Ensuring Program Sustainability

Ask any administrator of a mentoring children of prisoners (MCP) program to name their top three issues, and most likely program sustainability makes the cut. This topic is especially pertinent for the 52 programs funded by the Department of Health and Human Services whose grants expire in 2006. Committed Partners for Youth in Eugene, OR is on that list, and sustainability is the foremost concern of its executive director, Susan Walsh. Her staff focused on strategic planning this summer and is expected to continue the process during the fall.

“One of the things I would suggest to people is, if you have a university in your town, to use them,” says Walsh. “We have public policy grad students that are helping us develop a strategic plan. We’ve used the nonprofit management department and the marketing department at [the University of Oregon] to help us develop plans around sustainability. And that’s all free. Students really want the experience and professors want to help make it happen. So that’s been a real gift to us.”

As the agency approaches the end of its three-year grant period, Walsh wishes she had taken more strategic steps in years one and two. “I think that since our agency does mentoring and we have other programs, we went out and started recruiting and fundraising for this program like we did all our others,” she says. “I think that this program has such unique aspects to it and it’s working with such a special group of kids and families that we probably could have raised more money earlier and maybe sparked our volunteer base earlier if we had been out there in the community talking to people about the kids and these families.”

But it’s never too late. Luckily, Committed Partners, which has been in operation since 1991, already had a strong fundraising base in place to build upon for their True Friends MCP program.

Pinpointing the Best Fundraisers
“Every community needs to look at what they do [that’s] great,” says Walsh. “What is the thing that is your tradition? What are the unique resources in your community? Eugene is known as the track and field capital of the country. Running and walking is an enormous tradition here. We now have the second largest road race in Eugene and all the money goes to Committed Partners and for the True Friends program.”

Committed Partners’ other major fundraising event is an annual wine tasting and auction. The agency started this event five years ago as Oregon began developing a reputation for its wine country. However, this year was the event’s most successful one due to the fact that a local TV news anchor was recently recruited to serve on Committed Partners’ board of directors. In addition to developing public service announcements free of charge, the news station sponsors and promotes the agency’s fundraising events. Walsh says this year’s wine tasting was packed with people because for a couple of weeks beforehand, the news station consistently publicized the upcoming event.

The news station also produced a professional three-minute marketing video that featured a mentor/mentee match, as well as a grandmother who cares for her incarcerated son’s two children. “That’s something at this agency we could never afford to do ourselves,” adds Walsh.

The video was shown at the wine tasting and also has been screened when potential donors visit the agency. “I showed [the potential donor] the video and I didn’t have to worry about trying to get that mentor pair to actually be in the office,” says Walsh. “This video was so powerful that she was practically in tears.”

Other Avenues to Sustainability
Committed Partners is currently focused on building and educating their board of directors about fundraising and mentor recruitment, a key to program sustainability, according to Walsh. The agency has even recruited a couple of mentors from their True Friends program to serve as board members and talk to the community about their experience as mentors. “Everybody [becomes] a board member because they want to help, and they think what you do is great, and once you really give them those tools and that voice to go out there and raise money and raise awareness they can do it,” adds Walsh. “And it takes the pressure off the staff and the director to feel like they need to do everything.”

The other area of focus for Committed Partners is developing a stronger system that tracks all in-kind donations such as food, a room for an event, or volunteer time to facilitate a mentor/mentee activity. The goal is to “document it, track it, and quantify (it) because that is match,” says Walsh. “I think that’s something that especially small organizations could do better because it’s just hard to create those infrastructures. But it’s worth it.”

Fall 2005