Promoting Best Practices for Success

1. Promoting the Adoption and Use of Best Practices

2. What is a best practice? • A best practice is: • Measurable • Notably successful • Replicable • A good fit for your circumstances

3. Why promote the adoption and use of best practices? • Using a recognized best practice makes it easier to justify the work. • Using recognized best practices can bolster the credibility of an organization. • Using best practices can make it easier to get funding. • Using a best practice removes a lot of the guesswork from planning. • The originators of the practice are known, and might be available to consult on how to best implement it. • We know that best practices work.

4. When should you promote the adoption and use of best practices? • When a new intervention or program is starting up. • When what’s being done isn’t working. • When there’s a serious community problem that has to be tackled. • When the community demands it. • When funders or officials demand it.

5. Who should be involved in promoting the adoption and use of best practices? • Practitioners – health and human service workers, community developers, etc. • Members of the population that will participate in or benefit from the best practices in question. • Those who’ll be indirectly affected by the program. • Interested community members. • Local and, if appropriate, state officials.

6. Where do you find best practices? • On the Internet. • By networking. • In libraries. • Through national advocacy and professional organizations and their journals. • Through international, state, and federal agencies. • Through foundations and other funders. • In academia. • Through community word of mouth.

7. How do you promote the adoption and use of best practices? • Define your issue, needs, and goals clearly, so that you can determine exactly what kind of best practice you’re seeking. • Search for appropriate best practices. • Promote the use and implementation of best practices by: • Mobilizing community opinion. • Alerting funders to best practice possibilities. • Bringing some of the people who originated or who use appropriate practices together with people in your community.

8. Suggesting that, rather than substituting a best practice for what it is already doing, an organization or group simply add it, or try it out. • Ensuring that anyone involved in trying to replicate a best practice is provided with the training to make it successful. • Providing those who’ll implement best practices with the necessary support and resources. • Continuing to make the best better, and maintaining the community’s commitment to best practices.