One of the most common issues raised when community leaders are creating educational programs is the issue of time. People do not have time for training. They won't take more than a few hours. They won't take a full day. They can't possibly consider two days. Can you do it in an hour? And can we perhaps squeeze some other business in there as well?

When education programs are being crafted, time is typically considered a constraint. And sadly, we have seen far more programs built to accommodate those constraints than we have seen programs built to create extraordinary outcomes.

When considered from the point of view of those outcomes, it becomes clear that often we are hoping to achieve long-term results with short term programs.

If experience (or just gut hunch) is telling you that people will only attend short-term workshops, and yet you are seeking long-term, transformational results, what is the developer of an educational program to do?

The answer will be found in three places:

1)  The extent to which the program is driven by your definition of success - your desired outcomes

2)  The extent to which the program is co-created with the people who will directly benefit from the program, and

3)  The extent to which the leaders of the educational effort (perhaps the staff of the Nonprofit Resource Center) are engaged in ongoing learning themselves, regarding effective teaching / learning approaches for adult learners.

Defining Success
What would the community look like if your program were successful? What would the organizations your program will directly impact look like if your educational program was 100% successful?

Defining success is NOT about your organization. It is not about what your Nonprofit Resource Center would look like if you were successful. "We would have 20 more programs in 20 locations all over town!" Or, " Our workshops would always be full!" That is not the definition of success that matters.

Instead, define success in terms of the participants in your programs, and in terms of the community overall.

If your mission were 100% successful, how would the community be different? How would organizations be different? What would that look like?

Engaging Program Participants in Creating Programs Aimed at That Success
It is the rare Nonprofit Resource Center or Funder-driven capacity building initiative that engages the participants to design their own learning. But these are adults - adults who are doing incredible work, and who know an awful lot about a lot of things. Their wisdom is clearly missing from the development of many community-wide educational programs.

Engage your would-be participants in the vision of what is possible, for their organizations and for the community. Ask for THEIR take on that vision - what would THEY see as success? Add that to your own vision; it will make it that much richer.

And then have your would-be participants create the curricula, the courses, the format.

In the process of developing those programs, they will address issues such as "not enough hours in the day." They will discuss issues such as, "How can we get board members to take the time to attend?" They will discuss all of that. And they will have ideas about what might work. (See Mistake # 8 in the article "10 Mistakes in Developing Community-Wide Training Programs". Always be willing to experiment!)

And then, if you want board members to find the time to participate in the programs you develop for boards, have your community's busiest, most involved board members help create that portion of the program.

Engage them first in the vision of what is possible - your desired outcomes for the community and for the organizations they lead. Once they are excited about achieving that, have them help determine how to educate boards, so that vision can become reality. Engage their wisdom and experience - and you may just be surprised with what they come up with!

Learn All You Can Learn About Learning
If what is taught, and how long it is taught, and in what format it is taught, is all guided by the outcomes you want from the program - and if all that must be accomplished to be as efficient with people's time as possible - then those creating the program will want to know all they can about how adults learn best.

Yes, we are all unique. But adult learners, on the whole, tend to learn best by doing - by applying what they learn, sometimes a bit at a time. Adults tend to learn best by practicing, and then practicing some more. We learn best if we have ongoing encouragement and support. We learn best from peers who have been there, who can speak from experience, who can anticipate problem areas, and who will be there for support when problems arise for the person doing the learning.

As your team of program participants hammers out your courses, your knowledge of how adults learn will be invaluable in helping craft those programs to achieve maximum bang for the "time buck" of your attendees.

For example, if the intent is simply for participants to be introduced to a new concept, that may suggest Approaches X, Y and Z.

If the intent is for participants to learn a new skill, with adequate time, space and support to practice that new skill over time, then perhaps Approaches A, B or C would work better.

And if the intent is for participants to turn "learning" into "doing" and from there, into a way of "being," then that might suggest all those other approaches, plus Approaches L, M and N.

One can see that using the exact same approach to accomplish each of those dramatically different outcomes would lead to frustratingly disappointing results. A 4-hour workshop may work for an introduction to a new concept, but for the more developmental and transformational results, it is almost guaranteed to come up short.

As your combined team of education-program staff and program participants is working to develop your program, it will therefore be critical to infuse that process with knowledge about how adults learn best. That is the only way to ensure you are aiming different types of courses, requiring different amounts of time, towards different outcomes and more significant, transformational results.

Conclusion
There is such a desire for effective education in our communities, to enable Community Benefit Organizations to achieve more for their organizations and their communities. To date, that desire has been met with frustration. And yet that has only strengthened the desire for those outcomes.

There is tremendous wisdom and experience in our communities, just waiting to be tapped to create those programs in the most effective ways possible. Communities already tap that wisdom for teaching the actual course content - finding fundraisers who will teach a fundraising class, etc. Imagine, then, the power of engaging those who will actually take the classes, to create the overall program itself in a way that is the most effective for them.

And lastly, there is so much great information available regarding how adults learn best. It is available in courses, at conferences, online, in books, and in multiple combinations of all those approaches.

Combine those three - outcomes focus, community engagement and ongoing learning about teaching and learning - and your community-wide education program will be destined for the very success you have defined.

And there is no better way for your Community-Wide Education Program to hold itself accountable for making a difference in the community you serve.

* In addition to her other credentials, Hildy Gottlieb is adjunct faculty in the Masters Degree program in Community Leadership at Duquesne University.