COA is looking for providers, agency leaders, and subject matter experts in the fields of behavioral health and child welfare to sit on two standards development panels that will be convening virtually this fall. The goal of these advisory panels is to review and revise applicable COA accreditation standards to ensure they continue to promote current trends and best practices in their respective fields.   

COA is currently focused on revising its suite of behavioral health standards to reflect current practice in office-based opioid treatment, recovery housing, trends in child and adolescent behavioral health, and sobering centers.  For more information on the many ways you can support this ongoing work please contact Melissa Dury.   

The child welfare revisions are focused on two main areas: (1) ensuring that COA’s standards for treatment foster care align with current practice in the field, and (2) ensuring that COA’s standards for family support and preservation reflect current practice in prevention services, focusing on alignment with the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA).  For more information on how to support this work please contact Lucia Hsiao or Susan Russell-Smith.

As we head into winter with the pandemic still raging, we wish our entire COA community health and safety. We know that many of our organizations provide essential services and have quickly implemented practices to reduce the spread of COVID-19. On behalf of the staff and board of COA, thank you for your continued service to your communities. We are inspired by your dedication and flexibility in this extremely difficult and ever-changing environment.

As organizations shift into and out of in-person work, the decision to move one way or the other is made even more challenging by conflicting guidance, mandates that vary across communities, and the unique challenges posed by virtual service delivery.  Our hope is that this roundup of guidance from the field will help you make better informed decisions about how or if to return to conducting in-person work. We also hope that you’ll add your feedback and tips in the comments section to share your experiences and help our readers continue to adapt to this challenging time.

US Government Resources

Website of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OHSA)

From overview information to daily tips and updates, OHSA has an enormous amount of information about in-person work in the time of COVID-19. Find the latest guidance on hazard recognition, COVID-19 standards, medical information, and tips on control and prevention, as well as a number of other resources. Some materials are available in Spanish as well as English.

Visit the site here.

Website of OHSA’s Whistleblower Protection Program

This is the place to go to report unsafe working conditions, including unsafe conditions as they relate to COVID-19. You can also find information on the applicable law, COVID-19, how to create an anti-retaliation environment at your organization, and what to expect during a whistleblower investigation.

Visit the site here.

US Department of Labor COVID-19 Webpage

This site hosts a number of practical, nuts-and-bolts resources around workplace safety; wages, hours, and leave; unemployment insurance; and more, all as they relate to COVID-19. You will also find guidance on preventing the coronavirus at work, how to return to work during the pandemic, and how to keep the workplace safe until we can get a vaccine.

Workplace safety information is available in a number of languages, including Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Burmese, Chin, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Croatian, French, French Creole, Hmong, Korean, Kunama, Nepali, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese.

Visit the site here.

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Website

This site is especially useful as a resource for everything PPE, or Personal Protective Equipment. They have general tips on keeping staff safe, as well as information on the status of PPE supplies, what respirators are testing best, and crisis strategies on what to do if PPE runs low–a situation we saw at the beginning of the pandemic. There is also specific advice and strategies around navigating COVID-19 in schools, as well as how to reduce the risk of violence when having to confront clients who refuse to wear a mask or practice social distancing.

Visit the site here.

Center for Disease Control (CDC) Coronavirus Website

Of course, no government resource list would be complete without including all of the information available from the CDC. Here you will find helpful tips about wearing masks and which kinds of masks are most useful; the latest on COVID-19 symptoms and testing; the latest data and trends on cases; guidelines around quarantining and travel; and business-specific guidance and communication resources. Assistance in multiple languages is here as well.

Visit the site here.

Other resources

Returning to a Pre-Pandemic Workplace Resource Roundup from the Council on Nonprofits

The Council on Nonprofits walks through the factors an organization must weigh before returning to in-person work, and then provides their own list of resources for helping you with that decision. Some of our favorites include:

Find their full list of resources here.

Reopening our Workspaces: A Playbook from Leading Edge

This playbook from the Leading Edge Alliance for Excellence in Jewish Leadership also takes on the considerations around returning to in-person work (or not) from a philosophical point of view. It walks through the many things an organization must weigh, including what impact their decisions will have on diversity, equity, and inclusion; team culture; organization values; and the opportunity that COVID-19 provides us all to “re-dream” what we could be doing.

The playbook contains decision trees to help leadership teams make careful, informed decisions about next steps in the face of the pandemic, as well as a wealth of practical tips and considerations on transitioning back to in-person work. The back half includes day-by-day checklists to help ease that transition.

