Program Evaluation of God's Community Garden

Produced by: Jonathan Felteau, Araz Khajarian, Kathryn Looney, Hannah Lussier, Isabella Panagakos, Lyndsay Rinere and Brooke Warner

POL-330 Global Development

Dr. Chad Raymond

Salve Regina University

Executive Summary:

This process-based evaluation outlines key conclusions and recommendations about God’s Community Garden (GCG), a non-profit organization that provides free vegetables for poor families and the elderly on Aquidneck Island. The three main problems we found during evaluation research are:

1) GCG needs help to maintain a base of consistent volunteers.

2) GCG needs to learn to utilize social media in a more efficient and updated way.

3) GCG desires to provide its vegetables to more people, especially families with children.

In order to combat the three problems mentioned above, this report utilizes research in the form of informal interviews, formal interviews and surveys to reach the following conclusions. First, the information from interviews suggests that GCG should draw in volunteers through partnerships with existing clubs and classes that are affiliated with the Biology and Environmental Studies departments at Salve Regina University. Second, surveys which were sent out to students at Salve Regina and the MET school, show that students are more likely to find community service opportunities through social media. Therefore, we suggest that GCG posts an internship opportunity through the Career Development Office at Salve for marketing students who are interested in gaining experience with website design and social media advertising. Third, interviews with staff at the Florence Gray Center lead us to suggest that GCG should add a new farmstand at this location in order to reach more young families. These suggestions will allow more people to benefit from GCG’s services, and improve its relationship with the community.

Evaluation Purpose:

The purpose for this evaluation is to provide information for the director, Linda Wood, and regular volunteers of God’s Community Garden as the organization seeks to improve its efficiency and outreach. In meetings with Linda Wood and regular volunteers, it was clear that in order to achieve the organization’s short and long term goals, that steps should be taken to improve the organization’s efficiency in three specific areas. Because the evaluation recognizes that the production of the vegetables themselves is affected by a variety of external factors, it asserts that God’s Community Garden’s ability to distribute the vegetables and to advertise its presence is more controllable. As a result, this report seeks to improve practices in regard to social media, volunteering and connecting with families.

The people who will benefit from this evaluation are the women at God’s Community Garden who seek to improve the organization, the students at Salve Regina University who are interested in this volunteer opportunity, and the low income families in the area

who want to provide a nutritious diet for their children but do not know where to go. The conclusion of this evaluation will be received by the organization’s director, Linda Wood, and her most trusted volunteers as a comprehensive guideline for improvements to the organization’s basic practices.

Evaluation Questions:

Featured below are the evaluation questions that we used to assess God’s Community Garden in order to produce this report:

1. How can God’s Community Garden reach more families with children?

2. Would people be interested in volunteering at God’s Community Garden if it was promoted by Salve Regina University’s Community Service Office or a 1-credit course?

3. Are the current locations of the farm stands hindering the ability to attract more customers?

4. What are the goals of God’s Community Garden that have not been met?

5. What resources can the organization use to achieve their goals and what resources do they lack?

Project Background:

God’s Community Garden is a non-profit organization located in Middletown, RI. The mission of GCG is to address the social problem that low-income families and retirees who live on Aquidneck Island cannot afford to purchase quality vegetables. In order to grow and distribute free vegetables to these “neighbors in need”, the organization relies solely on the generosity of others through donations, grants and volunteers. GCG maintains three greenhouses located in Middletown, RI as well as three weekly farm stands located in Middletown, Newport and Portsmouth. God’s Community Garden is primarily run by a single director, Linda Wood, who performs much of the organization’s administrative and gardening work on her own and is supported by a staff of around four regular volunteers.

In its mission, the organization holds two major assumptions. The first assumption is that, there is a population living on Aquidneck Island who can benefit from being provided with free vegetables. The second is that, people in the community will be willing to provide GCG with enough money and volunteer time in order to keep the organization running successfully. While the assumption that this population in need of food is founded in statistics that demonstrate the income and population of people in the community, God’s Community Garden has continued to feel that they have a problem with reaching everyone on the island who could utilize their services, especially young

families. In addition to that problem, GCG also faces a lack of labor due to low rates of volunteerism. The combination of the two previously stated problems suggests that GCG faces an inability to properly advertise its existence, purpose and services.

