for help? If CBOs are processing intakes, how can the process be clear for them?

“Keep intake questions consistent throughout to make data collection easier”

We understand that this type of forethought and planning can be difficult if you are establishing a new program during an emergency. Do the best that you can but keep in mind that if you are able to maintain the same intake form, you’ll save time on record cleanup later in the process. We spoke with groups that had to make changes to their intake form along the way and they said that it created significant work when trying to clean up or align records later in the process.

Record retention. Record retention may be required by the IRS or your reporting agency. We recommend that you seek legal and financial counsel to determine what information you must keep, for how long, and when it is appropriate to purge data.

Keeping clean records. You’ll have many more opportunities to streamline and automate your work if you keep clean and accurate data. Also, you’ll likely have more work down the line if you collect data that needs to be fixed or reformatted. We heard about headaches caused by using multiple intake forms that collected different information or changing databases mid-process.

Most team dysfunctions arise out of issues related to failures in communication. We suggest that once you have your partner CBOs in place, that you set up a cadence for communicating and staying in sync.

A quick daily check in between all full-time staff assigned to the program is something to consider to make sure everyone is aware of each other’s work and to identify if there are any problems of blockers that need to get addressed.

Making time to reflect on the program’s successes and challenges is a worthwhile activity to commit to. Biweekly is a nice cadence for this. If you automatically reflect on your work every other week, you’ll be able to see how to improve the program and the ways that everyone works together. In the tech industry, this type of biweekly discussion is called a retrospective and here’s more to read about that.

*Note that if you are involved in running a cash assistance program and you have lessons of your own to share, believe that we left something out, or believe that we got something wrong, please let us know. We’ll be collecting feedback through the end of July. Thank you!