partnering with community organisations - Department of Families ...

Section Three: Maintaining a
successful partnership
Some ways you can promote your partnership
internally include:
>> make sure your staff know about the partnership and
are kept up-to-date with its developments. Their word
of mouth is your best promotion! Keeping staff upto-date
can also motivate them into participating and
supporting the partnership;
>> use your intranet, website, newsletters and meetings to
showcase your partnership activities; and
>> develop a staff award scheme for ‘most communityminded’
or ‘best partnership supporter’.
Unfortunately, many SMEs involved in partnerships fear that
they are boasting if they publicly promote their partnership.
This is why, in many cases, it is often the community
organisation partner that promotes the partnership. You
should encourage your partner to do this. Promoting your
partnership will not only build your reputation as a socially
responsible business, but it will also inspire and create the
imagination of others to develop a partnership.
Some ways you can promote your partnership
externally include:
>> promote the partnership and your partner organisation
on your website and in published material;
>> generate positive publicity through local, regional and/or
national media;
>> inform your customers, suppliers, investors and other
stakeholders what you are doing – either verbally or in
published material;
>> enter partnership Awards such as the Prime Minister’s
Awards for Excellence in Community Business
Partnerships and/or show case your Award in your
offices, advertisements, tenders etc; and
>> accept invitations to speak about your partnership and
attend networking and other events relating to business
and community involvement.
A useful resource to help you and your community partner
develop a publicity plan and promote your partnership is
the Promoting Positive Partnerships online tool, available
at www.mediateam.com.au. This website has other useful
online tools for generating and managing communication
and media coverage.
3.2 Step Seven: Monitoring
and evaluating
All partnerships should be monitored and regularly
evaluated to see how well they are working, and to ensure
that the original focus has been/is being met and that
the partnership aims are still relevant. Successes need
to be built on and, if any aspect of the partnership is not
effective, action should be taken to give renewed vision
and focus. It is possible that for a number of reasons, it
may not be appropriate for the partnership to continue.
Further, every partnership must have some way of
measuring its achievements. All outcomes should be
designed to clearly demonstrate when an objective has
been completed. Progress should be monitored and
regularly reported back to partners. If, for example, all the
original aims have been met then this should be celebrated
and the partnership brought to an end with recognition
of what it has achieved. Alternatively, new aims for the
partnership may be set.
Monitoring and evaluating are often missed steps
because their importance is generally unrecognised.
However, monitoring and evaluation will:
>> tell you what you are or are not achieving;
>> assess the progress you have made towards meeting
your partnership aims;
>> identify areas that are important to your partnership
program participants;
>> highlight where weaknesses are in the partnership and
its program and signal any potential warning areas
before they get out of hand; and
>> help you to improve your partnership and its program.
Monitoring and evaluating are also important for
identifying and documenting learnings and a great
mechanism for reporting back successes to employees
and stakeholders. But an evaluation can have a more
strategic role. An evaluation report, for example, can be
used to:
>> demonstrate the successes of your partnership
and its program to your key stakeholders and
strengthen their support;
>> raise your profile and generate community trust
and interest in your organisation as a socially
responsible business;
>> support resource allocation decisions and/or
leverage resources (e.g. help your community
partner gain additional funding);
[ 15