Building and Sustaining Coalitions & Partnerships

We can help your community-based organization, coalition or partnership transform its performance and develop its capacity to lead community change. Consultation, training and on-site technical assistance are available to help coalitions and partnerships thrive by self-evaluating and focusing on promising practices.

Getting Started

Assessment. Building an effective coalition or partnership begins by assessing its strengths and challenges. We can help plan an assessment of your coalition and its community that begins where you are and may include:

• Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis
• Historical review
• Needs and asset assessment
• Data collection; Surveys, focus groups and key informant interviews
• Summary and presentation of results to priority audiences

Strategic planning. Strategic planning can help your organization attract resources and members and reach its performance targets. Our seasoned professionals will help you prepare for strategic planning and facilitate the planning process. By using a systematic process to decide where you are, where you want to be, how you will get there and how you will measure and evaluate your success, your organization will achieve more than you ever thought possible.

Coalition in Action

We can help your coalition define expectations and apply appropriate strategies and tools to support membership, funding, communications and other health promotion initiatives. Services and tools are provided to avoid common problems and launch programs successfully:

• Promising approaches and program identification
• logic model development
• Action planning

Sustaining Coalition Momentum

Planning for sustainability should start early in the coalition's life and focus on community ownership, funding, resource development, advocacy, policy changes, and institutionalization of coalition programs by partner organizations. We will help your coalition implement and evaluate procedures that empower members and stimulate programs. We also provide training and tools to anticipate and manage organizational issues such as transitions in leadership and funding.

Our customized sustainability program focuses on:

• Ongoing program planning with central staff
• Financial and resource planning
• Staff and leadership development
• Programs dissemination and partners ownership
• Ongoing evaluation

Evaluating Coalition Success

Coalition effectiveness and sustainability also will depend on your coalition's capacity to document success. We use a collaborative approach to planning and evaluating your coalition and its programs. We provide your coalition with easy to administer:

• Evaluation design templates
• Evaluation methods
• Process and outcome measures
• Coalition report cards
• Evaluation report templates
• Data presentation and dissemination options