Find the PDF of the playbook here.

HR Forms and Blog Posts from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)

SHRM tackles the thorny HR issues that COVID-19 can surface and that staff may experience as they come into and out of the workplace. Their Coronavirus Resource page hosts back-to-work checklists, screening and notice forms, FAQs, COVID-19 culture quizzes, and more. Their blog posts offer troubleshooting advice on an array of issues such as social distancing, contact-tracing, and payroll. They also have articles that will help keep you up-to-date on what other companies’ HR departments are doing, providing inspiration and insight that might help your own organization.

Visit their Resource Page here. For more from SHRM, check out their helpful list of other reliable resources for workplace issues related to the coronavirus.

COVID-19 Return to Work Playbook from Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente’s all-in-one, clickable playbook offers tips on everything from the details of modifying workplace safety plans and COVID-19 screening to big-picture concerns such as the impact of the virus on the social drivers of health and emotional well-being. It even includes a section on specific guidelines for those who work in public services, which will be of special interest to the COA community.

Visit the playbook here.

What other resources have you seen or used that have been helpful? What re-opening tips and experiences would be helpful to other organizations like yours? Please share them in the comments below! Remember that you can always keep up-to-date on COA’s operational status during the pandemic on our COVID-19 Resources Page here

Note: This post was originally published in 2017. Now that it’s 2020, we decided to give it an update. The core information remains the same.

Social service agencies across the world have voluntarily risen to the challenge of achieving accreditation. Whether their original goal was to focus on administrative functions or service delivery quality, the accreditation process (particularly with a whole-organization accreditation approach) provides these agencies with a blueprint to refine practices simultaneously across every area of the organization. The performance of these agencies has caught the eye of oversight entities and consumers alike, prompting accreditation to be used has a regulatory tool through mandates.  

The word ‘mandate’, particularly in a government context, is notorious for creating concern across service providing agencies, often because of the cost associated with those requirements. COA believes all mandates function best when paired with the funding required to meet  those mandates. We encourage all regulatory entities to consider the financial impact of any imposed mandate, as it can make or break the success of these initiatives.  

Though the financial concerns of these agencies are absolutely valid, we can’t ignore the positives that can come with an accreditation requirement. Through accreditation, agencies are given a path to meet a base-level of quality across administrative and service delivery functions. Accreditation sets clear service expectations for service recipients and the taxpayers that fund these programs alike. It also fosters  a culture of continuous improvement that can ensure the sustainability of an agency’s services. We cannot ignore the importance of these tenets in growing and maintaining a strong social service system that meets the needs of our communities.  

To hopefully make this all a little easier on your organization, we’ve creating this guide to support your agency in navigating a mandate. Our goal is to help you gather important details, understand what is required, determine milestones, and know how to compare and contrast accreditors. 

Note: Our best advice is don’t delay! Expect that it will take up to six months to determine an accreditor and then 12-18 months to pursue and achieve accreditation. 

Questions for the entity that mandated your accreditation

What accrediting bodies are accepted?

Usually a mandate will include a list of accepted accreditors.  If this isn’t included, reach out to the payer to find out what accreditors are accepted. If your preferred accrediting body isn’t recognized, we encourage you to reach out to that accrediting body and let them know. We can only speak for COA, but we are always willing to work with you and regulating entities to have COA accreditation be accepted under a mandate. 

What service(s) is/are mandated?

Does the mandate apply to one service? Many services? The entire organization?  Is there a document that crosswalks which services are mandated and what standards need to be applied by the accreditors? COA Accreditation Coordinators often know which service standard assignments are required for a mandate, but we always think it’s best for you yourself reach out to your regulatory entity to determine what is exactly required for your agency and the services you are providing.  

What is due and when?

Mandates often come with specific timelines and may even have multiple milestone requirements. In these instances, regulating entities will designate a deadline for achievement of accreditation. To ensure organizations are on track to meet a deadline, regulating entities will designate milestone deadlines on the way to an accreditation award – a date by which organizations must engage with an accreditor, a date by which organizations must have their Site Visit, and then a date by which an award must be received. 

What type of accreditation award is needed?

It’s important to clarify what type of accreditation award is due and when.  Some accreditors offer provisional or temporary accreditation. Accreditors and regulatory entities will work with your organization to determine the type of accreditation award that is required under your mandate. 