The purpose of this evaluation is to take the three major problems that God’s Community Garden currently faces, stated above, and to provide the organization with the tools to combat them. Through the method of formal interviews, informal interviews and surveys of the local community, this evaluation presents GCG with a revamped process that will allow the organization to achieve its goals.

Evaluation Methods and Limitations:

In order to evaluate God’s Community Garden and to answer our team’s evaluation questions we went through a multifaceted research and interview process. Starting with a meeting with program director, Linda Wood, the team was offered an overview of the program’s mission and goals. This preliminary meeting provided us with a basis for our understanding of the organization. After that, we met with Linda Wood and her regular volunteers at the greenhouse location in Middletown and asked them open-ended questions about their time as a part of the organization. In order to evaluate the organization’s understanding of their successes and failures, our group asked Wood and the volunteers to describe their most positive as well as their most negative thoughts about the organization. The only limitation to this process was that we were confined to the duration of our class period in order to receive their responses.

After meeting with the program director and receiving the organization’s internal assessment our class sent two representatives to each farm stand in order to survey the organization’s perception and level of outreach in the community. The representatives at each farm stand asked customers survey questions from a set of protocol previously determined by the group as a whole. The survey was made up of about half demographic questions and half opinion questions. It asked customers to describe themselves so that the group could record data on the relative age, family and economic status of customers at the stands while simultaneously collecting data on those same customer’s opinions of the services produced by the stands. Some limitations in our ability to accord accurate data during this phase was the uncooperative weather (it rained) and the fact that it was the stands’ last harvest before GCG replanted for the winter season.

In addition to working with and among the individuals at God’s Community Garden to answer our evaluation questions, the group sought the opinion of members among the Salve Regina University and greater Newport communities to answer our evaluation questions regarding what other people recommend to improve God’s Community

Garden and about how best to encourage volunteerism. Throughout this process we connected with administrators in Salve’s Career Development and Community Service Offices; with students from the Biology, Environmental Studies and Marketing departments; with two members of Salve’s Hydroponics Club; with a professor from the Biology department; with the director of the Florence Gray Center food pantry and with students from the MET school. The data for this part of our research was mostly qualitative and interview-based but some was based in analytics from an online survey. In the case of the interviews, all of the administrators and faculty members were targeted for their expertise in areas like community service, internships and interest in Biology-related projects. The students were also targeted as members of the Salve community who would be most likely to have interest in providing the services that GCG is interested in.

Our group chose to interview most of the contributors to our evaluation of God’s Community Garden directly because we found that it was the best way to foster a productive dialogue. Email conversations proved too tiresome and surface-level to be of use to our audience. However, we did treat students differently because we found that an online survey was the best way to cast a wide net and to reach the highest number of people in the shortest amount of time. We found that interviewing someone in person or over the phone was the least limiting form of communication for data collection and used it as our preferred method of communication. Online surveying proved to be a little bit harder as it reflects some selection bias due to the targeting of only a small sample of students at Salve and the MET.

We believe that the quality of our data is good because we attempted to ask members at all levels of interaction with the organization to evaluate God’s Community Garden. However, our evaluation could have been made better if we had had more time to interview potential families interested in benefitting from the provision of free vegetables as well as more students who were not as inclined to be interested in GCG’s endeavors.

Conclusions:

Our research has identified the three major challenges that God’s Community Garden faces to be: recruiting regular volunteers, using advertising and social media effectively, and reaching families with young children.

Our findings suggest that one of the major challenges that God’s Community Garden faces, both in recruiting volunteers and reaching eligible customers, is advertising. Our data shows that there is little knowledge of God’s Community Garden. 98% of high school students and 86% of college students surveyed had not heard about the organization and it is likely that this lack of advertising also affects customer reach. The

survey also showed that 74% of the college students surveyed said they heard about community service opportunities on Facebook. However, the God’s Community Garden Facebook page currently has very little information about opportunities for volunteers or the services that the organization provides. Similarly, the God’s Community Garden Website has not been updated recently.

A qualitative analysis of common responses received from on-site interviews of farm stand customers found that most customers are retirees living off a fixed budget or Social Security. Most of the customers had heard about the farm stands by word of mouth or through a friend at church. Almost all of the customers had no young children, suggesting that many families on the island who may be struggling are not aware of this program. The community does not know the farm stands are there and furthermore they do not know how to get to them. Many of the customers at the farm stands were seeking social experiences and appreciated the sense of community the Garden provides. Overall, farm stand customers were overwhelmed with positive comments about the management of the stands. This demonstrates that, while God’s Community Garden is successful at accessing and providing services to retirees, the organization has trouble reaching out to families.

