Strategies for the Long-Term Sustainability of an Initiative: An Overview
Learn how to lay the groundwork you need to create a plan for institutionalization and increase your initiative or organization's impact.
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WHAT IS A PLAN FOR SUSTAINABILITY?
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WHY SHOULD YOU PLAN FOR SUSTAINABILITY?
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WHEN SHOULD YOU PLAN FOR SUSTAINABILITY?
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HOW DO YOU PLAN FOR SUSTAINABILITY?
So your initiative has really taken off. Congratulations! Now you want to make sure that all of your hard work will not be washed away by time and inactivity. If you believe in the work you are doing, you want to find a way to keep it going when the grant lapses, the political winds change, or when someone important (even you!) must leave the organization. In short, you want to make your initiative a permanent part of the community. To do this you must sustain your initiative.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Sustainability is the active process of establishing your initiative - not merely continuing your program, but developing relationships, practices, and procedures that become a lasting part of the community.
You may have several different reasons for wanting to do this, depending on what kind of an initiative or organization it is.
But one thing is clear: developing a plan for the sustainability of your initiative will increase its impact. And it will certainly make your life easier because the group members will have a better idea of what they will be doing next month and next year. In this section, we will help you lay the groundwork you need to create such a plan.
WHAT IS A PLAN FOR SUSTAINABILITY?
Planning is a way to organize actions that will lead to the fulfillment of a goal. We've talked in other sections of the Tool Box about the importance of planning and how to do it.
Before you do that, however, it's important to look at what is unique to planning for sustainability. Your goal, in this case, is to maximize long-term benefit to your community. If you have created something of value, you don't want it to disappear. Because of this larger goal, planning for sustainability is more long-term than much of the other planning you will do, and it is also more all-encompassing. It asks you to step away from the daily details of running your organization and look at the picture as a whole.
How do you do that? By looking at the important questions, answering them frankly, and then using those answers to develop your strategic plan. Below is a list of eight questions that are basic to just about any sustainability effort. We suggest several key members of your coalition work together to answer them, and also decide together if there are other important questions unique to your initiative that should be discussed.
- What is the nature of our initiative (or organization)?
- What are the goals of our initiative?
- What has our initiative done?
- What publicity has our initiative received?
- How is our initiative structured and governed?
- Does our initiative have sufficient staffing?
- Is our budget sufficient to cover expected costs now and in the future?
- What are some obstacles we may encounter? And how do we get around them?
Example: We've worked really hard for over a year now. We believe our efforts to decrease the rate of homeless mentally ill in our city have been helpful; however, we cannot keep having bake sales every time we need money.
Because our initiative is new and lacks structure and legitimacy, we miss out on opportunities for funding. People don't even really know who we are. And besides, our fearless leader, Karin, is getting tired. He's been working over twenty hours a week in addition to his regular job on this initiative, and at this rate he'll surely burn out.
If we don't do something soon to provide our initiative with the staying power it needs to continue on into the years to come, it may be in trouble. But how do we go about doing this? How can we make sure our initiative will last?
- Here's the key point: Planning to sustain our initiative will help us if we want it to be around in the future. Answering the questions above will save us time in the long run, and increase the chances of accomplishing our goals.
WHY SHOULD YOU PLAN FOR SUSTAINABILITY?
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