Virtual Enrollment Party

This posting was inspired by a combination of questions--from Sue in Howard Co. and by Joy in Warren. Although it's too late for those of you who have done your year-end processing, it involves getting some summaries from your group enrollments. These reports would be the kind of thing that you would print and save along with the complete group enrollment file report. They can be used for stakeholders reports or annual review documents, and for a Civil Rights Audit.

The ES237 report is, in truth, not very meaningful. (But VERY necessary!!) Youth are counted and grouped in ways that do not yield the kinds of information that we'd like at a local level. There are no numbers for specific programs (Sue's question), and no ethnic numbers by delivery mode (Joy's concern).

However, under the Reports menu, Statistical Reports option, the third choice (Volunteer/Youth Group Statisticals) will give you some nice summaries of the short-term programs that happened in your county. Below is a screen print of the parameters window.

Printing this report would give you the total numbers for each program that you presented, which is certainly more valuable information than you'll find looking at your ES237!

Some stat reports are appropriate to be done at the state level, but others, like these, are only possible to be done at the county level. Be sure that you don't overlook the the Statistical Reports option when you're printing summaries of both your member enrollment AND your group enrollments at the end of the year!

Posted by Becky at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While you're entering your new enrollments and re-enrollments, it's a really good time to do some clean-up on some of your files. This first post is about club files, but there will be more posted in the next couple of weeks.

Go to the File menu and Choose Club/Unit Codes. Look at the following things for each club:

Does this club still exist? If not, it's time to delete the record. If you get an error message about members in the club, you can find them in the Club Member Query and get rid of those memberships.

The integration codes--I believe that nearly every one should be marked as "mixed community" because so few communities any more are not integrated. Then look at Integrated Group--if there is one member of that club who is anything other than Non-Hispanic White, then that box should also be checked.

The primary leader contact--is this still correct information? Sometimes when leaders change, we might forget to change the club record.

Delivery mode--FFA groups are "not a youth group unit". So are any groups comprised entirely of adults. Clover Kids could be "after school club", or "special interest" or even possibly "school aged child care". Project clubs that actually meet (horse clubs, etc) could be either "community club" or "special interest" depending on how often and regularly they meet, and whether they have officers, a checking account, and/or other aspects that you would expect in a community club.

Date organized--if you have the information about this stored somewhere, but not in Blue Ribbon, you might want to consider putting it in here just for easy access. It's quicker to look it up in Blue Ribbon than to dig through filing cabinets!

Checkboxes--same thing as date organized. If you want to start tracking any of those, now is a great time to get the information entered into the program.

Many of the clean-up tasks will be very quick--especially after the first year that you go in and start organizing!!

Posted by Becky at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I'm working through all the stat reports, I've just recently looked at the Under Six Hours forms that have come in--known in State 4-H Language as the S-7 forms. It's apparent that I have NOT done a good job of explaining exactly what kinds of things should (and should NOT) be documented on those, so here goes.

What SHOULD be listed? Events that are attended by non-4h member youth, involve under six hours of contact, AND (this is key) are educational. That's a really short definition. Let's move on to a longer list of what SHOULD NOT be listed!

Recreational events (Family Fun Night)
Promotional events (Join 4-H displays at the local schools)
Project workshops (all those kids are already 4-H members, and we've already counted them once)
Performances (communications contest, style show... besides, again, they're already 4-H members)
Leader training for adult leaders (there's a place in BR to record that)
Beef weigh-in (ever. Even if your CEED says it's educational, it's not. Ever.)

So when you're filling that out, ask yourself a couple of questions. Was it educational? (If no, stop...) Were the attendees 4-H members? (If yes, stop...) That should help you figure out whether a given event should be listed or not. The events that don't make it to BR or to the Under Six Hours form can certainly be recorded in other reports--your county stakeholders' report, your annual review document, success stories, whatever.

Of course, I can always continue red-lining the Under Six Hours reports that are sent in, but it'll save us both some ink (and time) if you just leave them out in the first place!

Posted by Becky at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another excellent question, this time from Verna in CG county. She originally posted it as a comment on another blog entry, but I wanted to separate it out so that you'd all find it easier. She asks "When you pack tables can you select all files at once?"

If you're not familiar with what "packing tables" means, it's a process that you should do maybe once a year (right after year-end processing is a good time) to compress all your data files. Data files are like elastic waistbands, in that they grow as large as they need to in order to hold all the records within them. Unfortunately, though, they don't shrink back up when all that space is not needed (kind of like waists...). So, periodically, it's a good idea to pack the tables, which is basically like burping them--forces all the unused space out, makes them as small as they can be again. It cleans up many potential problems, and also can speed up access times a bit.

The answer? You can indeed pack tables all at one time. There is no danger to that, because Blue Ribbon does them one at a time anyway. It's going to pack Youth2a.db before it goes on to Youth2b.db. For more information about packing tables, see the Helpsheet.

