The Impact of Effective Nonprofit Training Programs
Good training has a real impact on those who receive it. It can shift mindsets. It can build skills. It can change the way your organization works. And that's what I want to share with you today.
Nonprofit leader, Lauren Wiley, shares how a training at her nonprofit impacted the midwives and doulas they train and ultimately the pregnant and postpartum women they serve.
Listen to the episode or scroll down to read the blog post ↓
Key Points:
03:44 Lauren’s journey from a finance major to a nonprofit leader
15:11 The training and technical assistance that Start Early provides in the state of Illinois
17:51 The importance of a continuous quality improvement process for trainings
24:53 The impact a good training can have on those who receive it
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The Impact of Effective Nonprofit Training Programs
Could your nonprofit's training save someone's life?
Could it help a staff person navigate an intense call on a crisis line?
Could it help a volunteer connect a person who is unhoused to much-needed resources?
Could it help your leaders find millions of dollars to fund their organizations?
The answer is YES!
Good training has a real impact on those who receive it.
It can shift mindsets.
It can build skills.
It can change the way your organization works.
It can help you accomplish your mission.
That's what I want to share with you today. This is just one example of how training can have an incredible impact. In this case, it might have saved someone's life. Nonprofit leader, Lauren Wiley, shares how a training at her nonprofit impacted the midwives and doulas they train and ultimately the pregnant and postpartum women they serve.
In this blog post, we’re covering the following:
Lauren holds a Master's Degree and certificates in Infant Mental Health from Erikson Institute. She earned the Illinois Association for Infant Mental Health’s Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Credential in 2012. She holds endorsements through the Association for Infant Mental Health in Tennessee as an Infant Family Reflective Supervisor and an Infant Family Specialist. Lauren is an active member of the Consultation Council for the Center of Excellence for Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation at Georgetown University.
Lauren currently works for Start Early as the Assistant Director of Quality and Systems for the Professional Learning Network Division.
1) Behind the Scenes at Start Early
Lauren explains that Start Early has three major branches of work. There is the policy division (both at the national and state level) and the research division, and most of their funding comes from either private funding or fundraising.
“Those are really macro. Those are looking at working with the decision-makers to make decisions about children and their families, primarily those living in poverty in Illinois.” - Lauren Wiley
Lauren continues by saying that the third branch is programs. That is where the Professional Learning Network Division (PLN) lives.
“A large part of my work is overseeing the revision and development of the content for courses and trainings.” - Lauren Wiley
The majority of this division’s funding is not private. It comes from public funding from the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Department of Human Services, the Division of Early Childhood.
Here is what Lauren’s division is contracted to provide:
The training and technical assistance for the Birth to Three home visiting and center-based programs in Illinois
Parents as Teachers training, which is a program model for home visiting and training for Healthy Families Illinois
The statewide training and technical assistance for the doula programs funded by ESB and DHS
“We follow through with technical assistance in a number of different ways through our communities of practice reflective learning groups, but also individual. Our TAs go either out to sites and visit with them, or they do it by phone, or email or video. But we provide all the technical assistance for funder requirements, model fidelity, and best practices in working with children and families.” -Lauren Wiley
2) Refining Training Through Collaboration and Adaptation
I want to focus on one specific training that Start Early offers, which is Homebuilding Strategies to Promote Maternal Health.
Lauren explains that Start Early was approached by the University of Illinois, through a colleague who used to work for Start Early. She invited them to take a look and consider revising a mental health training that had been developed for a group of early childhood professionals by medical professionals.
The funding for the original training had come through a grant opportunity from HRSA as part of a financial assistance award totaling 9.5 million to the University of Illinois Department of Medicine.
“This specific program was referred to as I Promote Illinois - Innovations to ImPROve Maternal OuTcomEs in Illinois.” - Lauren Wiley
Lauren explains that although the training had been originally developed for medical professionals, they tried to deliver it to a group of home visitors.
“They provided feedback that the content was way more medically focused than they were comfortable with or even felt prepared to discuss with pregnant persons or new moms. They just felt like that's not their area of expertise.” - Lauren Wiley
Lauren tells us that her contact requested that they revise this training for a more traditional group of early childhood home visiting professionals. The focus of the group was to address the high rates of maternal mortality in the state of Illinois by providing home visitors with the relevant information and methods of talking with pregnant moms who had recently given birth
“We revised it, and it was presented to the original group of professionals responsible for approving the content. And we thought we had a beautiful product; they felt a little differently.” - Lauren Wiley
The group, Lauren explains, included individuals from the University of Illinois School of Public Health and Department of Psychiatry, a nurse practitioner practicing in the Chicagoland area, and the Illinois Department of Human Services.
