• If you enlist a service coordinator to recruit and manage participants and a volunteer coordinator to recruit and manage volunteers, consider scaling up numbers at an equal pace to keep all parties engaged. This helps to minimize attrition of both volunteers and participants.
  • When building a new program, consider a soft launch or pilot focusing on onboarding and training new volunteers while meeting CR expectations at a smaller level.
  • Identify a trusted community member to act as a program ambassador. This individual can be a point of contact to whom others can call with concerns or needs. This can be especially helpful in more rural areas.
  • Although it is critical to have good plans, build in flexibility to change the program model when new needs arise or the environment changes.
  • Establishing feedback mechanisms with program partners, care recipients and family caregivers, including surveys and learning collaboratives to continuously assess the program’s effectiveness and identify areas for improvement, can be essential to your model’s development. Employing data-driven decision-making, based upon the feedback from all stakeholders to refine the program, ensures that it remains responsive to the evolving needs of the community.