22 September 2023
As the ASISA Foundation reflects on its first 10 years of operation, the focus inevitably falls on its programme workshops. This is where the rubber hits the road, and where the Foundation’s beneficiaries experience its financial education first-hand. So what have we learned about how we teach, and especially for retirement fund trustees’ training?
ASISA Foundation monitoring and evaluation partner The Bureau of Market Research has been using the Theory of Change model to determine the impact of ASISA Foundation’s programme workshops. “This model measures different levels or layers of impact,” says BMR Research Director Professor Carel van Aardt. “The first layer determines to what extent the workshops gave rise to people obtaining skills and to what extent those skills have really been absorbed by the participants. At the second layer you try to determine to what extent the skills that were absorbed gave rise to changes in the participants’ behaviour.”
The third impact layer determines the outputs. “In the case of the ASISA Foundation’s Retirement Fund Trustee Education (RFTE) programme, for example, this measures the extent to which those skills and behavioural changes have given rise to the retirement funds operating better,” explains Professor Van Aardt. “This would be the improvements in their governance, to what extent better decisions are being made, etcetera.”
The fourth layer, then, is the outcomes layer. “This determines the extent to which those improved skills and better behaviours gave rise to better outcomes for the retirement funds in terms of both governance as well as benefits to the members of those funds,” he says.
The fifth and final layer determines the extent of the long-term positive impacts of the workshops.
That’s the theory; what has it revealed in practice?
“One of the major insights that BMR has gained through monitoring and evaluation of the ASISA Foundation’s RFTE programme is that facilitators are crucial to the programme’s success,” says BMR Senior Researcher and Head of the Household Wealth Research Division, Jacolize Meiring. “We’ve also seen from the delegates’ feedback that the training they receive is adding value and helping them to fulfil their roles as trustees.”
Another key learning is the importance of workshops in the ASISA Foundation and ASISA Academy’s relationship with the programme participants. “The workshops are the first contact point in working with the delegate (or trustee, in RFTE’s case) on their learning journey and identifying their unique needs and their specific level of knowledge,” says Meiring. “This is a challenge when the delegates have vastly different levels of experience and knowledge. The programme facilitators are key in identifying the needs of each individual, and then walking with them, advising them and perhaps recommending that they attend another course in the programme.”
