The 508(c)(1)(a) New Millennium Faith-Based Initiative

In order to determine where it is going, the organization needs to know exactly where it
stands, then determine where it wants to go and how it will get there. The resulting
document is called the "strategic plan."
While strategic planning may be used to effectively plot a company's longer-term
direction, one cannot use it to reliably forecast how the market will evolve and what
issues will surface in the immediate future. Therefore, strategic innovation and tinkering
with the 'strategic plan' have to be a cornerstone strategy for an organization to survive
the turbulent business climate.
Evidence-Based Programming
The Importance of Evidence Based
Social Interventions
Non-governmental and governmental organizations worldwide implement programs to
combat social problems, including poverty and lack of adequate health care. However,
the programs are often designed and executed based on assumptions rather than
based on data and facts. In her TED talk entitled “Social Experiments to Fight Poverty,”
MIT economist Esther Duflo compares the implementation of social programs that are
not evidence based to the use of leeches by doctors in the medieval period.
Doctors used leeches due to prevailing assumptions about the body and illness during
that period. Sometimes the leeches worked, but they were oftentimes ineffective. In
some cases, the leeches caused blood loss that exacerbated the patient’s condition.
Centuries later, evidence-based medicine and rigorous analysis became central to
medical practice. Until recently, social policies and interventions have been developed
and implemented based on assumptions rather than evidence. Evidence-based [Social
Interventions] are [now] essential.
The nonprofit organization Innovations For Poverty Action further explains that “Two
voids exist in developmental policy: insufficient incorporation of results from social
science research, and insufficient evaluation (in particular, replication of studies) to
learn concretely what works, what does not, and why.”
Some organizations and research centers have recently begun conducting evaluations
of various interventions to determine their efficacy in practice rather than in theory.
Their overall goal is to positively influence the design and implementation of policies
and programs by international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and
governments.
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