Benefits of Partnerships              

  • Partnerships with other organizations provide opportunities for both you and your partner to expand your scope of work. Sharing your experience and expertise with each other may help you to think more broadly about how to serve your community.
  • Establish effective partnerships by learning what other organizations in the community are doing and find ways to collaborate and share resources. This will reduce unnecessary duplication and work, while ensuring clients are getting connected to services and resources in the most efficient manner.
  • Building strong relationships throughout the community with various organizations provides many benefits to your program. These partners can generate referrals, fill service gaps, raise awareness of your program, provide opportunities for volunteer recruitment, sharing, cross-training and offer in-kind support.
  • Bringing in partners with knowledge and experience in strategic areas outside of your scope and utilizing their expertise can greatly enhance the project’s impact on the community and across the partnership.
  • Having a variety of community partnerships can offer beneficial volunteer recruitment opportunities. Bring community-based organizations together and introduce them to each other and your volunteer model. During these discussions, organizations can brainstorm ways that they can help recruit both volunteers and participants to engage in your model.

 Identifying Potential Partners

  • Consider these entities for partnership: faith-based communities, food banks/programs, Chamber of Commerce, Area Agency on Aging, Veterans programs, community/senior centers, cultural centers, universities/colleges, corporations, Easter Seals and community businesses.
  • Identify prospective partners with whom a mutually beneficial relationship can be forged. For example, partnerships with colleges and universities can offer students valuable experiential learning opportunities by serving as volunteers assisting care recipients.
  • When considering building a respite program, partnering with an adult education provider allows the care recipient to attend the respite program while their caregiver attends an adult education program.
  • Recognize that both internal and external partnerships can be utilized in building trusting relationships with community members and other potential partners.
  • It may be beneficial to seek out partnerships with organizations using similar methods of volunteer recruitment, training, onboarding, engagement. To expand the reach of both organizations, try to share volunteers when possible. When developing relationships with potential partners, get to know multiple people within the organization. That way, if your primary contact should leave the partner organization, you still have an internal contact.
  • When reaching out to new areas, you may have greater success when you focus on a single area/community spending significant time making connections, learning where the informal and formal networks are, meeting with potential partners multiple times and finding out how these communities communicate with one another.
  • When meeting with community organizations for outreach and partnership, always ask, “Who else should we be meeting with?” They may have ideas for additional outreach and referral resources you haven’t thought about and could direct you to some amazing champions for your program.
  • Focus on a single area/community and spend 10-12 weeks making connections, learning where the informal and formal networks are and meet with potential partners multiple times. If you try to do this process in several communities at once, you can’t be present often enough in any one place to build those much-needed strong connections.
  • After you identify the potential support needs of your participants and volunteers, find community organizations to be a part of your resource sharing network. If you offer transportation and your care recipient reports food insecurity, partner with an organization that can accept a referral from you to potentially address it. That organization should also be able to refer one of their program participants to your organization for transportation needs.

 Establishing Partnerships

  • Help your partners identify populations they have not previously engaged and work together to build a diverse client base.
  • Forming successful partnerships can be achieved by fostering a collaborative environment during meetings and decision-making processes. If you are the lead on the project, consider adopting an inclusive approach, avoiding a top-down directive and promoting inclusion and collaboration with partner organizations.
  • When building new partnerships give first to the organization with which you hope to partner with no expectation of reciprocity. Providing that organization support with no strings attached may lead to both organizations gaining insight into a service gap that your organization can fill, resulting in a program partnership.
  • Developing solid relationships with community partners takes time, be sure to allocate enough time for this when developing your work plan.
  • It may require the effort of more than one organization to identify and meet the needs of community members so consider developing a coalition of community organizations to address and meet community needs.
  • There may be other organizations in your community providing the same or similar services as your organization. Consider organizing regularly scheduled meet ups with these organizations. Discuss current issues and how you can work together to meet community needs without overstepping boundaries. Establish a referral system within the group to meet community needs.
  • When leveraging partnerships with other community organizations to gain referrals for family caregivers and care recipients, be mindful of staff attrition. Consistently reach out to ‘partners’ to ensure a warm handoff to replacement staff. Offer training to new staff members about how to refer individuals to your programs. At minimum, schedule quarterly check-ins with the appropriate members of each organization.

 Partnership Engagement

  • Frequent communication with partners can help facilitate meaningful engagement and interest in your program.
  • To initiate and or sustain relationships with potential community partners, create a distribution list of all potential stakeholders and send out regular updates on program activities to keep all members informed and engaged.
  • Offering partner meetings remotely instead of in person allows program partners to meet more frequently, reduces travel expenses and can increase availability and attendance.
  • Develop partnerships with organizations that provide services that complement those provided by your organization rather than duplicate. Work with your partner organizations to train and support their volunteers to successfully provide volunteer assistance to older adults, adults with disabilities and family caregivers. Convene all partnering organizations on a regular schedule and host additional meetings with individual partnering organizations. This meeting structure allows partners to connect, learn about each other’s programs, and spark ideas for collaboration while simultaneously ensuring that your organization can work closely with each partner individually.