Posted by Becky at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got a great question today about adding the LT1R activity code to leader records after they attend a training session. In Adair county, they recorded those training sessions last year as well, so Donna's question was whether she should use LT3 this year, since the leaders already had LT1R from LAST year.

You're going to use LT1R and LT2R every year for the first two training sessions that your leaders attend--and it's based on the first one that the individual attends, not the first one you offer. So one person may have LT1R for a September event, and another might have LT1R for a November event. The only thing that changes on the activity tab is that you'd record a different year... for instance, the trainings that occur this fall would have an activity year of 2008 (which is how we name the 4-H year, by the year in which the stat report will be submitted).

The person in question would have LT1R and LT2R linked to the 2007 activity year (last year) and now would have an additional LT1R linked to this year (2008), for a total of 3 activities listed on that tab.

Don't forget that you also must complete a Training Log entry (under the ES237 menu) for each of those leader trainings that you hold in your county. For more information about the process for recording Leader Training, go to the BR HelpSheets page and you'll find one under the "Working with Records" section entitled "Recording Volunteer Leader Training".

Posted by Becky at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This entry is a result of a phone call I got from a CEED this week. He does his own ES237, and was itchin' to get done so he could start picking corn. As a result, he may have sort of skimmed over the "successful stat" packet...

He had entered all his group enrollments, previewed his ES237, and then kind of leaped over a few pages to the last page, which is "year-end tasks". He was busily checking off all his accomplishments, which included year-end processing. You can see where this is going, can't you?

When he reached me (and he was an unhappy camper), he had discovered that he couldn't print his ES237 (or any other report, for that matter). Ooopsie doopsie. When you do year-end processing, all members and leaders are changed to Inactive, and all group enrollments are deleted, to get ready for the new year.

Fortunately, this particular CEED is smarter than your average bear, as Yogi says, and he had actually done all the things on the list, including the optional "make a copy of your Data folder". We were able to get him up and running again by just changing his Data path to be the copy he created right before he did year-end processing. He had all his records as they were at the end of the year. When he gets done with the things he needs to do, we'll change the data path back again to the original folder and he can start the new year. If he had NOT made that data folder copy, there would have been no way for me to help him out, because I didn't have a backup from him.

Five minutes into the phone call, we were both happy, and he was on his way out the door, to jump in the combine he had parked at the curb. If you have not done year-end processing yet, think about making a copy of your data folder before you do that. If nothing else, be sure you do not do year-end until you hear from me that I have received your stat backup!!

Posted by Becky at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This job is all about lifelong learning--and I learn most from all of you!

It was brought up at one of my recent BR workshops that although the "fee paid" checkbox is emptied out during year-end processing, the other checkboxes are not. If they were checked this year, they would remain checked even as you begin the new year.

That's not a good thing, given that we're using them mostly for forms that have to be submitted every year. Here's a really quick way to fix that. Immediately after you do year-end processing, go to File>>Member Query. Choose the Select menu, Select All. Then, on the Actions menu, choose "Set Behavior checkbox to False". Same thing with the other two checkboxes, assuming you're using the fourth (user-defined) box. Then everyone will start out with all those boxes empty!

If you have more questions about the year-end process or how to change a group of records quickly, let me know and we'll see if it makes the blog list!

Posted by Becky at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's another one of those great questions, this time from Nancy in Van Buren:

"I did a report to get a list of 4-H members e-mail addresses. I have five members who are showing up twice. I clicked on Category—Members, Report Type—Complete, Report Style—E-mail List, and Record Status—New and Return.

Why do I get these five members on there twice? The only thing I’ve noticed is their parents are divorced so there are two households."

I couldn't have answered this question nearly as quickly if Nancy hadn't asked it in such a great way--all the information I needed about the report, as well (and this is the key) as the information about what the "problems" had in common.

The answer is that this is a "feature". Since these kids have two households, both households are going to be listed on the report, so that both emails can show up. This is different than the phone list, which only lists the "first" parent phone number for each youth. "First" in this case means the parent record with the lowest ID number. So there you have it--it's not a bug, it's a feature. By the way, that's the Golden Rule of Programmers...

Posted by Becky at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've had several questions in the past week about line 1a on the ES237 being higher than the number of 4-H members (the ones that pay the program fee).

The ES237 is a federal report, and somehow they want things counted differently than what might make sense to us. Line 1a is a good example. On the report, that line counts all members-clovers-special (categories), new-return-terminate (status), once per membership. So if a young person belongs to two clubs, on line 1a, he/she would be counted twice.

The program development fee applies only to members, new & return, (once per kid) so you can see that there is plenty of opportunity for line 1a to be higher than that number.

We always tell counties not to pay the program fee from the ES237, but if you REALLY want to do it, please make the check out to "cash" and send it directly to me. I'll see to it that your program fees are paid in full, and you can be sure I'll use the overpayment to a good purpose!!

Posted by Becky at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)