Evaluating accreditors — features to consider 

Once you know which of your programs needs to be accredited, by when, and by whom, reach out to all the approved accreditors and get an understanding the features of each. Regulatory entities and some membership groups will often facilitate panels with all recognized accreditors to help providers select the accreditor that is best for their agency. Here are some questions you’ll want to ask:   

How much does your accreditation process cost?  

Ask about application fees, accreditation fees, Site Visit fees (scheduled and unscheduled), and maintenance fees.  Is there a fee to purchase the standards?  If so, how many copies will you need and how often will updates be published in the future?  Make sure to ask about required fees and optional fees.  For example, trainings might be required and have associated fees.  

What is awarded and how long is it valid?

Each accrediting body will have a different length of accreditation award. This is referred to as an ‘accreditation cycle’, which will let you know how long your award is valid and how often you can expect to go through the accreditation process. Some mandates require a specific award length, in these cases the approved accreditors have worked with your oversight entity to meet this regulatory requirement. It’s important to keep all of this in mind when evaluating cost – how many accreditation cycles will your organization undergo over time (including provisional cycles)? 

What is included in the accreditation review?

Will the accreditor require all programs to pursue accreditation, or can you isolate individual programs?  Will the administration and management areas of the organization be reviewed?  Will every site be visited in the review (important to keep in mind when considering cost!)? Does the approach of the accreditor fit your organizational culture?  Does the accreditation cover all of the desired service areas (current and future growth plans)?  

We encourage all agencies to look toward future mandates as well. We have often seen additional services mandated, and agencies that utilized an accreditor with a whole-organization approach are most prepared for any mandate that comes their way. 

How long does it take?

Most accreditation processes take 12-18 months from deciding to pursue to decision. However, the right time to sign up might vary with each accreditor.  For example, some accreditors want to hear from you when you’re ready for your Site Visit within 4-6 months. Other accreditors want you to apply before your self-assessment period so that they can work alongside your organization in preparation for the Site Visit. 

How is my organization supported throughout the process?  

Are you assigned a point person to work with from the accrediting body? Does the accreditor offer trainings? How and when can you ask questions?  Does the accreditor provide templates and other tools to support you? Is there an online management system to assist with managing the process? Though every accreditor provides different tools to support agencies in meeting their mandate, it’s important to assess how much guidance and assistance will help your agency thrive in this process. 

What is required to maintain our accreditation status?

Once accredited, what is your responsibility for self-reporting changes at your organization? What is the process when your organization adds a new program or a new site? Are there annual reporting requirements and fees? What is your responsibility when it comes to implementation when standards change? 

Seek recommendations 

Ask peer organizations

Contact a few peer agencies that are already accredited. Think about the characteristics you should consider when identifying a peer – is it population they serve? Their size?  Location? Mission? Ask your peers about their satisfaction with the accreditation process, how they managed the work, and when appropriate, if they’d be willing to be a resource while you pursue accreditation.  

Ask internally – staff, board members, and volunteers

Start a discussion about their accreditation experiences and what they liked or disliked about the process. This is also an opportunity to gauge interest to see who would be willing to be part of the accreditation team or even lead the accreditation effort within your organization.

Ask your membership associations

If you belong to an association, ask if they support accreditation. Some associations have relationships with accreditors which might make your organization eligible for a discount when pursuing the process. Some offer technical assistance, and many are willing to facilitate dialogue around accreditation. 

Hopefully, this information will assist your organization with mapping out your journey towards seeking accreditation. 

Here are some related resources we have available.

Please feel free to share other resources you’ve found helpful while navigating this topic in the comments below!

Welcome to the Council on Accreditation (COA) blog post series Profiles in Accreditation! 

The organizations that COA accredits are diverse in both the communities they serve and their reasons for seeking accreditation (or reaccreditation).  Profiles in Accreditation will explore the accreditation experience through the perspective of these organizations. Through them, we can discover the value of accreditation, best practices, lessons learned, and recommendations.

Organization profile

Name:  Presbyterian Home for Children (PHFC)

Location: Talladega, Alabama; Hoover, Alabama

First accredited: July 2020

Snapshot: The Presbyterian Home for Children is a 152-year-old ministry of the Presbyterian Churches of Alabama which provides a faith-based safe haven for children, adolescents, young adults, and families through programs which nurture, educate, and equip individuals to become the fully functioning persons God created them to be.

