Program Design

Catalog description

Program design and development are of critical importance in nonprofit organizations. In this course students will gain a practical, hands-on understanding of strategies for designing programs. The course focuses on program development approaches that attempt to maximize a program's relevance to the need being addressed and increase the likelihood that the program will attain its identified outcomes. Emphasis is placed on learning to understand a community's need/problem, reviewing evidence on potential strategies and identifying promising practices, anticipating potential implementation challenges and addressing them, and identifying potential funders. The link between program design and the development of effective program proposals is stressed. Through this course students will have the opportunity to design a program using a specific analytic framework. Students will learn: (1) to address the demands of multiple constituencies and competing values in program development process, (2) skills for developing and implementing programs in the nonprofit sector, and (3) to examine issues of diversity as they affect organizations and community efforts and explore personal values and ethics as these influence programs and interventions.