Making Community Partnerships Work: A Toolkit

Posted by on October 13, 2008

Making Community Partnerships Work: A Toolkit

Making Community Partnerships Work: A Toolkit provides insight into how to develop and sustain community partnerships. The Toolkit is divided into three stages of community partnership-building, 1) assessing organizational readiness before pursuing community partnerships, 2) getting to know the community, their needs, strengths, and assets, and connecting with key informants who are most familiar with the community, and 3) developing a partnership identity and purpose, consistent guidelines, and addressing issues of sustainability. In order to show how the strategies presented can be applied to an actual project, case stories from the Genetics Education Needs Evaluation (GENE) project are used. The Toolkit also discusses the challenges that are often associated with community partnership-building and presents basic information individuals, organizations, and foundations may need to build new relationships in diverse communities. It is available for free in both English and Spanish at http://www.marchofdimes.com/professionals/15829_29439.asp.