Keeping It All Together:
Ideas For Sustaining Your Initiative

Sustaining Your Program

If chosen carefully, the program you implement should fit your community, its needs and issues, and its demographics and culture. Generally, the collaboration objective will be to assure that the program becomes an integral part of the community’s efforts to facilitate healthy youth development. This requires constant attention to program quality and cost effectiveness, and long-term funding strategies.

Build a high-quality program
A high-quality program is the basis for long-term sustainability. Ask yourselves, are we doing what we said we would do? Did we do it well? How do we know, and how do others know that we are delivering a high-quality product? (See ACTION Pamphlet 4 for more on evaluation.)

Take the time you need to build your program. Although it is hard to tell people that services will not be available immediately, practitioners who take the time to refine their services report better results than those who rush to open the doors before they are ready. One implementer agreed to revisit all contracts within the first 6-months and, after doing so, identified a different target population. Although the initial plan was to work with youth involved in the probation system, the implementer found high rates of truancy among children in the families residing in the target community and decided to concentrate on these youth instead. This modification helped gain the support of the school superintendent and provided opportunities to bring teachers and parents together.

Invest your resources in activities that add value. Successful practitioners say that they drop activities that are time consuming and of little value in meeting their objectives. Cost-effective programs are more likely to be sustainable than those without visible cost controls. Practitioners and researchers advise collaborations to adapt appropriate management tools, such as work plans, accountability measures, and productivity goals. These tools serve to reduce the amount of financial support needed and help to increase the public’s willingness to support the project.

Plan a long-term “renewable resource” strategy
Often, coalitions invest a tremendous amount of energy in a program that fades away when the money ends. Three years seems like a long time when you first receive a grant, but that time passes quickly, and before long, you’re writing a final report— telling the community that your great and useful program will soon come to an end. Collaborations that look to the future from Day One can help ensure program continuation.

In developing a long-term strategy, be sure to minimize dependence on soft (grant) money, which is limited in scope and duration, and give more attention to alternative funding sources. Be careful to avoid interagency competition for funds as well. Some practitioners report that collaborative efforts help them avoid this competition. One agency seeks the funding, then all collaborate to carry out the project. They point out that Federal agencies direct funds to enterprise zones. These geographical areas often have few alternatives to this kind of soft money. However, your coalitions should continue to seek funding from diverse sources.

Dollars alone will not ensure that your intervention will survive and thrive. The key actions discussed below demonstrate that you need to invest time and energy in strengthening the people side of your resources.
Empower partners and relevant others
Expanding the pool of individuals and organizations capable of maintaining the program in a variety of sites is a powerful financial strategy. Provide free training in the model. Offer training of trainers so your partners can do the same with their extended networks. This helps the trainers train as many people as possible. Once people are trained in the model, they become invested in it and help grow the program outside the coalition. Many practitioners report that this strategy helps ensure continuation of the program, even if future funding is not available.

Provide training to families, day care workers, and nontraditional providers. They may be able to help sustain the program in nontraditional ways. Also engage nontraditional partners who may be looking for ways to participate (e.g., rural firefighters who are civic minded).
Promote the program externally and internally
Programs that endure have value and involve partners who are willing to sustain the program and actively communicate the value of the program to the community. Therefore, establish and maintain a communications strategy through which you can promote your program both internally and externally to maintain community support and engagement. Some practitioners feel self-promotion is outside their “comfort zone.” They say that the need to organize the collaboration and implement a program tends to take over, leaving them little time or energy for social marketing. Yet they agree that effective communication about the project is essential to their long-term financing strategies.

Hold public events with corporate sponsors to raise awareness and obtain more local funding. Remember to communicate with legislators. Educate political leaders and their staff. Visit them to learn their priorities—before you need a favor from them! Invite them to visit your site more than once. After their visits, send them written materials.

Legislators can work to include your program in State and local budgets, but you need to attract their attention at an early stage as it takes a long time to change authorizing language or insert an item in a budget.

When Andrew Young, as mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, was asked by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation what information mayors need when deciding whether to adopt school-based health centers, he replied that his support would depend on the answers to two questions: (1) Is what you’re talking about a pretty good thing, doesn’t cause damage, and looks like it will benefit people? (2) Do the people who put me in office and those I’m obligated to serve think it’s a good thing? From Mayor Young’s perspective, a program has to operate at ground level in a community and provide services that community members value.
Your objective, assuming that your youth violence prevention program has proven effective, is to assure that the program becomes an integral part of the sponsoring organization, supported with hard dollars (e.g., as a line item in the organization’s operating budget) rather than soft dollars. So, communicate—clearly and often—with the sponsoring organization, providing evidence of program effectiveness and of the benefits they’ve accrued by adopting the program.

