News Archive

There has been a lively discussion about communicating the public value of youth development programs on “Youth Development Insight,” a blog of the University of Minnesota Extension Center for Youth Development. Community program specialist, Joanna Tzenis argues that youth programs can create public value by having society-level impacts. Examples of two such impacts are building trust among community members and youth becoming agents for change in their communities.

Elements of a program’s design can influence how much public value the program can create. Module 9 of the Building Extension’s Public Value Presenter’s Guide lists a number of those elements:

Module 7 of the Building Extension’s Public Value workshop leads participants to answer the question “Why Extension?”–that is, why should Cooperative Extension, and not some other public or private entity, develop and deliver outreach education programs? We answer the question by listing the people and organizations that are perceived to deliver programs that are similar to what Extension does, and naming Extension’s strengths relative to those alternative providers.

At the OMAFRA public value workshop last week, a participant suggested that in order to make a strong public value case for Extension programs, we cannot only provide funding for program delivery. We must also invest in research and program evaluation that will provide the data to support public value messages. She said that in the following diagram of a public value message, we need to “fund the arrows”–the links between the stages of the model.

In public value workshops, we emphasize that Extension programs’ impacts create value for people who have no contact with the programs. We argue that creating value for these stakeholders–the greater community–helps us make the case for public sector funding for Extension programs.