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In order to be successful, your Big Brothers Big Sisters program or Boys and Girls Club must find effective ways of working with other groups, such as other programs that serve children and young people, schools, businesses, government offices, and others. You will strengthen your program and the collective effort by coming together with others in the spirit of the greatest community good. Your program should always be thinking, “Who can we be working with to make this even better?” By doing so, you reap the benefits of joint action, which are usually far greater than what can be achieved in isolation.
There are many ways in which your program can work with others to accomplish its purposes while also advancing the goals of its collaborators. For instance, it is essential that you network with other youth serving groups in your area to share information and develop a common understanding about one another’s services. But, you will also have to move beyond informal networking to develop more formal collaborations.
For example, you might involve a local business or corporation in the In School Mentoring program by developing a sponsorship in which they provide funding and employee volunteers for a particular school. You would also create a formal partnership with schools participating in a Breakfast Club program for their students, or with the local police in delivering the Kids ‘n Kops program. Or perhaps you could make the best use of resources by sharing office space or a staff person with another local youth serving organization.
As your program develops these more formal types of partnerships, it is necessary to have written partnership agreements or memoranda of understanding that guide the work to be done together. The agreement should:
- Clearly define the nature and scope of the work to be done together
- Outline the expectations, roles and responsibilities of each partner
- Identify primary contact people from each partnering organization, and a spokesperson for the partnership
- State how communication occurs regarding ongoing progress
- Define how compliance with the agreement is ensured
- Describe a dispute resolution process
- Determine how the agreement can be changed or ended.
Could you provide a sample collaborative agreement for them to look at? I have one.
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