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• Board Meeting Date: 9/17/2008
• Description: Rio Grande Watershed Association of Conservation Districts - Conservation and Education Public Outreach
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

Long Term Strateg ies
Our long term funding solution has changed to building capacity within in each district, so that
they can contribute a larger share to the education position. This capacity building will come in
the form of work that the individual districts do for the ir respective county residents and farms.
This will allow them to cost share more of the funding for the position. The second counter
measure will look towards the state funding conservation partners such as CWCB (The Colorado
Water Conservation Board and Trusts to help fund for a permanent goal. Finally it will be to build
our fund raising capacity through community outreach such as our charity golf tournament now
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the third largest in the San Luis Valley and in its 3 year.

Evaluation:
The organization understands that measuring success with education ventures can be difficult so
our goal has been to look at it in two ways - quantitative and qualitative.
Student assessment will be measured in a quantitative l to determine the amount of learning that
to ok place. This assessment will be in line with the Colorado Model Content S tandards and will
have a pre and post activity that follows the hands - on piece; this will be both useful to the grant
and to teachers as well. This will give us a success measure fo r learning. The second quantitative
number will be in utilization - are numbers served increasing and in what ways. We need to track
how we get the most bang for our buck. There will also be a qualitative evaluation tool that will
be used to improve the p resentation and delivery style. The community evaluation will be
qualitative in nature, and help us focus on delivery management; these will be post - test in design .

Our expectation is that we continue to reach our target demographic groups, by maintaining these
numbers . W e feel that we will be able to increase conservation practice s and awareness , while
helping the community see the integral role that conservation plays in our local structure.

We use our results to drive the level and type of instruction that we direct ; in this way we can

adjust to our communities needs and help meet those needs in the best possible way.