 Today we're going to talk a little bit about impact report writing. One way to help you get a better idea of how to approach your impact report and focus in really on the important parts and the real focus of an impact report is the content. There's four sections that we look for that are actually outlined in the impact report template. There's a situation statement, there's a response section, an impact section, and then there is some space for feedback. The situation statement is where you kind of set the stage. You want to be concise and clear in what is the situation, why are you doing what you did. Try to avoid jargon or something that only we understand. Make sure that you spell out any acronyms, don't use acronyms, but keep it simple and keep it concise. We just need to know what drove their need for the program. In the response section, that's where you'd want to give some of the other context who attended, how many people attended, was it a one day, multiple day, where are you at in the process of this major, if it's a major program, where are you at in the timeline of that process. In the impact statement, that's where you want to bring together what actually were the outcomes of the teaching that you did or the program that you conducted. We do suggest that you try to use evaluation tools that are going to give some outcome data that's level to or higher. You can also use some anecdotal information in the feedback section. The other focus with the outcome section is to really think about what was different because of what was done. What happened as a result of the program that I delivered? What did it do for the community, the individual or the organization? Those are kind of what you want to really think about. You know, clientele did what because of this program. And that can also help you set up your evaluation to ask the right kind of questions. And also you want to think about the anecdotal information that was collected. That can be as simple as comments that someone made at the end of the meeting or even during the meeting. We also need to know some of the evidence of the data that was collected. That's why it's nice to know the number of people that were at the meeting or specifically we really would like to know the number of people that completed whatever type of evaluation tool you used. Whether it was a pre-post or whether it was just a direct interviews. It's good to know the number of people that actually conducted or participated in that evaluation. There are definitely some challenges with collecting that outcome and sometimes it's really hard to define or quantify the impact of your program. So it's okay to consider some potential impact. Sometimes it's also difficult to really identify the most likely benefactors of the educational project. And it's also important that you think about what it is you expect the outcome to be and why. That can also help you set the stage with the evaluation tool as well as your response section. If you did have a challenging situation where it's not an immediate response, this is more of a long term project or proposal or teaching event that you're dealing with. It's okay to incorporate some type of an explanation into this outcome section as to where you're at in a timeline and you can use such statements that because of what they've learned today we're hoping in the future they will do X. So you can certainly look at a timeline response as well. And you can use real examples if this is a project that you know had been done somewhere else and they had specific outcomes and you're trying to reach the same. You can certainly incorporate that into there. Or you can use hypothetical outcomes that are quite obvious from whatever the objectives were for the project. And it's also okay to include a little bit of what other research is out there to support your event or project. But you have to be careful. It's too easy to write a lot of words citing other research so make sure you still stay focused to the point on that. I already mentioned you can use anecdotes for feedback. Anecdotes are very powerful and it's really great for those kind of hard to quantify projects where it's easy to get some qualitative data but if you can get anecdotes that's very helpful. And there's lots of examples if you look in the health and nutrition area after a meeting or after you've done several teaching events one of the attendees approaches you and says you know my blood pressure is down and I can cut back on my blood pressure pills thanks to what I learned in your educational sessions. That's the type of anecdotal information that very valuable that you can put into your impact statement. Well I hope that type of information will help when it comes time to put your impact report together. And there's three key things that you really need to make sure are included in your impact report. Besides you know worrying about your situation and your outputs and outcomes you need to first of all make sure you outline what your teaching role was include the number of participants in the evaluation and third if you can work on trying to show outcomes that go beyond just an increase in knowledge. And some of that can be just a simple follow up with some of the attendees weeks or months later just asking them several pointed questions what did you do because of this or you know how did it impact your budget or how did it impact your crop production you know some of that follow up so outline your teaching role include the number of participants in evaluation and then try to work on the outcomes that go beyond just an increase in knowledge. Two final notes that you will see here I did not come up with all this information this was taken directly from the guidelines for impact or guidelines for completing impact reports which is on the web and it's available so you all the information is there you can certainly follow it besides watching this slide presentation and at the end of this presentation there will be two examples of impact reports inserted one of them is going to be a completed and acceptable impact report containing all the points that we're asking and the other one is a draft impact report that I received from a staff member asking for input and that's another good hint I guess you can certainly send draft copies of your impact report to your district director or supervisor and ask for input we're more than happy to give you that feedback because we want to make sure that we know you have it we just want to help you get it into the impact report.