Select a section: Creating Your Partnership Identifying the Vision and Mission for the Partnership Building Partnership Capacity Printable Partnerships Worksheet This section describes the process of building the capacity of your partnership to design, develop and implement the intervention as part of the shared vision and mission for the partnership (see partnerships). Once these capacities are inventoried, you may want to build some capacities before moving forward or make sure you take into account the strengths and weaknesses as you move forward.

Printer-friendly version

You can think about the partnership capacity of your partnership in two ways:

1. the structure of collaboration, or the number and type of groups that form the network; and
2. the process of collaboration, or the degree of engagement of partners (keeping other partners aware of what is happening to joint planning and decision-making).

In order to develop the structures and processes of your partnership, you may want to take inventory of personal, organizational and structural capacities and resources (e.g., cultural competency, communication and equipment).

To identify the structures and processes, you may want to engage partners in the following discussion:

• Who are the individuals, organizations and institutions that make-up this partnership?
• What individual and organizational assets (skills and experience) do partners bring to the table? (i.e., health services provision, office experience, industry, public relations, media, community organizing, research, evaluation, education, transportation, housing or others)
• Do your partners represent the range of people living in your community in terms of race or ethnicity, income, education, age, ability status, sexual orientation, gender, or other important characteristics you identified in your community of interest?
• Have you established joint communication and decision making processes?
• What work to address the health conditions or risk factors is already happening in the community and who is doing it?

Based on this inventory, the partners should work together to develop a partnership structure, including places to gather, frequency and length of gatherings, decision making processes, conflict management strategies, roles and responsibilities, and processes for facilitating discussions. Be sure to highlight the benefits of participation for each member of the coalition and be sure the structures maximize rather than minimize these benefits.

Create a strong partnership by:

1. Gathering on a regular basis with a clear purpose and start and end on time.
2. Defining roles and responsibilities for all of the partners.
3. Forming active committees so partners are involved in the issues of concern to them.
4. Developing by-laws that reflect the mission of the partnership.
5. Ensuring consistent and clear communication across all partners (i.e., consider creating a newsletter to keep everyone informed).
6. Preserving shared leadership and responsibility by delegating meaningful tasks and timelines that are doable.
7. Building social time into your gatherings for networking or getting to know each other.
8. Recognizing hard work and dedication through celebrations and fun activities.
9. Agreeing on fiduciary responsibilities and developing a budget for the partnership.
10. Building relationships with elected officials and other key community leaders to gain support for the partnership and its mission.
11. Recruiting technical assistance and support if resources are needed outside the partnership.

While you may need to work with a wide range of groups to fully understand the health needs of the community (e.g., community members, researchers, nurses, counselors, employers, physicians or insurance companies), you may want to work in smaller, more focused groups to design and execute your intervention in a timely fashion. The structure of the partnership needs to take these smaller groups into consideration by, for example, having the smaller groups report back to the larger group.

Having strong relationships with clear roles and responsibilities is key to tackling sensitive and controversial issues that are likely to come up when discussing how to meet the needs of the community of interest.

Building partnerships with multiple organizations can be tricky as you have to be cautious about who participates, how information is shared among people within and between organizations and the inherent power structure within organizations. For example, an employee may be less likely to participate if their boss might get upset about their participation. Including broad representation within the organization (e.g., administration, management, staff) and processes that ensure confidentiality can enhance participation and support for the intervention.

If you will be implementing your intervention in a worksite setting, you may consider the following as part of your planning:

• Form a worksite committee. Work with senior and middle level managers, as well as employees from all segments of the worksite. These individuals may be people who are already leaders in the worksite, and, if not, it may be important to help build their capacity to help promote these activities. It is also important to develop processes for decision making that enable all members of the committee to have a say.
• It may be necessary to convince management and others of the importance of a worksite intervention. In doing so, others have found it helpful to use existing websites that provide helpful data on the cost benefits of the intervention. You may also want to obtain data at your worksite regarding current benefit costs, age of workforce, absenteeism, injury costs, and other relevant figures. This type of information may be important in demonstrating the financial need to invest in your intervention.
• Jointly develop methods for determining the specific needs of the employees and the capacity of the organization. This may include health risk assessments as well as an assessment of the specific barriers employees face and what would help overcome those barriers. This should include individual factors as well as factors related to the physical environment at work and worksite policies.

A few other considerations for improving partnership capacity are as follows:

• the structure of the partnership influences how decisions are made in the organization (i.e., a hierarchical structure may make it more difficult to create change without involvement of organization leaders);
• whether the partnership is in a period of growth or decline affects readiness for partnership change; and
• partnership training and performance evaluation can provide existing vehicles for creating change.