Introduction
The first objective to improve funding for Middle-Tennessee Golden Gloves Charities organization in La Vergne, Tennessee and stabilize the current boxing program by getting more donor financial support from the boxing and business communities supported hypothesis 1.1 and 1.2 by garnering 25% of its support from USA Boxing’s Development program and 25% of its funds from community business support. The second objective to increase volunteer and parent participation, financial support and trust within one year of implementing the program, supported hypothesis 2.1 and 2.2 by increasing “grassroots,” volunteer, donor, and parental participation and financial support by 25%.. Both of these objectives required that the program itself did not lose ground or sacrifice the children’s goals in the processes of raising more funds. The increased funding required to meet these goals were easy to measure using standard accounting procedures. They we surveyed the donors and parents to determine why they increased their support.
Determining the quality of the program and making sure it met the children’s goals was more difficult to evaluate. Prior to the commencement of this project, the children were required to demonstrate a Christian background and each one of them needed to have a high sense of moral well-being. The coaches gave their services only on the condition that these goals remained the organization’s top priority. They would only attend to children who were morally upright and showed discipline. Before soliciting funds from various stakeholders, we needed to state clearly the organization’s goals and objectives.
The main goal of this organization was to train children between the ages of eight and eighteen to nurture their boxing talent. A children’s pastor was hired to offer this with a Christian background. The administrator had to test several aspects of the children’s performance in relation to good morals to help ensure investor and donor support from Christian-based organizations. Attributes tested included team participation, capabilities of the children, moral well being and the ability to learn new skills and techniques. This section is therefore addresses these aspects and to make sure they were portrayed and tested accurately along with evaluating donor and parental support and the reason why it was given.
Objective Analysis Design
An Objective Analysis needed to determine if the intervention met children’s goals and the organizations financial goals. It was comparatively easy to review the financial facts and extract the data we needed. Then we had to determine what factors and motivations were instrumental in reaching the goals. Because there were percentages associated with the objectives, we utilized a survey of donors and parents to determine their motivation for increasing their support. To complete the valuation we needed evaluate the children’s goals we needed to look at their behavior. This was more difficult and involved the ongoing process of looking at what the children were doing, how they were accomplishing their goals and getting input and feedback from their teachers and coaches along the way. We accomplished part of this evaluation process by looking at grades and talking to the adults involved with the children. To further all the objectives and how they interacted we also produced a boxing competition.
The boxing competition increased the program’s visibility and helped measure the children progress. The children were trained then auditioned to choose the best participants for competition. To select the best participants, we did both physical and scholastic testing. We chose to use the name Team A to give a positive and optimistic portrayal of the group and attract more participants to the Boxing Games opening and closing ceremony. We divided the groups into several teams composed of children with different capabilities. This process allowed us to evaluate the progress of the children involved, an important part of our evaluation process. In this section of the study, we are going to lay more emphasis on the sample team since we could not asses each individual team because of limited time.
The boxing competition attracted more stakeholders by letting the children display their talents on stage. The auditions aimed at coming up with the best participants to make the event attractive and a one of its kind. The children were between eight and eighteen years old because that is when they are in the prime of their talents. This helped to achieve a final production that met the standard for the Boxing Games opening and closing ceremonies.
In this section, we demonstrate how the training process as a group achieved the optimal performance of its members in such a way that we could make accurate assumptions that we met our goals of raising more money without sacrificing the children. The training took about three months of two hours of training per day three days a week. The participants’ uniforms also had to be in line with the Boxing Association’s colors. The children were analyzed to establish whether they had gained the required training from their respective coaches. These children depicted effective teamwork to help them perform better, which established achievement of the stated goals.
Effective teamwork is essential for any organization. Groups that enjoy strong team co-operation often become successful and is an essential component of achieving high reliability. A team needs strong team players who can perform well within the team and are reliable. To determine this involved assessing individual as well as team achievements. Reliable team members do their fair share of work, meet commitments and show consistency on the types of works produced. A good team also has honest and direct communication within its ranks. Team members listen actively to each other and ensure that the team functions effectively. All members of the team share openly and willingly and exchange ideas with each other. A good team should also have a lot of flexibility within its ranks. The officials team members need to make flexible, fair decisions and accommodate each other. Disagreements should be solved with each team member working as a problem solver and showing respect and support to each other.
Most members of the teams depicted team spirit and were able to cooperate during the teamwork. However, there were several challenges that were met in the course of the training. Generally, most members cooperated well while others were not able to accommodate each other in the team because of differences in opinions. A few members of the team were not very reliable and could not manage to complete their assignments as stipulated. Some completed their assignments late while others were not able to complete them as required. At some point in the training process, we even contemplated eliminating some members from the team because of poor work standards. Most members of the group had very good communication skills and we did not encounter any form of miscommunication or communication breakdown. This helped in developing the team further and also helped in improve the efficiency of each team member.
There was only one case and one instance of a participant who could not listen actively. However, in the course of the training process, she was able to learn from others and learned to listen more. This helped her in advance her skills and improve the way she communicated with different team members. This was one case of a positive reform to one of our members. It also helped us learn that doing away with any member of the group due to unwarranted behavior, is not a solution. We were able to learn that accommodating every person’s opinion is very essential in any organization. This not only helped the children learn to mold their behavior for this project but also in other, future assignments.
The participants were active and performed their roles in a positive manner. They shared with each openly so the team leader was able to make the necessary adjustments whenever they were warranted. The team leader appeared not to be flexible in accommodating some members of the team who seemed to be slow learners. However, as the training progressed, he was able to understand each person’s needs and allocated extra time for the slow learners. This helped in making the team move at one uniform speed in order to accomplish the main tasks ahead.
All team members of the team showed commitment, respected each other and worked as problem solvers, which was instrumental in the success of the team. Even though the team was a success, they still needed to work on the general constitution of the team. There were more boys than girls, and this resulted in some unbalanced activities. In my own rating, our team was the most successful because all the positive points were strictly followed and each team member learnt to accommodate each other. There were two teams that disintegrated during training and were forced to recruit new members.
Conclusion
Increased donations, survey results and student improvements all showed that the program was a success. Evaluation of the organization’s accounting books showed that we met the financial goals. The Donor and Parent surveys indicated that we exceeded our goals as can be seen by examining the survey return statistics attached hereto as Addendum A, (Parents’ Survey) and Addendum B, (Donors’ Survey). Because it was necessary for the students to achieve their educational goals in order to remain active in the program, we already knew these educational goals were met, or exceeded.
While the quantitative goals were easy to evaluate the qualitative goals were not as there were no clear benchmarks that could be applied. To further evaluate the children’s moral and social goals we needed to look at how they responded to their training. Even with talent, there is need for training to further enhance and sharpen skills. In preparation for the London Boxing Exhibition, a set of young children were chosen, grouped and trained so that they would learn how to coexist and enjoy exhibit team spirit while learning specific tasks. The opening and closing ceremonies use a set of participants performing activities that show togetherness and demonstrates the main aim of having the Boxing Games. Our participants succeeded in all of these, which showed that they achieved the hard to evaluate qualitative goals. The Intervention was a success by all standards, quantitative, qualitative, statistical and financial.