Interview with Presbyterian Home for Children

For this Profiles in Accreditation post, we asked Doug Marshall, President and CEO of the Presbyterian Home for Children, to share his experience at an organization undergoing the COA accreditation process for the first time. Doug shared how he and his team navigated the workload in spite of a sudden upending of staff, and highlighted how accreditation has been a great source of validation for his agency. 

COA: Why was seeking accreditation important for your organization?

DM: The Presbyterian Home for Children is a ministry to children, youth, adolescents, young adults, and families. Our faith-based non-profit is in its 152nd year of service. We have longed to obtain accreditation recognized at the national level that comprehensively represented the programs and services offered by our agency.  We chose the Council on Accreditation (COA) because COA is one of the most highly respected national accrediting bodies.

In addition, COA is an approved accreditor for Qualified Residential Treatment Program (QRTP), relative to the Family First Prevention Services Act. As a faith-based agency with multiple service programs, we have an expressed need in our Moderate Residential Care Treatment Program to be a QRTP.

COA: What about COA made you decide to partner with us?

DM: As a long-standing member of the Alabama Association of Child Care Agencies (AACCA), our membership is filled with agencies who have obtained various accreditations. COA was specifically identified as the best national accrediting body for our agency’s needs. COA was the best fit for us due to our holistic programmatic structure and service type.

COA: What was your biggest worry coming into the accreditation process? How did that worry bear out?

"Time management and team effort were the keys to success."

DM: We had been advised that accreditation by COA was extremely challenging and a tremendous amount of work. The greatest concern was balancing the workload of COA with the daily workload of program operations.

At times, the workload was arduous. It was quickly learned that one had to be disciplined and organized in order to meet proposed deadlines. Hence, time management and team effort were the key to success.

COA: What did your workplan and timeline for the Self Study and PQI process look like? How did it work out on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis?

DM: We had a hiccup at the start. In the first quarter of our work with COA, our Director of Resource Development and two additional members of our Leadership Team–one in Finance and one in HR/ Accreditation–made career changes and left their positions at PHFC.  As a result, we requested and received an extension from COA.  Thus although we started in October 2018 upon acceptance of our application, our Self-Study was delayed. Matters were further complicated by the fact that those positions had to be filled while all program management duties and the process to document achievement of work plan goals had to be maintained. 

"Workloads had to be managed, tasks had to be assigned to those directly responsible for them, and allocation of assignments had to be timely and not overwhelming."

We established a PQI Committee that consisted of our Leadership Team. Throughout the process, the PQI Committee met on a bi-weekly basis to discuss assignments, progress, and concerns.  As a result of the PQI Committee’s work, we were able to submit our Self-Study on July 31, 2020. The COA Lead and the Manager of Accreditation communicated frequently, and they diligently worked together to ensure that work assignments were completed in a timely manner to maintain motivation of the team members.   It became apparent that some departments excelled in productivity, while others required more support from the COA Lead and the Manager of Accreditation.  Workloads had to be managed, tasks had to be assigned to those directly responsible for them, and allocation of assignments had to be timely and not overwhelming.  

COA: How did you engage and communicate with entire organization during the accreditation process?

DM: We managed engagement and communication through staff meetings, Leadership Team meetings, and PQI Committee meetings, as well as through email. That way, our team had important information in multiple formats.

COA: What did you like most about the process? What did you find to be most helpful/beneficial to your organization?

DM: The end results! The most helpful benefits were:

COA: What was the biggest challenge?

DM: The biggest challenge was the unknown. This was a process that we desired but were fearful of at the same time, because we did not want to fail. Both our financial resources and our reputation was on the line, and we wanted to be good stewards of both.

COA: Were there any unexpected results after completing the Self-Study?

DM: There were not any unexpected results. We had strong processes in place–we just needed to document and demonstrate implementation of those processes, which took additional time.

COA: What do you see as the main benefit of COA accreditation?

DM: The main benefit is that COA validates our agency as a high-quality, non-profit faith-based organization at the national level.

"COA validates our agency as a high-quality, non-profit faith-based organization at the national level."

COA: How has COA (re)accreditation impacted operational success?

DM: Through our COA accreditation, we have a set of organized, cohesive standards for our faith-based non-profit ministry, which will guide our daily operations.

COA: What are the top three pieces of advice or tips that you would give to an organization considering or currently undertaking the accreditation process for the first time?

DM:

COA: Are there any other learnings or insights that you’d like to share?

