How-To-Guide

Creating a Compass for your Country

Introduction

What is a Country Compass?

A Country Compass (CC) is an online resource of social and behavior change (SBC) toolsl and project materials, based on the model of the global Compass, but tailored to the interests and needs of your particular country setting. While the global Compass covers all countries and all types of tools and project materials, a Country Compass focuses on your country’s particular activities, partnerships, and news updates that can enhance the work of country-based SBC professionals.

Can you give me an example?

Let’s say your country SBC program involves multiple partners, each of whom would like a space to share unpublished (or published) materials. By giving the partners access to a country-specific Compass, each partner can share reports and documents, ask for comments, and engage in resource sharing that helps everyone move country programs forward.

What’s the benefit of having a CC?

With a CC, the partners within a country can share

  • News
  • Resources
  • Unpublished documents, tools, and project materials
  • Published tools
  • Published
  • And anything else!

Members can upload materials that are relevant to current projects, can use the Compass as a “warehouse” for all documentation about projects, and can share materials that are not for public use.

How does a Country Compass relate to the Global Compass?

If the members of a CC want materials to be uploaded/shared on the Global Compass, they only need to let the Compass team know and the material will show up in the global Compass.

Steps

Planning

Do we need a Compass?

Your first step in creating a Country Compass (CC) is to decide IF there is a need for a Compass site

Your team should consider the following questions:

  1. What need are we meeting by creating a Compass
  2. What problems are we solving by creating a Compass
  3. Use the How to Conduct a Root Cause Analysis How to Guide
  4. What kinds of materials do we need to keep on our Compass

What resources do we want/need for a Compass

Staffing:

  • At least 1 part time SBC professional to maintain the overall site content, answer questions
  • At least 1 part time IT professional to maintain the technical aspects of the site
  • 1 individual in each partner organization responsible for adding new materials

Sources for Materials

  • Tools and project materials already in the global Compass
  • RSS Feeds
  • News sources
  • Partner sources

What is a reasonable timeline for creating a Compass (about 6 months)

  • Decide on content, partner roles – 1-2 months
  • Decide on site technical issues and requirements – 1 month
  • Create site with IT professionals – 2 months
  • Test site with SBC professionals – 1 month
  • Make corrections, changes and test again – 1 month

Development

What is the best process for creating the Compass

  • Decide who will be the lead in maintaining the site for content and to answer questions
  • Decide who will be the lead in maintaining the site for IT
  • Review the current template
  • Decide on any additional tabs/features you need (e.g., News, Staff, About, etc.)
  • Share ideas with CCP IT team
  • Designers work on first draft
  • Meet with program team to review the first draft of site
  • Decide on changes you want
  • For second draft, involve stakeholders, donors, and partners
  • Find solid, useful content

How do we create/find content for the Compass

  • Partner organizations should be surveyed
  • News feeds
  • Global Compass

How do we pretest

  • Focus groups
  • Skype-based user testing
  • User test at meetings/conferences

Implementation

How do we launch the site

  • Advertise launch date several weeks ahead of time
  • Have private launch at sponsor/donor headquarters
  • Provide link on all professional listservs and to all SBC organizations
  • Create a launch event – virtual or live
  • Follow up launch with email to listservs several weeks later to ask for input/comments

Maintenance

What should our process be for adding to the Compass?

  • Can everyone upload materials?
  • What are the criteria for new materials?
  • Is there going to be an approval process?
  • Who has the final say on approving materials?

How do we publicize the Compass to our partners and other organizations?

  • Conferences / meetings
  • Public relations push by the Compass content team – social media, Facebook, list serves
  • Create a group on Springboard to discuss the Compass site

Evaluation

What type of evaluation should we do?

  • Site analytics
  • Surveys
  • Discussions
  • Meetings

What tools can we use for evaluation?

  • Google Analytics
  • Analytics provided by platform itself
  • Outside web evaluation company