Through the various interviews at Salve Regina University we concluded that God’s Community Garden can get an internship opportunity advertised on the Career Development Center website by submitting an application. Additionally, the organization can utilize advertising opportunities on Salve Regina’s Community Service Facebook page.

Additionally, our results show that 68% of college students surveyed said that they would be interested in gardening as part of a for-credit course. A Salve professor, Dr. Chace, recommended that with the signature of a department chair, GCG could partner with students in two pre-existing internship courses (ENV 390 and BIO 497) in order to increase their regular volunteer base. Additionally, the Salve Regina University Hydroponics Club is interested in working with God’s Community Garden as a part of the club’s community outreach. The Florence Gray Center in Newport is also interested in helping GCG reach young families through the introduction of a new farm stand at their location. This area would allow God’s Community Garden easy access to many young families in need.

Recommendations:

Based on the conclusions above, this process evaluation marks a three point course of action to be taken by God’s Community Garden in order to further its outreach and service.

While GCG does well at serving the customers and maintaining the volunteers that it currently receives, it needs to implement three changes in order to reach its goals. First, the organization should work on creating a social media marketing plan to reach a greater audience. Next, the organization should create a new farmstand location at the Florence Gray Center in order to target more families. Finally, God’s Community Garden should establish a relationship with Salve Regina’s Hydroponics Club and Biology Department in order to create a stronger volunteer base.

Based on the results of the data, it would be very beneficial for God’s Community Garden to create an interactive Facebook page where students and members of the community would have access to a schedule with volunteering sign-up slots. It would also be very advantageous for the organization to have a portion of their website that includes a map of the locations of their farm stands, as well as the food pantries located in the area that they donate to; this would help out the people that are looking for access to the organization's food but don’t know where to go based on their location.

God’s Community Garden could also increase its reach to potential volunteers and eligible customers by providing advertising such as hanging flyers at community centers, the Martin Luther King Center food pantry, and low income housing developments.

Whether the organization sets up a marketing internship through the application for Salve’s career portal (which we will provide) or simply diverts some of its tech-savvy volunteers to manage the organization’s social media presence, being on these platforms will generate more traffic to GCG in terms of customers and volunteers.

In establishing a relationship with the Florence Gray Center, God’s Community Garden would be able to achieve its goal of feeding young families because of the center’s location near low-income housing developments. The center is constantly in use, whether it's hosting community events, GED classes, services for children, or even a food pantry. The people who tend to live here are low-income families who could benefit greatly from GCG. A large problem with the current farm stand locations is that not many people know where they are due to the fact that they are set far back from the road and lack advertising. A farm stand could be added or moved to the Florence Gray Center in Newport so that these families would have easy access to the free produce and everything that GCG has to offer.

God’s Community Garden could also look into partnering with the local schools because more than half of the students that attend schools in Newport and Middletown apply for free/reduced lunches, which means that they live under the poverty line. This would create a situation where God’s Community Garden would be giving the free vegetables to the schools to provide a healthy option for their students, as well as educating them on nutrition and how to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Finally, through becoming involved with Salve’s Hydroponics Club and offering volunteer opportunities to an environmental internship class, GCG could create a lasting source of young volunteers. Dr. Chace told us in an interview that he could make the independent study a course requirement for Environmental Studies and Environmental Science; he also said he could possibly include Biology classes in the program but could not give us a definitive answer yet. In terms of making the volunteer help last longer than a semester, he suggested that students could either get it all done in one semester for three credits, or spread it out receiving one credit per semester. This method would be successful because it provides an incentive for the students, rather than asking them to devote time out of their busy schedules for the sake of volunteering.

God’s Community Garden can also partner with two of Salve Regina’s offices in order to increase volunteering potential. GCG can submit an application to the Career Development Office in order to advertise to students about internship opportunities at the Garden. The organization can also contact the Community Service Office to advertise to Salve students on the community service Facebook page.

If God’s Community Garden is able to take the steps provided in this recommendation to improve its process, it will be able to achieve its goals more effectively. This in turn, will make a positive impact on the entire Aquidneck Island community.