DM: Talk to your peer organizations who have completed the process. They have valuable wisdom and knowledge to help you along the way.

Thank you, Presbyterian Home for Children!

We would like to thank Doug for his illumination of the accreditation process through an organization impacted by the Family First Prevention Services Act, and acknowledge the entire Presbyterian Home for Children board and team for embracing accreditation and collectively contributing to the promotion of best practices. Thank you, all!

Do you have an accreditation story to tell? Click here to share it. You could be the next organization we feature!

We at COA love what we do because we are passionate about promoting practices that will serve the greater good. Equity, diversity, and inclusion (or, as someone at COA recently put it, “belonging”) are critical components of that. We cannot truly do good work and better our communities if we are not also working to ensure that every community member can be safe, belong, and access equal opportunity.  

The road to fully realized equity, diversity, and inclusion is constant and requires no small amount of collaboration and introspection. If your organization is committed to embedding these efforts in every facet of your work, you might be at a loss of where to begin. Don’t stress! We’ve pulled together some of the resources we’ve drawn best practice inspiration from to help get you started.  This list captures a fraction of the information available out there, so we encourage you to continue your learning.

Do you have a resource to recommend? Post in the comments below!

Why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Matter for Nonprofits—This goes through not only the “how” of implementing a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion plan, but also the “why” (whether your organization is a nonprofit or not). It provides several tools for embedding EDI into work at all levels of an organization.

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Harvard Implicit Association Test—This test is included in the article above, but it’s worth highlighting for itself. We cannot honestly approach this work without first grappling with any biases we ourselves may hold. This simple test is meant to help individuals recognize their own implicit bias.

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The MSW@USC Diversity Toolkit—A Guide to Discussing Identity, Power, and Privilege—Looking for specific exercises that you can conduct with your team? The University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work has created several to help you engage your team in this work.

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Racial Equity Resource Guide Glossary—In order to facilitate communication and avoid misunderstandings around sensitive issues, it’s important that everyone is using the same language. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has pulled together a glossary to help you and your team get on the same page.

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The Alliance Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion resources, webinars, and group discussion forums—One of COA’s founding organizations and close partner, The Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, has a diverse spread of resources to help organizations work toward a just, fair, and inclusive society that contributes to everyone’s well-being. From tools to places for conversation, you’ll find it here.

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What’s the Difference Between Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity?— Though this General Assembly blog post is geared toward tech companies, its content applies to everyone. In it you’ll find a good breakdown of the differences between diversity, inclusion, and equity and how they’re related. There are also a few basic exercises that may be helpful for individuals to do on their own or with colleagues to further clarify the definition of each.  

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Diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants share a script to respond to racist microaggressions at work so you know exactly what to say in the moment—This article from Business Insider could be helpful particularly for staff of color, because it talks about how to approach and respond to microaggressions. It’s also helpful to organizations for learning about microaggressions and how they may or may not be perpetuated in the workplace.

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Urgently Looking for Anti-Racism Training for Your Company? Start Here.—This Medium article gives a blunt examination of where diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at an organization often stand, which can provide a kick in the pants to get things started. It offers a nice set of questions and points to consider when engaging in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

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11 Books To Read If You Want To Be A More Inclusive Leader—This post from Forbes provides a great roundup of books that take on different aspects of EDI work. Each helps leaders (or aspiring leaders) to enhance “soft” skills and tackle implicit or unconscious biases to become more inclusive. It’s a great place to dive deeper into specific areas of interest and is sure to provide great food for thought for professional development work or even staff book clubs.

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Racial Equity Tools Library —Hungry for more resources than are offered here? This is a great database of information and tools to support individuals and organizations working to achieve racial equity.  This library is the product of a collaboration between several social policy focused national organizations, it offers tools, research, tips, curricula and data for anyone to use and learn from. Here you will find resources about justice at every level – in systems, organizations, communities and the culture at large.

What resources (publications, writers, researchers, etc.) have been helpful to you or your organization in promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion? Share them in the comments below!

A big thank you to Whitney Claire Thomey from the Nonprofit Risk Management Center for this guest post!

Certain aspects of the risk management discipline are more compelling than others. It’s easy to see how Enterprise Risk Management harnesses the power of your organization’s strategic initiatives and bolsters the opportunity for your mission to grow and succeed. Having candid conversations about daily risks can become a simple standard practice that helps keep preventable risks in check. And annual reviews of insurance policies are necessary and routine to protect the mission from liabilities.

