The Center for Civic Partnerships http://www.civicpartnerships.org
Summary:
The Center has created The Sustainability Toolkit: 10 Steps to Maintaining Your Community Improvements. The ten steps are: create a shared understanding of sustainability; position your effort to increase sustainability; create a plan to work through the process; look at the current picture and pending items; develop criteria to help determine what to continue; decide what to continue and prioritize; create options for maintaining your priority plans; develop and implement a sustainability plan; evaluate your outcomes and revise as needed.
Leadership for Change:
The ten steps can be taken by individual or group leaders. Many of the tasks involved in the ten steps involve leadership functions such as creating a shared understanding of sustainability.
Strategic Planning:
The center defines sustainability as the continuation of community health or quality of life benefits over time. Materials recommend the use of strategic planning first to create a shared vision of sustainability and then a work plan for sustainability. Materials guide you to look at what you are doing now and where you want to be at the end of your grant funding.
Partnerships/Collaboration:
The Toolkit offers suggestions about establishing effective relationships with other players in your community who are working towards the same or similar ends.
Capacity Building:
The importance of building capacity through the life of a program is embedded in most of the 10 Steps to Sustainability, notably Step Two: Positioning your effort to increase your sustainability odds.
Communications/Marketing:
A key step in selling your program to potential funders and others, is to create a brief program summary of goals and accomplishments, what aspects you want to continue, and what resources, including donations and in kind support, you need to continue it.
Public Policy:
The Toolkit does not address policy work directly, but the Center for Civic Partnerships website offers a variety of resources in this area.
Evaluation:
The Toolkit recommends using evaluation results to decide what program elements to maintain and to sell your program to partners and potential funders.
Financing:
It is important to determine precisely how much funding you will need to continue the program elements you have prioritized and identify several possible sources for this funding.
