Partner (Re)Engagement Denise McNerney President & CEO iBossWell, Inc. and Chair – Center for Nonprofit Excellence Association for Strategic Planning

Partner (Re)Engagement How do you get them to come to/back to the table? Consider what worked/didn’t work during the CHA

Exercise: Identifying the Challenges Think about partner engagement challenges:  During the CHA or other Collaborations  Issues identified during “Adapting Intervention Strategies to your Community” Were any of these relevant/influenced by partners or the partner relationship?  Note these relevant engagement issues/challenges NOW - Note, then discuss: What did you try? What worked? Didn’t work?

Successful Collaborative Engagements: Things to Consider WIIFM – What’s in it for your partners to do anything with the CHIP?  Look at the Crosswalk document: especially Implementation, Evaluation & Monitoring

Successful Collaborative Engagements: Things to Consider Common themes among many LHD Final Reports:  An increase in awareness and understanding of the health of our community, a broad definition of health, and the importance of the local public health system.  An increase in communication and collaboration among local public health system partners.  An increase in organizations that are invested and committed to community health improvement.

Experiences from Others “…approach was to make good use of peoples’ time, be organized and intentional about how we engaged people, and to carefully balance our needs while respecting the time of our participants” “Although there was broad participation from LHD system partners and community members, there were still several sectors of partners or community members who were missing from the table. Casting a wider net when recruiting for the committee and for involvement in the project might have been a better approach.” “Some committee members felt there should have been more commitment from partner organizations and better meeting attendance (especially towards the end of the project)”  Kittitas County Public Health Department (KCPHD), WA - Serves approximately 40,500 Report-for-ORC-Posting-0413.pdf

Experiences from Others, cont. “Spending more time up front on partner recruitment…” “Establish a tighter agreement for public health partner accountability…” “We would not allow any core team members to have a baby, a stroke, or a death in the family (5 of 8 HD administrators were off for these reasons up to 3 months each and we are too small to have backup staff for this project).” Hilarious they put in here!  East Central Kansas Public Health Coalition (ECKPHC) Report-for-ORC-Posting.pdf Report-for-ORC-Posting.pdf

Experiences from Others, cont. We would do “More periodic checks on individual organizations and self-interest levels, more preparation on the lead up to dialogues, educate and prepare the hospitals on what community engagement looks like and what qualitative analysis goals are, etc.” Hospitals were able to receive a significant amount of information that was necessary to report to the IRS. For LHD’s: Opportunity for significant engagement of board members especially commissioners  Barry-Eaton District Health Department, Ingham County Health Department, and Mid- Michigan District Health Department Posting pdf Posting pdf

Additional “Tips” Collaboratively discuss Purpose and high-level Goals at beginning of process to ensure clarity and alignment across all partners Ensure there is balanced, appropriate and diverse representation of all stakeholders at the table  After Purpose & Goals are established, review who is at the table and who might we be missing? Collectively, define process, rules of engagement, and “commitment to action/engagement” (including specifics of what engagement looks like) as one of the first steps.  Make this a written agreement of the CHIP Partners Charge, signed by all partners  Perhaps include specifics of benefits for performing to the commitments (e.g. names/orgs listed on all documents/communications; etc.), and consequences for not (e.g. name removed, off the CHIP Team, etc.)

Take Away’s What will you do (differently) as a result of this discussion?