COACHING AND PHILANTHROPY PROJECT
REPORT
Submitted by
A Hand UP Coaching
September 30, 2005
Sponsored by
The Kellogg Foundation
Background
About A Hand UP Coaching:
The mission of A Hand UP Coaching (AHUC) is to impart lifelong career skills via career coaching to economically disadvantaged individuals. AHUC is committed to the vision of ending the cycle of poverty through guiding clients to self-sufficient resourcefulness that enables them to make meaningful contributions to their family, their workplace, and their community. Career coaching can effect permanent career and life changes to create long-term economic self-sufficiency among the participants it serves.
AHUC establishes affiliate partnerships with government agencies, other nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions which provide services to economically disadvantaged individuals. Clients are referred to AHUC for career coaching from these affiliate partners. AHUC selects clients who are most ready to capitalize on the coaching experience, who are positioned to move forward with regard to goals, and who have demonstrated responsibility and commitment. Selected clients are then matched with volunteer coaches.
AHUC relies entirely on volunteer coaches to fulfill its mission. Coaches from all over the world have volunteered to work with AHUC. All coaches are required to meet three criteria: (1) have graduated from, or near graduation from, a coach training program which has been accredited by the International Coach Federation (ICF); (2) be a member of the ICF or agree to abide by the Ethics Guidelines established by the ICF; and (3) have some coaching experience.
AHUC’s projects and operations are managed and conducted virtually using the telephone and Internet. AHUC is committed to using technology to operate as efficiently and effectively as possible to keep operating costs to a minimum. AHUC’s database streamlines its operations, allowing it to receive and review applications from coaches, enter coaching applications from clients and match them to coaches, monitor the progress of the coaching program for each client, and collect assessments from coaches and clients following completion of the program. A portion of the Kellogg Foundation Grant was used to add a statistical accumulation module to its database. This statistical documentation significantly supports AHUC’s commitment to utilize technology and minimize operating costs.
Project Purpose:
This report contains the results of a three-month project in which professional coaches worked one-on-one with low-income individuals from several cities in the United States and Canada.
The purpose of this project was to:
Methodology:
All coaching was conducted via telephone (teleconference). The coaches were from geographical locations throughout the United States and Canada. The pairing of coach and client was not determined by geographic proximity. Rather coaches were matched with clients in consideration of hours of availability and time zones.
Executive Summary
Hypothesis:
One-on-one coaching helps individuals achieve higher employment goals including increased income, greater vision, and an improved sense of self-confidence.
How the study was conducted:
For this project, between May and August 2005, AHUC provided one-on-one coaching services to low-income individuals who were referred from four affiliate partner organizations. AHUC then conducted interviews with potential clients during which applications and pre-coaching assessments were completed. All coaching applicants participated in this project voluntarily. The four affiliate partners from which these applicants were referred are:
§ Connections to Success (CFS)
§ Dress for Success (DFS)
§ Olympic College (OC)
§ Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA)
These organizations are described in greater detail below.
The AHUC coaching program consisted of a total of nine coaching sessions over a period of three months. As noted above, a pre-coaching assessment was taken prior to the commencement of coaching. At the conclusion of coaching, a post-coaching assessment was taken from each of the clients. A variety of questions were asked on each assessment to determine whether the participants had achieved higher employment goals along with an improved sense of self-confidence at the completion of the coaching program. The two assessments consisted of 25 questions with 5 answer choices for each. A numerical value was assigned to each of the 5 answer choices so that statistical data could be easily collected showing in what areas changes occurred. Both the pre- and post-coaching assessments were identical with one exception. The pre-coaching assessment did not include any narrative questions. The post-coaching assessment included two narrative questions in addition to the same 25 questions contained in the pre-coaching assessment.
Statistical observations:
§ Initially 61 individuals were referred to and interviewed by AHUC for this coaching program. Of that 61, 3 failed to return signed applications and did not participate; 4 never started coaching because they could not be reached; 4 requested to drop from the program for personal reasons before coaching started; 1 moved from the country after 4 sessions and was unable to complete coaching; and 6 were dropped from the program for failure to show up for coaching sessions.
