There is more help available than most of us realize. Who could be helping your school?
Often when a school thinks about its need for help, it limits its thinking to donors. Donors are a valuable source of help and so are volunteers. But who would like to collaborate with your school?
There is a school on the east coast that helps young boys with behavioral problems. Part of the program provides the parent or parents with parenting skills. Across town is a women’s pregnancy center that offers similar services for unwed mothers.
When the two groups began talking, they discovered that their clients had similar needs. They also realized that neither program was operating at capacity. They collaborated on and won a grant for parenting skills. In the end, programming was less expensive, provided better services, made better use of facilities, and was less difficult to schedule and manage.
Developing parenting skills are important to both programs. However, other services are strategic to each program. Since developing parenting skills are an operational need, it is a good candidate for outsourcing or collaboration.
Before talking about collaborating, both groups thought that because the services were important, they were too important to outsource, share, or collaborate. However, when each of them reflected on the services, they realized that the services were important to the clients but other services were important to the mission.
Mission-critical services should be carefully managed and are never a candidate for outsourcing or collaboration. All other services are good candidates for collaboration, sharing, or outsourcing.
Next Step:
Divide your client services into two groups (mission critical and program critical)
Look around your community for organizations that need or offer similar program-critical services (competitors, for-profits, and government agencies)
Find at least one partner who has a similar or higher standard of service than yours
Develop a plan to integrate your services
Invite a foundation to help you reduce costs, improve services, and make better use of the capacity that exists in your community
Mission-critical services are the services that must be provided to keep the promises of the mission. The east coast school promises to create citizen scholars. Improving parenting skill is important to the families’ success and it makes it easier for the school to be successful. However, if the school is going to keep its promises, it must offer other programming.
Your school’s long-term sustainability depends on mission-critical services. Those services ensure you will be able to keep the promises in your mission statement. Focus on what is important to your mission and let others help you with non-critical services.
Take It Further:
In the example, the two organizations could have formed an advisor panel (using board members or other volunteers with parenting expertise) to guide the program development. How can you do something similar?