“Not one of those people have expertise in home visiting. That was our area of expertise, but yet, we still had to respond to what they wanted to see in the training. So we made multiple attempts at a revision very patiently.” - Lauren Wiley
And it was through this process of collaboration and iteration that they revised the training to meet the needs of the partner organizations and the learners.
3) The Importance of a Continuous Quality Improvement Process for Trainings
The revised training was piloted with the original group of home visitors that had received the initial training
“We wanted to see if we had heard their feedback and made the changes that made it more relevant and applicable for them.” - Lauren Wiley
Lauren explains that the pilot group feedback resulted in additional revisions. It was also determined that the training would be delivered as a virtual series over two half days and a community of practice to discuss how the content had been used to ensure knowledge to practice.
“Initially, the group that developed the initial training were not interested in a community of practice. They said, “Just deliver it in two half days.” But I felt strongly that in order to see knowledge to practice and in order to see if people understood the content in a way that is useful to them, we should include a community of practice.” - Lauren Wiley
Lauren supports this by saying that a community of practice gives people an opportunity to try out the strategies and the discussion points that were discussed.
Originally the training was embedded into their doula training catalog but they realized home visitors in general need this information. So they opened it to home visitors as well.
“Our evaluation results indicated that training participants felt overwhelmingly more confident and comfortable initiating and engaging in discussions with mothers about their own medical follow-up care and signs of more significant risks to their health.” - Lauren Wiley
In August of 2023 they were invited by the University of Illinois and the Governor's Office of Early Childhood to be a virtual co-presenter at the National Maternal Health Innovation Symposium.
“It was a very brief presentation, but it resulted in mental health educators and providers from multiple states getting in contact with our agency, Start Early, to explore opportunities to attend and/or offer the trainings in their own communities.” - Lauren Wiley
I love that Lauren and her team have this training in a continuous quality improvement process so that they can continue to collect feedback and adapt as needed.
This ensures that they’re meeting the needs of the home visitors and the doulas, but they have also taken into account the needs of the partner organizations. It's really a nice marriage of everybody's needs. It's both strategic but also human-centered to what that learner is experiencing and what they need, and they're able to continue to adapt because of that.
4) The Impact of a Good Training
The results that Lauren has seen from this training have been really exciting so far.
“Overwhelmingly, it has really proven to provide home visitors and doulas with more confidence and concrete evidence to have productive and meaningful discussions with mothers about their health and the health of their babies.” - Lauren Wiley
Lauren explains that these results are concrete, they’re not theory-based.
“The feedback has been consistently positive. Participants in the training have indicated that they have the skills to initiate conversations that can at times be life-saving.” - Lauren Wiley
Lauren and her team have heard some incredible experiences shared in the community of practice sessions. Here’s one example that shows how the training may have saved a woman’s life.
“The home visitor was able to recognize some significant urgent warning signs in the mom and encouraged her to seek medical care. The woman contacted her doctor and came to find out she required medical attention that she was told potentially saved her life.” - Lauren Wiley
Here is some more feedback that Lauren received from home visitors:
“I feel better now that I'm taking this class and understanding my clients better. I'm able to answer their questions.”
“This training helped me understand that all mothers have experiences after childbirth that I should pay more attention to and actually have a plan to help if necessary, or just to accompany during and after childbirth.”
Lauren explains that on a scale of one to 10 when they ask about post-training competence levels, the average score is about 8.5.
“We feel like we've really accomplished the goal we set out to when the course was developed. However, as you said, continuous quality improvement is a part of our work. And we are always assessing and reevaluating based on feedback. And we'll continue to make revisions as needed.” - Lauren Wiley
As Lauren was telling me about these amazing results I couldn’t help thinking about the people that they're impacting. Not only are they helping the home visitors and doulas do their job with more confidence, but they're also impacting the people that they're serving and potentially saving lives.
I think a lot of times when we create a training, we don't always get to follow that line of impact to see exactly what's happening or how it's impacting the organization or the people that we're serving. In this case, Lauren and her team were able to follow that line and see and hear about that impact which is huge.
To hear the full conversation I had with Lauren Wiley on the Learning for Good Podcast, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 69.
The Nonprofit Learning and Development Collective
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