However, business continuity planning (BCP) often feels like a burden and is an uncomfortable, time-consuming topic to discuss thoroughly. Therefore, it rarely receives the attention that it deserves. Instead of focusing on the negative implications that disruptions cause to your organization and your mission—which often leaves BCP stuck on the backburner—realize how having a clear plan to deal with business interruptions empowers and protects the vital work that your organization does to serve your community and constituents.

Why is BCP important?

The first step in moving your organization’s business continuity plan to the front and center is establishing its value to the organization. So, why is business continuity planning so vital to a mission-driven organization?

Know in advance the critical operations

From a power outage to a pandemic, disruptions never occur on a predictable schedule. Business continuity planning shifts your organization from a defensive state to an offensive one, making sure that nonprofit leaders won’t have to scramble to respond rapidly and improvise when unexpected outages pop up. Being able to pivot quickly can make or break stakeholder trust. A primary function of your business continuity plan is to establish which operations are mission-critical, which services and processes you can do without for a finite period, and which activities can be wound down or halted indefinitely.

When a disruption does occur, response time is crucial to ensure that indispensable services are available, allowing your mission to continue with minimal downside impact. Ideally, business continuity plans are created far in advance, under low-stress conditions, making it possible for cool heads to prevail during the disruption.

One-stop-shop for contingency information

Your business continuity plan collects all kinds of essential, necessary information that make it possible for vital operations to continue in the face of any type of disruption. And it’s likely that your organization already has many of the answers! However, it’s the potency of collation that makes a BCP so powerful. By taking the time to collect and catalog procedures, processes, and points-of-contact, you remove the stress associated with being able to quickly access required resources while also dealing with a crisis in real-time.

The hidden benefit

We have established that contingency planning helps identify in advance the operations and services that are mission-critical to your organization. You’ve seen that it can be leveraged as a one-stop-shop for essential resources and points of contact for your vendors and services. But did you know that there’s an inherent hidden benefit to contingency planning?

You might be surprised to learn that the true benefit of contingency planning lies not in quickly selecting Plan B or Plan C when a disruption occurs. The actual advantage lies in the process. When teams come together to execute planning exercises to brainstorm what disruptions might happen, how they will affect the organization, and what can be done to mitigate the damages they build resilience. Essentially, it flexes the muscles needed to make thinking on your feet a salient and normalized practice. Therefore, it’s not just the final plan but also the time spent discussing and preparing a business continuity plan that helps prepare your nonprofit.

Driven by diversity

If you’ve begun drafting a business continuity plan for your organization and watched it die on the vine or get back-burnered for a more pressing project, the temptation to go it alone is enticing. However alluring it might seem to sit down and hammer out all the details without the organizational drag of a committee, this is a suboptimal approach.

A practical business continuity plan examines the organization with a holistic view. No one department or managerial level has all the answers. BCP cannot be solely focused on information technology any more than it can only consider boots on the ground operations. As organizations move through business impact analysis exercises and begin identifying the crucial areas of service that must not be interrupted, diverse perspectives make all the difference. Establishing a team of individuals representing a variety of functional groups and with differing levels of responsibility will ensure that no stone is left unturned.

Getting buy-in

It might seem like an insurmountable task to find team members who will want to hunker down and run the marathon of creating a business continuity plan. However, don’t assume that your colleagues won’t be interested! Start by asking for volunteers. It’s human nature to worry, and uncertainty causes stress and anxiety. Being involved in an effort to establish plans for combatting risk has the potential to ease anxiety and make people feel better.

People decide whether to buy-in to things when they have a stake in the investment. Consider how accomplished you feel after completing a big DIY project! This is the concept of the “IKEA Effect.” Even if you only assemble something, you immediately have a sense of ownership and accomplishment. Asking staff members to help shape the plan allows their voices and concerns to be heard and safeguards responsibilities, programs, and services that are important to them.

Break the glass! Don’t keep your BCP a secret. There is a tendency to think of continuity planning, crisis management, and succession planning as organizational secrets. Nothing in your BCP should be embarrassing or contain information staff shouldn’t know. Making the plans public among your internal stakeholders will give them comfort and empowerment to be part of the process.

Get the word out

Knowing that the organization is prepared to weather difficult times can be comforting to staff, stakeholders (your board and funders), and the community you serve. An important piece of the business continuity planning process is sharing your plans with a broad audience. With that in mind, your communications should be targeted accordingly; the message that you send to staff about the plan and decisions for enacting it won’t be the same as what you share with your community funders.

