Projects across the country vary in myriad ways, but all strive toward a shared goal: sustaining their work beyond the initial grant period. Grantees all over the country have found successful strategies to continue their work meet their goals and marshal their resources.
The materials we offer here are culled from their experience and expertise and are designed to be used by project directors or staff members who are perplexed about where to begin or overwhelmed by the array of frameworks, toolkits and other materials currently available. We offer here a comprehensive overview of sustainability strategies and resources within a framework that helps you create and develop your own sustainability work plan.
Planning for program sustainability from the beginning of the grant enhances your chances of success, and visionary leadership will draw collaborators together to meet their common goals. Sustaining a program requires action and creativity in one or more of 8 possible realms, which are represented in our "wheel":
Leadership
Strategic Planning
Partnership and Collaboration
Capacity Building
Communications/Marketing
Public Policy
Evaluation
Financing
For each of these strategies, we offer numerous resources including planning guides, toolkits, and journal articles for in-depth information to help you tailor each type of sustainability strategy to your circumstances.
We believe that sustainability starts with knowing your overarching goals, seeing which of your program elements are achieving those goals, and being creative about how to keep those elements at play within your community. If the program you implemented achieves the outcomes you were after and is a good fit for the needs of your stakeholders, your long-term sustainability plan may involve maintaining several program elements. If one or two program elements produced measurable positive results but others did not, your plan may focus on those elements only.
The wheel can be used in multiple ways. Clicking on the words within the wheel will take you to a brief explanation of each strategy linked with in-depth resources in each area. Clicking on the words in the outer rim will take you to common questions and answers about sustainability, definitions of terms, a comparison of leading sustainability frameworks, and examples of grantee successes.
If you are a beginner , try using the wheel like this:
- Take the self assessment (which surveys activities within each strategy)
- Explore the definitions to clarify terms
- Read Spotlight on Grantees for illustrations of sustainability
- Explore sections on the wheel to consider what strategies might work for you
If you are moderately experienced , try this:
- Take the self assessment
- Read the FAQs
- Start with wheel sections you are most familiar with
- Explore wheel sections you have not considered using
If you are very experienced , try this:
- Look at Models of Sustainability to see a comparison of major models in the field
- Choose the appropriate wheel section(s) to further develop your sustainability plan
- Choose other wheel sections to see if you might add strategies to your current efforts
