Assess Your Partnership

Why?

At least once a year it is important to conduct a year in review of the state of your partnership with your partner to celebrate the wins, reflect on the lessons learned, and identify opportunities and next steps. This conversation supports planning for the partnership, serves to solidify the relationship and deepen trust between the partners.

What’s the Result?

This conversation will provide you the guidance on next steps for the partnership – what needs to be adjusted/changed to increase impact, what the continued need is for the partnership or whether it is time to celebrate and hand the work over to the community.

Materials
Pen and paper to take notes, post-it notes

Time: 120 minutes

Step I:  Ensure the right stakeholders are in the room

  • Identify and invite the key stakeholders in your partnership to the meeting

Step II:  Conduct an analysis of the year of partnership

  1. On post-it notes, using one post-it per answer individually write your answers to the following questions: (Write as many responses as you want)
    1. What needs to be celebrated?
    1. What lessons did we learn?
  2. Discuss the themes that are surfacing from the responses
  3. Identify
    1. Areas of potential opportunities for further investment
    1. Areas to reduce investment/ dis-investment

Step III:  Plan for the future of the partnership

  • Discuss the high-level plans for the following year OR
  • If the partners agree it is a natural time to bring the partnership to a close discuss the plans for ensuring the sustainability of the work of the partnership. Considerations should include:
    • How to institutionalize the change
    • The work of the partnership that can be taken over and owned by the community
    • The resources required to sustain the work of the partnership

Step IV:  Celebrate the partnership

  • Regardless of the future path for the partnership, remember to take time to celebrate the successes to date of the partnership with your partner and your key stakeholders