Leveraging Resources Through Community Partnerships

1. Leveraging Resources Through Community Partnerships ETA/ASTD Regional Technical Assistance Forum October 19, 2011

2. In democratic countries the science of associations is the mother science, the progress of all the rest depends upon the progress it has made. Alexis De Tocqueville Democracy in America (1835)

3. TEGL 30-10Areas of emphasis for WIA youth programs • Strengthening partnerships to leverage resources and opportunities. • Building capacity to increase credential attainment and improve the quality of credentials, including alignment with in-demand jobs. • Developing programs that provide career pathways in high-demand sectors such as health care and energy. • Improving employability skills through paid and unpaid work experience.

4. Workshop Objectives At the end of this workshop you will: • Understand different types of partnerships with a special emphasis on collaboration. • Have strategies for involving youth. • Have tools to help identify potential partners and a list of questions to consider before entering into partnership agreements. • Start an inventory of your organization’s assets and needs.

5. The Four Cs of Partnership

6. Communications • Individuals link to exchange information and resources. • Emphasis is on tapping into other people for contacts, information, and resources location.

7. Cooperation • Focus is on accomplishing a specific purpose or goal. • Work is driven by individuals rather than the organizations they may represent.

8. Coalition • More formal focus at the organizational level. • Intent is to address a specific need and disband. • Goal is to have impact on an issue beyond what one group could do alone.

9. Collaboration • Most difficult form of strategic alliance. • Formal and sustained commitment. • Involves shared decision-making and allocation of resources. • Work together to accomplish a common mission related to critic and complex social issues of wide concern.

10. Think about your own partnerships. List the ones that fit into each category? • Communication– exchange information and resources. • Cooperation – individuals (not organizations) work to accomplish a specific goal • Coalition – organizations work together to address a specific issue/need then disband • Collaboration – groups or organizations make a formal, long-term commitment to work together towards a common mission.

11. Why Collaborate?

12. Collaborations Can Help: • Identify gaps in current services and provide a means to fill the gaps. • Expand available services by cooperative programming and joint fundraising or grant programs. • Provide better services to clients through interagency communication about client needs, referral programs, and client case management. • Develop a greater understanding of client and community needs by seeing the whole picture.

13. Collaborations Can Help (cont.): • Share similar concerns, while being enriched by diverse perspectives that different member from varied backgrounds bring to the collaboration. • Reduce interagency conflicts and tensions by squarely addressing issues of competition and “turf”. • Improve communication with organizations within the community and, through those organizations, with larger segments of the community. • Mobilize action to effect needed changes through collective advocacy.

14. Collaborations Can Help (cont.): • Achieve greater visibility with decision-makers, the media, and the community. • Enhance staff skill levels by sharing information and organizing joint training programs. • Conserve resources by avoiding unnecessary duplication of services. • Realize management efficiencies through collective buying programs and other collective cost containment opportunities.

15. Seven Keys to Successful Collaborations

16. Shared Vision • Group works together to create a common mission for the group while recognizing that individual members may bring their own agendas. • Participants come to consensus around the definition of the need or problem, and develop a mission statement that guides the group in its decision making process

17. Skilled Leadership • Participants have a stake in leadership and in the outcomes of the group. • Shared responsibility for the success of the group. • New leaders are cultivated to ensure that a few individuals are not over-burdened and are not perceived as too controlling or monopolizing.

18. Process Orientation • Focus is on developing consensus, thus ensuring all opinions/voices are heard. • Focus on the agreed upon mission is maintained, while simultaneously striving to meet participants’ needs. • Conflict is managed and channeled into useful solutions.

19. Diversity • Members of different cultural, racial, ethnic, and income groups are included. • Efforts necessary to communicate successfully with someone from another culture results in a new perspective on the topic and creative solutions to problems.

20. Membership-Driven Agenda • Individual organizational goals are articulated and shared with the group so that needs can be met. • All participants contribute resources: • Time • Space • Contacts • In-kind services, • Financial Resources

21. Multiple Sectors • Include as many segments of the community as are compatible with the mission. • Some collaborations purposely limit participation to ensure members’ goals are consistent with the group’s mission. • Others attempt to mobilize and entire community around an issues or set of issues to forge a new style of working together.

22. Accountability • Results and outcomes are outlined early. • Progress is monitored on a continuous basis so mid-course corrections can be made. • Attention to accountability in the early stages of building the collaboration helps avoid the temptation to over promise, and helps to set realistic expectations for the collaborators and those the collaboration seeks to serve.

23. Four Strategies for Youth Involvement

24. Youth as Representatives to Primarily Adult Collaborations • Provide valuable insight into how programs affect them and their peers. • Provide a reality check on the appropriateness of activities planned for other youth. • Avoid tokenism – must be seen as a valuable resource. • Assign an adult to mentor/coach youth. • Avoid professional jargon • Invite more than one youth to participate.

25. Youth as an Advisory Committee to and Adult Collaboration • Youth serve on an advisory committee to the collaboration. • Youth and adults can meet separately at times/locations convenient to each. • Ensure that a greater diversity of youth are represented. • Youth can take on leadership roles. • Two representatives can sit on the collaboration board providing input from the whole youth committee.

26. Combined Youth/Adult Collaboration • Especially suited to collaborations made up of youth membership organizations. • Can have a youth and an adult from each organization represented – may form mentor relationships. • Shared leadership offers an opportunity to develop youth and adult partnerships. • Two groups (adults and youth) can meet separately at times and together at times.

27. Independent Youth Collaborations • Effective spokes people for youth concerns. • Often carry a great deal of clout among their peers and the general community. • Usually sponsored by youth-sensitive organizations and involve some adults as advisors. • Adult collaborations should work to develop healthy relationships with these youth collaborations if they exist.

28. Tips for Working with Youth • Share the responsibility for leadership. Provide guidance, but avoid total control. • Listen carefully to youth and try to understand their perspective. • Provide meaningful roles and assignments for youth. • Share all work activities, even tedious ones. • Treat young people as equals and develop a partnership relationship. • Keep youth informed about activities. Have a positive, open mind.

29. Tips for Working with Youth (cont.) • Make activities fun and challenging. • Be clear about levels of authority for youth and back their decisions when they fall within the agreed upon guidelines. • Serve as role models for the youth, and be consistent and fair in your actions.

30. Identifying and Working with Potential Partners

31. Where to Start • Look at existing partnership that could be developed further. • Walk around the community, look through the phone book, and use the internet. • Involve program participants in the search

32. Consider your Organization’s Assets • Personnel – expertise, abilities, knowledge of community • Constituents – Abilities and interests, link to community • Space and Facilities – meeting rooms, glass display case, gardens, parking lots • Expertise – classes and workshops, knowledge of community/clients • Networks of Connections – private and public institutions, association, individuals • Materials and Equipment – computers, furniture, literacy and GED materials • Economic Power – job training, assist in writing and submitting grants

33. Questions to Consider • Are the mission and overall vision of this organization aligned with my program’s mission and vision? • What are my expectations for a relationship with this partner? • What resources will this partner bring to the relationship? How will I ensure the quality of these resources? • What will my program bring to the relationship?

34. Resources Used: The New Community Collaboration Manual of The National Assembly of National Voluntary Health And Social Welfare Organizations Building Communities From the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets. John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight Building Community Partnerships: Tips for Out-of-School Time Programs. Mary Burkhauser, Jacinta Bronte-Tinkew, and Elena Kennedy.

35. Shawn Sweeney Executive Director LAUNCH, Inc. 740-286-3000 shawn.sweeney@launchyouth.org