By Hector Escalante, Ed.D, MFA
Ombudsperson - Pacific University
What are the top suggestions ombuds can use to show value to leadership? What tools can they use to make a case that their office deserves to exist? Recently, Chuck Howard, IOA’s Executive Director formed a team led by Randy Williams and Ronnie Thompson to address these key questions. The Ombuds Effectiveness Project’s mission is “to equip ombuds offices with guidance, research tools, and training to measure and present effectiveness of their programs relevant to the stakeholder’s goals, in alignment with their organization's mission and values”.
In today’s uncertain and unstable environment, this mission is critically important for ombuds offices. Many ombuds offices may be at risk for closure. I recently experienced the possibility of my office being closed because of new leadership and extreme budget cuts. Fortunately, with the help of IOA, close ombuds colleagues and my university stakeholders, I was strategically able to convince our new leader that the ombuds role brings tremendous value to him as a leader and to the greater university community.
Goal #1 of this project is to gather resources such as articles, webinars, whitepapers, reports, case-law, and any other type of resource that may help us answer these questions. Michael Green, Sofia Trelles, Angella J. Wint and I are working hard to gather resources for this project. If you have a resource that may inform these questions and the project of this mission, please share them with me, Hector Escalante. You can reach me at [email protected] or at 209-969-6549.
Thank you in advance for any help you might offer.
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Learn More About the Ombuds Effectiveness Project
The Ombuds Effectiveness team has been researching and gathering information on how ombuds share meaningful insight with their organizations. What do their reporting documents, brochures, surveys, and data look like? The goal is to bring all of this knowledge together and a training and a comprehensive toolkit to share with members.