Presenters: Jane Haskell, Extension Professor, University of Maine Cooperative Extension and George Morse, Extension Faculty Associate, University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Professor Emeritus, Applied Economics, University of Minnesota Extension. Click here to learn more about our presenters.
Description: Any public service provides private value to its users or patrons as well as public value to those people who never access or use the service. When public officials only have information from the public service about the private value to those who use the service (or direct benefits), funding decisions are made with incomplete information. The glitch in this scenario is that public services often have no ideas how to identify and then share information about the public value (or indirect benefits) to those who never use the service. This webinar will share how Laura Kalambokidis’ (University of Minnesota Economist and Minnesota State Economist) ground-breaking model for demonstrating the public value of Extension programs has been used in Maine with non-Extension public services. Our work has involved increasing the capacity of organizations to be able to describe their public value in a way that is memorable and is also ‘backed up with numbers’. Hear how 8-year old Curt who lives in southern Maine reads to Winston the therapy dog and learn how we discovered from one of our workshop participants that story telling is a pivotal component of public value messaging. We will describe how our pilot project started with public libraries in 2013, evolved through 2014, its current status, and our next steps.
Public Value Resources
- University of Maine Cooperative Extension Community Development/Public Value website
- Enhancing Rural Community Capacity – an eXtension Community of Practice
- Public Value Educational Resources for Extension Programs
- Laura Kalambokidis Blog: Building Extension’s Public Value
- Six Articles on Public Value in Extension
- Examples of public value statements for Master Gardeners
- Sample Public Value Statements for Other Extension Programs