Involve key constituencies
Often coalitions overlook key constituencies at the State and local levels, such as businesses and the media, or individuals who represent such constituencies. Journalists, CEOs, legislators, and well-known community leaders are your neighbors. They and their families are as affected as you are by social problems such as youth violence.They may not want to become members of the collaboration, but they can be involved, and practitioners advise that you work hard to gain their attention and support whenever possible. Ask a potential funder’s staff about the best timing to provide information regarding an issue, especially if you’re seeking funding in the budget. Each organization’s deadline is different, and the timing will vary among funding sources depending on their calendars. It is much easier to be considered for inclusion in the budget before the board meeting than to try to be added later.

At the top of your list should be State legislators. Much of the action (in terms of both funding and antiviolence initiatives) takes place in State legislatures these days. However, community organizations (particularly those with nonprofit or charitable status, or agencies of local and State governments) tend to be wary of crossing the line from providing information and education to advocacy and lobbying. Yet, when you’re contemplating strategies to sustain your collaboration and/or your intervention, State legislators are key allies. As one State senator put it, “Voters are the most important people in my life.” Try to identify legislators who have expressed interest in the issue(s) that are important to you, and frame your issue in ways that resonate with the legislator. A good approach is to translate research-based data into something a legislator can use; show your legislator how a particular program makes a difference in his or her own community.

Practitioners are advised to find supporters on both sides of the aisle; one or two passionate advocates on each side will suffice. Also, find a “hero” legislator who can be your champion and your spokesperson with other legislators. Be sure to reward your heroes, with a plaque, a picture in the newspaper, or some other type of public recognition. When you do that, the legislator gets positive publicity—and so does your issue! Approach junior legislators who are trying to figure out how they fit into the process and whose issues may not be so well-defined as to make them unavailable to you. Keep in mind that legislators work with their counterparts in other areas of the country and are involved in several productive regional and national groups. (For example, the National Conference of State Legislators maintains a website where legislators exchange information and policy ideas). It is wise to ask your legislators who they know elsewhere.

A senator from the Northeast advised practitioners and evaluators to remember that legislators have lives to live outside their official duties, so don’t approach them at the grocery store or call them at home. Legislators do want relevant, accurate, and timely information, however, and they want to know what resources are available to them. Your role is to become an expert resource for your legislators on your issues of concern so that they will contact you when the time is right. Remember that legislators are busy and may not be able to address your issue immediately. You can ask when it is convenient to call or ask them to call you. You can also contact legislators via e-mail, being sure to provide your name, address, and telephone number. Legislators (or their staff) will not respond to an e-mail that lacks this identifying information.
Select partners with known resources
Each partner brings something to the table—expertise, access to high places, or strong ties with the target community/population, for instance. And every collaboration needs to be sure that some partners (e.g., State agencies) are able to provide funds, facilities, people, or other needed resources. This should be considered from the first moment you and your colleagues meet to discuss the possibility of forming a collaboration to address youth violence.

Consider selling your products and services
The concept of social entrepreneurship has been around for many years, with social welfare organizations “going into business,” selling publications and other products, acting as consultants to government agencies and private corporations, and so on. But social service agencies and organizations that were once supplemental providers of services have now taken the lead in service delivery—with no more resources than they once had. Organizations and agencies should invest in themselves, take care of themselves, and build wealth, not just seek support from others.

Organizations often have marketable assets that they have neither recognized nor used. Once uncovered, these assets can generate substantial revenues, that can lead to long-term financial health.

A self-diagnostic tool is available that helps guide organizations through the process of assessing their own assets and revenue-generating potentials. (See Resources at the end of this pamphlet.)

Examples abound of former grant- and donation-dependent entities that are thriving by marketing their knowledge and expertise. Here are some of them:

The Compass School, which educates youth who have special needs (e.g., mental health problems, violence patterns, juvenile justice involvement), provides training to other school districts to help them establish and maintain similar programs. This endeavor has resulted in $800,000 in consulting revenue.

Another organization, Pioneer Human Services, works to mainstream ex-offenders and people with substance abuse problems. The organization began with residential placement, then added job training—and then decided that the most effective approach would be to employ their clients. They approached Boeing and arranged to supply them with sheet metal; subsequently, they added other businesses to their array, including a hotel, real estate, a corporate cafeteria for Starbucks, and a mailing and fulfillment house.

The Denver Zoo started packaging and selling Zoo Doo (no explanation necessary!) several years ago; the Center for the Homeless in Indianapolis employs guests in a landscaping business, generating $400,000 per year; and another organization in Michigan created a diversity training institute for businesses.

Previous | TOC | Next

Back to Community Action Pamphlet Menu

Keeping It All Together: Ideas For Sustaining Your Initiative

Sustaining Your Program

Keeping It All Together:
Ideas For Sustaining Your Initiative