§ Of the remaining 43 participants, coaching was delayed for 6 participants either because the coach and client agreed to alter their schedules or because the client was reassigned to another coach. Of those 6, 5 will be finishing the coaching by early October and 1 has been evicted and may not be able to complete coaching.
§ Of the 50 participants who started the coaching program, 37 completed their coaching by the end of August and are included in this report.
§ Approximately 75% of coaching participants included in this report were not married.
§ Of the DFS households with dependent children, 42.8% had single parents heading the household. This percentage increased to 50% of the CFS households with dependent children and 100% of the YWCA households with dependent children. One of the 3 (33.3%) participants in the OC group had dependent children and was a single parent head of household.
§ The number of working participants increased from 83.3% of all participants at the beginning of the project to 91.7% at the conclusion of this project.
§ Both the average hourly wage and the average monthly earnings increased for all groups. The average monthly earnings increased $201 per month, while the average hourly wage increased from $11.32 to $12.92 by the end of the project.
§ All groups increased the average number of hours they worked each week.
§ All groups indicated they felt better about themselves at the end of the coaching project than they did in the beginning. The YWCA participants showed the greatest change in this area. In fact, by the end of this project, the YWCA group had a higher score in this area than the average of all groups combined.
§ Many participants asked what “networking” was when questioned about their networking skills. Based on responses during the post assessment, every group showed an increase in how they felt about their networking skills.
§ Of the 25 questions asked on the pre-coaching and post-coaching assessments, there were overall improved responses from the group for 24 questions. Only one question did not show improvement. This question (1) had to do with having reliable childcare in order to go to work or school. Participants responded in both assessments that childcare is never or rarely an issue for them, which did not show any change.
§ Question 23 related to how participants felt as to whether they had the power to change things in their lives that they did not want. All groups showed an overall improvement in how they felt in response to this question. A larger percentage of CFS and YWCA participants provided answers reflecting an improvement in this area.
§ As noted earlier, the post-coaching assessment included two additional open-ended questions. The first question asked how coaching had helped them. The responses, summarized later in this report, were overwhelmingly positive. Many participants provided similar answers explaining that coaching had helped them to set and achieve goals that they would not have set on their own. Participants consistently indicated that coaching had helped them to gain confidence in planning and to feel that their lives now had direction. The last open-ended question asked how the program could be improved and for feedback as to what they did not receive. A majority of the participants responded that they would have liked the program to last longer, and one person added that she would have liked to also have had email correspondence with her coach. One participant wanted to meet her coach and another felt it was too challenging to have to come up with the agenda for the coaching session. Only one person said the coaching sessions were too long for her. A couple of participants wanted more advice and tips from their coaches.
General conclusion:
An analysis of the results of the pre- and post-coaching assessments revealed that there were substantial and positive changes with regard to achieving higher employment goals and improved self confidence for a majority of the participants.
Results
Project Scope:
AHUC chose to work with four different affiliate partners in order to increase the number of participants in the study and to compare the differences in results among the four groups. Those affiliate partners are described below.
Fourteen women and one man completed a pre-assessment with the intention of participating in this project. Six women and one man dropped the program and one participant is still in her three-month coaching relationship. Seven women completed the three months of one-on-one coaching and are reflected in this report.
Thirty-four women completed a pre-assessment with the intention of participating in this project. Eight women dropped the program and four participants are still in their three-month coaching relationship. Twenty-two women completed the three-months of one-on-one coaching and are reflected in this report.
Six women completed a pre-assessment with the intention of participating in this project. Two women were dropped from the program and one participant is still in her three-month coaching relationship. Three women completed the three months of one-on-one coaching and are reflected in this report.
Six women completed a pre-assessment with the intention of participating in this project. One woman was dropped from the program. Five women completed the three-months of one-on-one coaching and are reflected in this report
Sample Size:
Sixty females and one male completed applications and the pre-coaching assessment and agreed to the terms and conditions of this project. Seventeen women and the one male participant were dropped from the project either prior to the commencement of coaching or during the coaching process. Coaching was delayed for six of the participants for various reasons, so they are not included in this report. The results of the pre-coaching and post-coaching assessments of the remaining 37 female participants are reflected in this report.
