What is TA anyhow?
What is technical assistance? It is at once easy and difficult to define. It also has a lot of syllables, so we're going to call it TA from here on.
The simple answer is that TA is the provision of expert guidance. But here, as is so often true, the simple answer doesn't really satisfy.
The why of TA gives us a more textured, nuanced understanding of what TA is. Humans, as a species, come up with a lot of creative and complicated ideas. We also come up with a lot of creative and complicated problems. Loads of them. We regularly find ourselves up a creek without a paddle.
Many of the problems in social systems, institutions, and interpersonal dynamics don't have easy or ready answers. There's no playbook. Or sometimes there is a playbook, but it's really long, hard to read, and doesn't have a table of contents. This is where TA comes in. Many grantmaking agencies, including the federal government and several state governments, provide TA to the grant recipients because they know that people need support to do their best work. TA is often provided not by the funder itself but another agency with expert knowledge and specialized skills in the relevant subject matter.
TA is expert guidance that adapts to each situation so the TA recipient can do their best work. TA helps the recipient fully understand the problem (because sometimes we don't know what we don't know) and how they might solve it. Sometimes TA is a quick email, because the recipient needs help finding the right part of that long and confusing playbook. Other times, TA is a series of meetings over several months with an agency's leadership to help them respond to a never-before-seen challenge. TA can help recipients with project plans and implementation and best practices in services for their given field. TA can give recipients condensed and accurate information they need when there is no time for researching the matter themselves.
Some of you will be not even a little bit surprised that I looked into the roots of the term. I'm delighted with what I found. Technical comes from the ancient Greek téchnē, meaning "art, craft, proficiency in an art or craft, systematic method of performing or engaging in an art,..." Assistance is from the Latin assistere, which means "to take up a position near, stand by, stand by as a supporter or advocate."
The ancestors got it exactly right: TA is the craft and methods of providing knowledgeable support. If you want to improve your TA craft, join Fulcrum Practice Lab!