2002 Year in Review

Advancement Plus & New Beginnings’
2002 Year in Review

Overview:
For Advancement Plus and New Beginnings, 2002 was a year with some great successes and major strides forward, as well as year with some frustrations, missteps and setbacks. We look back and have a number of things to be proud of, as well as building blocks in place for the future, but we also need to look back and at our mistakes, missteps and failed experiments that so we can learn and grow from them.

Successes:

Microsoft Employment Related Training Part I
	In January of 2002, after years of frustration with what was available on the market, we introduced our first in house designed project based, self-paced learning module for teaching the computer. This first addition in what we hope to be a 4 part series for teaching Microsoft Office, focused on getting people the skills that a basic and competent user of Microsoft Word needs.
It won rave reviews from our participants, and the tracking and evaluations system that went along with it ensured that a much higher percentage of participants were successfully gaining the computer skills they needed in Microsoft Word. This success was a testament to what kind of tools that we can develop when we have the time to put our methodology into a replicable tool. Based on the positive feedback we have been getting, we believe with some fine tuning, we can make this into something that can be marketed and generate revenue.

MVHUB.com
Although formally introduced in December of 2001, this online community resource guide that New Beginnings developed in collaboration with Greater Lowell Family Resource Collaborative, Weed and Seed, and UMass Lowell, entered its 300^th program into the system in 2002, and agencies in the community are starting to look to
it as a resource to better assist their constituency. This is resource is going to play a central role in assisting staff and volunteers with helping people find resources that will help people through crisis as well as help move people closer to their goals.

Although formally introduced in December of 2001, this online community resource guide that New Beginnings developed in collaboration with Greater Lowell Family Resource Collaborative, Weed and Seed, and UMass Lowell, entered its 300^th program into the system in 2002, and agencies in the community are starting to look to it as a resource to better assist their constituency. This is resource is going to play a central role in assisting staff and volunteers with helping people find resources that will help people through crisis as well as help move people closer to their goals.

Volunteer Program
Although we recognize that our volunteer program has a long way to go before it is reaching its full potential, 2002 saw 17 volunteers actively participate in the program adding real value by: helping people with resumes, monitoring the computer room, tutoring students in computer skills, creating and teaching classes, providing tech support, and helping with administrative duties. We hope to build upon this success, and with the a current batch of active volunteers hope to work with them to develop an infrastructure and system that allows us to increase the services offered on a larger scale

Resume Program
	After a number of years of helping people sporadically with resumes, in 2002 we finally began to develop an approach for getting volunteers involved with helping people with their resumes. Although there are still quite a few bugs to be worked out, the series of seminars and follow-up sessions allowed us to successfully target, reach and serve more people than we had ever in
years past. The system also allowed us to offer more with less strain on staff time, since we were able to involve volunteers. We hope to make adjustments to this framework in the upcoming year to yet again increase the quality and quantity served with resume assistance.

Excel Seminar
We finally were able to find time to develop an Introduction to Excel seminar to supplement our self-paced training. Although we need to add a higher skill level training, this was an important first step, and helped a number of people who were struggling with the basic Excel concepts.

Environment
One of the things that New Beginnings has always been complimented on is the warm, open and comforting environment it creates. Because New Beginnings is open to any adult, we have an extremely diverse population in every sense of the word. We all bring different skills and weaknesses to the table, and because of that, we all can help each other move forward. We try to build relationships so that people will feel comfortable enough to open up when they need assistance, as well as to step forward when they feel they can assist. This open environment is essential to the success of the goals program, because it builds the necessary trust and goodwill necessary for moving forward.

Restructuring
In 2002 we recognized that we are unable to move Advancement Plus’s goal of creating a replicable program on a large scale, so long as all of our energies were devoted to direct service to the people at New Beginnings. We also saw that when we started to focus on development, the quality and quantity of the service we were able to give declined greatly. Based on this Advancement Plus restructured its organization to have a development arm, that will focus its time and energy on design and development of replicable tools and infrastructure that will allow us not only to better serve people the people at New Beginnings, but also to be able to share and replicate these tools elsewhere, and expand program to other sites. The New Beginnings site will focus on direct service to the participants, as well as act as a laboratory for the development arm. The restructuring was completed in December 2002, and has put Advancement Plus on the right track for reaching its 3-year plan.

Mistakes/Setbacks

Loss of Focus on Goals Program
Advancement Plus went into 2002 with the recognition that although it had a proven methodology for helping people with its goals, its approach for developing the infrastructure and tools to allow this methodology to be implemented on a larger scale was unfocused. Since the majority of the people who came in had employment related interests, we decided to focus our time and energy on developing tools for employment related goals, while putting focus on other non-related goals on hold. Our success in this area can be seen with the improvements made with resume assistance, as well as the improvements to the computer training. Unfortunately we saw that we began to loose our image as a place to come for goals, and because of some unforeseen obstacles did not make as much progress on improving our employment related services as hoped. In addition, our focus on development detrimentally affected our direct service. This was one of the leading factors for Advancement Plus’s Restructuring.

Now that we have restructured, the site is going to return to its holistic approach and improve its system for referring to outside resources, while the development arm focuses on developing the different tools necessary for reaching Advancement Plus’s overall goal of creating replicable tools and programs that can help people improve their lives on a large scale.

Grocery Program
	Advancement Plus made an attempt at creating a revenue generating venture by starting a grocery purchasing program. The idea was to get participants to purchase groceries through us. We would deliver them to New Beginnings to pick up when they attended there sessions. We had scoped out the different stores in the area, and discovered that there was
a 20-30% difference in price in most products, depending on what store you were going to. We would shop across stores, pass some of the saving along, and keep the rest as a source of revenue. The participant would benefit from not having to spend time shopping, as well as reduce impulse buying, and we would benefit by the revenue. The hope was eventually tie it in with a future budgeting and eating healthy program. The plan was to put little money into infrastructure in the beginning, but rather focus on getting some customers to start generating revenue. Once we were generating revenues we planned on investing that money back into the infrastructure. Retrospectively this had things backwards, since people were not willing to commit to the program until certain infrastructures were in place. After 5 months of struggling, we closed the operation, and laid-off the two employees operating the program. Although we think a program like this has potential, we realized that it couldn’t be undertaken until the proper infrastructure is in place. At this time we do not have the start up funds necessary for its success.

This was a disappointment, and clearly frustrating to loose money on, but it also was a step in the right direction in recognizing the need to diversify our funding.

Funding Cuts
In October of 2002 we found out that due to the downturn in the economy, as well as other factors our funding stream would stop, leaving us with $200,000 in the bank for 2003, and no guaranteed source of income. Advancement Plus had been fortunate in its first 6 years of existence receiving almost all of its operating
funds through almost all of its operating funds through a few very generous donors. This allowed Advancement Plus to focus on Mission rather than chasing money. The result was a program that is mission focused, and participants centered. The problem with this was that we were to reliant on a few major sources of income, so when they stopped, we were left in a difficult situation. The Grocery program was our first attempt to diversify our funding, unfortunately once again we put too much hope into one source of funding.

We have learned that we need to diversify our funding. To do so we plan on seeking funds through fundraising, grants, large individual donors, small business donors, and revenue generating ventures.

Conclusion
2002 was a time where we began to see and start to unleash some of the great potential of our Program, it also was a time where we learned some tough lessons, that will increase the challenges ahead, but we are confident that we will continue to improve, grow and learn so that we will meet these challenges and unleash the great potential of Advancement Plus.