This report represents the results of pre-coaching assessments and post-coaching assessments of 37 participants who completed nine coaching sessions.
Description of Assessment Instruments:
In the pre-coaching assessment, participants were asked several preliminary questions concerning employment and demographics such as ethnicity, marital status, number of dependents living with them, etc. The assessment also included 25 questions with 5 answer choices for each, “always”, “often”, “sometimes”, “rarely”, and “never”. All but one of the 25 questions began with the phrase “these days”. This phrase was used so the participant would reflect how she/he was feeling at the time of the actual interview for the assessment. The participant was told to answer each question to reflect how she felt at the time of the assessment, not how she felt in the past or how she wanted the answer to be. For the statistical purposes of measuring the participants’ answers, each response later was assigned a number value, e.g., Always = 5, Often = 4, Sometimes = 3, Rarely = 2, Never = 1.
The post-coaching assessment also queried for demographical and employment information which may have changed since the pre-coaching assessment was taken. This information included questions about marital status, number of dependent children, and whether they lived in an urban or rural area. The post-coaching assessment also included the same 25 assessment questions, with 5 answer choices for each question, as those asked during the pre-coaching assessment. In addition, the post-coaching assessment asked open-ended questions concerning the participant’s assessment of the coaching experience. Those responses have been added at the end of this document.
All information reflected in this report, including demographics, is self-reported by each of the participants. We found that this caused a variation in figures. There were also some limited instances in which a participant failed to answer a question on either the pre-coaching or post-coaching assessment.
Where appropriate, all data is weighted.
Demographics:
Average age of coaching participants
Age is self-reported and is reflected based on the participant’s response at the pre-assessment.
|
|
Average Age (n=37) |
|
Connections for Success (CFS) |
39.6 |
|
Dress For Success (DFS) |
45 |
|
Olympic College (OC) |
43.7 |
|
YWCA |
49.2 |
|
All Groups |
44.4 |
|
Total Responses |
37 |
There was nearly a ten-year difference in the average age of CFS participants and YWCA participants, the YWCA participants being older.
Sex
100% of the participants reflected in this report are female. As indicated earlier in this report, CFS referred one male participant for coaching. This individual requested to be dropped from the project before his coaching began. This was the only male referred for coaching from any of the affiliate partners.
Ethnicity
|
|
African –American |
Asian |
White European American |
Other |
||||
|
CFS |
7 |
100% |
0 |
0% |
0 |
0% |
0 |
0% |
|
DFS |
2 |
9.1% |
3 |
13.6% |
16 |
72.7% |
1 |
4.6% |
|
OC |
0 |
0% |
0 |
0% |
3 |
100% |
0 |
0% |
|
YWCA |
0 |
0% |
0 |
0% |
5 |
100% |
0 |
0% |
|
All Groups |
9 |
24.3% |
3 |
8.1% |
24 |
64.9% |
1 |
2.7% |
The assessment instrument requested that the participants indicate the ethnic group applicable to them. The five choices were: African-American, American Indian, Asian, Latino, White/European American, or Other. There were no participants who identified themselves as American Indian or Latino.
Of the four groups of participants, the DFS group was the only group which had any ethnic diversity. There was no ethnic diversity within the other three group—CFS, OC, YWCA. All of the CFS participants were African-American and all of the OC and YWCA participants were White/European American. Of the 37 participants studied, 2/3 identified themselves as White/European American and ¼ identified themselves as African-American.
Marital Status
|
|
Married |
Divorced |
Single |
Single, Living w/ significant Other |
||||
|
|
Pre |
Post |
Pre |
Post |
Pre |
Post |
Pre |
Post |
|
CFS |
3 |
3 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
|
DFS*** |
5 |
4 |
3 |
4 |
13 |
12 |
1 |
1 |
|
OC |
1 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
YWCA |
1 |
1 |
3 |
3 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
|
All Groups |
10 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
16 |
15 |
1 |
1 |
|
% All Groups |
27% |
25% |
%27% |
29.7% |
43.2% |
41.7% |
2.7% |
2.8% |
***One participant from DFS did not answer this in the post assessment.
Roughly one quarter of all participants were married for the duration of this project, leaving nearly 75% of total participants as unmarried.
