Abstract:

Currently in the Russian Federation socially oriented non-profit organizations (SO NPO) play a significant role in the social services market. Most of them provide social services to various categories of citizens on a project basis. The introduction of project products is carried out mainly at the expense of the grantors. The state represented by ministries and departments, which announces project competitions in the framework of state programs, acts as the main grantor. The subject of the competition is the evaluation of social projects.

The initial reference to the problem of project training was caused by the results of a study conducted by the authors of the article commissioned by the Ministry of Social Policy of the Sverdlovsk region in 2016. An expert survey of project developers (SO NCO specialists) and Ministry specialists revealed a contradiction between the existing institutional practice of social design, the interests of the participants of intersectoral interaction, and the tools for developing and evaluating social projects. A discrepancy has been established between the demand for high-quality social projects and the low level of project culture of both project developers and their experts. According to the results of the study, an integrated, scientifically based model was developed, methodologies for evaluating the effectiveness of social projects of NCO NGOs were developed, and recommendations for project training for all stakeholders were developed.

Interest in the required problems arose in 2019 on the part of our undergraduates, who undertook project practice in the related ministries of youth policy and health, and who are knowledgeable about the 2016 scientific materials. The decision of the new research team, which included students, was to conduct a research experiment. The purpose of the experiment is to evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of previously developed materials. Research methods - document analysis, secondary expert survey, focus group interview, case method.

The results of the experiment confirmed the research hypotheses. While maintaining the proposed assessment technology in 2016, the program complex that simplifies the process of evaluating social projects by the competition commission from the ministries has not been implemented. The practitioner of a truncated model for evaluating NPO projects is not a universal scientifically based tool due to the exclusion of key subgroups for assessing the design consistency of materials submitted for examination by SO NPOs. The deformation of a scientifically based technology for evaluating social projects causes the leveling of two fundamental characteristics of the competition: transparency of the procedure and monitoring of efficiency at the implementation stage of the winning projects. Low scores of the winning projects confirm the expert opinion on the imperfection of the existing application forms and the presentation of the project to the competition, which do not even involve the thorough development of the actual project tools. The main reason is the steady lack of project competencies of both grantors and grantees. The training program for managers and NPO specialists has not been implemented on an ongoing basis since 2016.

According to the results of the study, a program of project training for specialists of intersectoral interaction was developed and its economic feasibility was proved.

Keywords:

Project training, additional vocational education, social engineering, expertise, socially oriented non-profit organizations.