Total Number of Participants with Dependent Children Living at Home
|
|
Pre |
Post |
|
CFS |
6 or 7 (85.7%) |
6 of 7 (85.7%) |
|
DFS*** |
7 of 22 (31.8%) |
7 of 21 (33.3%) |
|
OC |
1 of 3 (33.3%) |
2 of 3 (66.7%) |
|
YWCA |
3 of 5 (60.0%) |
3 of 5 (60%) |
|
Average All Groups |
17 of 37 (46%) |
18 of 36 (50%) |
***One participant did not answer this in the post assessment.
When looking at age versus number of dependents living in the household, the YWCA participants ranked second of all groups in the number of households with dependent children. The YWCA also had the second highest number of dependents per participant (1.0 average, versus 2.3 for CFS during the pre assessment and 1.0 versus 2.6 for the post assessment).
|
|
Pre |
Post |
|
CFS |
2.3 |
2.6 |
|
DFS |
0.5 |
0.5 |
|
OC |
0.7 |
1.0 |
|
YWCA |
1.0 |
1.0 |
|
Average All Groups |
.86 |
1.0 |
Of the 7 CFS clients, 6 had dependent children living at home. Three of the 6 participants with dependent children living at home were married, and the remaining 50% were either single or divorced heads of households. The one CFS client without dependent children was divorced.
The DFS participants were less likely to have dependent children. Of the 7 participants from DFS who reported having dependent children, only 3 were married. This means that 42.8% of the DFS households with dependents had single parents as heads of households.
One hundred percent of the YWCA participants who had dependent children were single parents during this project.
Geographic Location
Participants were asked whether they considered where they lived to be urban or rural. Urban was defined as “somewhat to very populated, with lots of businesses nearby” and rural was defined as “not very populated and/or very remote”. The following chart reflects participants’ answers to that query.
|
|
Urban |
Rural |
||
|
|
Pre |
Post |
Pre |
Post |
|
CFS |
5 |
7 |
2 |
0 |
|
DFS*** |
22 |
20 |
0 |
1 |
|
OC |
3 |
2 |
0 |
1 |
|
YWCA |
2 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
|
All Groups |
32 |
32 |
5 |
4 |
***One participant in the DFS group did not answer this in the post assessment.
The majority of participants in this project lived in an urban area throughout the duration of the project.
Employment Status
|
|
Working |
Not Working |
||
|
|
Pre |
Post |
Pre |
Post |
|
CFS |
6 |
6 |
1 |
1 |
|
DFS*** |
18 |
20 |
4 |
1 |
|
OC |
2 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
|
YWCA |
5 |
5 |
0 |
0 |
|
All Groups |
31 |
33 |
6 |
3 |
***One participant in the DFS group did not answer this question on the post-assessment.
83.8% of participants were working at the time of the pre assessment. This increased to 91.7% during the post assessment.
Income
Information used for this section is self-reported by the participants. Participants varied in how they reported earnings during the pre-coaching assessment and post-coaching assessment. For example, some reported hourly wages in the pre-coaching assessment and annual income in the post-coaching assessment. Others reported their earnings on a monthly basis. In order to be able to compare the results from pre- and post-coaching assessments, as well as to compare income within a group and for the overall sample group, earnings were calculated on an hourly and monthly basis for each individual.
One participant refused to share her earnings, so her earnings are not reflected in this report. Other participants worked on commission or by-the-job. Because those participants were unable to provide the actual hours worked for earnings, their annual earnings also could not be included in this report.
Seventeen of the DFS participants are from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Because of the difference in value between US and Canadian dollars, an exchange rate of .8453[1] Canadian to 1 US dollar was used to more accurately reflect the comparisons between individuals and groups.
|
|
Mean |
Median |
Range |
||||
|
|
Hourly |
Monthly |
Hourly |
Monthly |
Hourly |
Monthly |
|
|
Connections For Success (CFS) |
|||||||
Pre |
$9.22 |
$1237 |
$8.98 |
$1244 |
$6.85 - $11.06 |
||