When preparing messaging about your BCP, consider creating some criteria to help you group stakeholders to ensure that the right information gets to each person. You might ask questions such as:

Insiders – Board, Management, Staff

Some staff and management may already be somewhat aware of your organization’s business continuity plan since they likely participated in the process on some level. However, everyone inside your organization should know that the plan exists, where it exists (whether there’s a hard copy or where the digital files can be found), and the steps for activating it when an event occurs. The final step is critical, as not every incident may warrant a deviation from “business as usual.” As we mentioned before, the plan shouldn’t be a secret; it’s an invaluable asset!

External – Community, Public

The people you serve and those who support your mission will take comfort knowing that the organization has a plan to sustain and continue mission-critical activities when the going gets tough. However, there’s no need to mire them down in the nitty-gritty details of how you will shift to Plan B when the need arises. A simple one-page document with clear contact information is what the public needs to know about your response. Start with messaging you have developed for any recent disruption and tweak it to be easily customized for other situations.

If a mid to wide-spread impact occurs that causes the nonprofit to radically alter services to your community or necessitates a fundraising campaign to help support during the time of need, you’ll need to communicate requirements and changes to this stakeholder group clearly. Consider distributing your message through a variety of sources, making it easily accessible to many people.  Consider these possibilities:

Vendors

Maintaining an open flow of communication with your essential vendors will ensure that expectations and obligations are met even when you can’t do business like you usually would. Involving your vendors in your BCP plans will make sure that services you rely on them for will be available and operating without impact during the disruption. Points of contact may change, or the types of services that your partners can provide could be altered. Therefore, an essential step in a good vendor relationship is to have clear, open communication!

Test the waters

"Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good." --Malcolm Gladwell Outliers: The Story of Success

Having a plan isn’t enough. BCPs should be rigorously and regularly tested. As with many risk management tactics, business continuity planning isn’t a linear “one time” event. It’s a cycle that should be refined and revisited repeatedly.

The best-laid plans…

Testing is a powerful step in the BCP cycle. It is during this phase that you breathe life into the pages of your contingency plans. Executing simulations strengthens the plans that you captured by verifying that they are functional and appropriate. Your tests allow you to calmly and systematically identify any weaknesses or gaps, confirm that the objectives are met, and improve upon the drafted systems and processes. Each time your BCP is put through rigors is an opportunity to update and improve as your organization evolves and adapts. Each time trials are conducted, team members can evaluate the response and develop proficiency for the contingency. The real beauty of testing comes in being able to deliver the developed response under ideal, no-stress situations.

You say tomato, I say tomahto

Options for testing your plans are as varied as there are missions and organizations. The variety of testing options and methods means that it’s easy to find a right-sized approach for your organization, team members, and plan. Finding the best fit makes testing a reality for all organizations and eliminates excuses.

You may choose one testing method or several so long as the approach ensures that objectives mentioned above—identifying weaknesses and strengthening processes, to name a few—are met. At a minimum, consider a plan review with team members outside of the initial drafting committee. Receiving feedback from staff who weren’t a part of the planning process will shed light on any areas that were omitted or misunderstood.

Executing more complete simulations through tabletop exercises, walkthrough drills, and full functional recovery tests will provide an added layer of credibility to the plans you’ve drafted. Tabletop exercises could be completed during team meetings for your organization’s functional groups, and simulation testing can a specially scheduled all-hands meeting. The amount of time needed for each of these different methods varies greatly, and therefore gives staff and volunteers an opportunity to thoroughly vet the processes and procedures in your organization’s BCP.

Lather, rinse, repeat

Analysis, evaluation, planning, and testing must occur on a regular schedule to be genuinely useful. Making testing and training routine will ensure that when a disruption occurs, your organization will be prepared to respond as seamlessly as possible.

Testing timelines, just like your plans, must be built to suit. Some factors that will impact how often testing should occur are the size of your organization, availability of personnel (paid staff and volunteers), resources at your disposal, and the maturity level of the business continuity plan itself. What’s right for an organization in your sector might not be right for your organization! Build a testing program that makes sense for you and you increase the likelihood of its success.

Consider various employment milestones as touchpoints for your testing process. Employee and volunteer onboarding are excellent times to communicate and train new stakeholders on the plan. Their unique perspectives may offer a fresh look at methods, so incorporating this feedback will help strengthen organizational resilience. Some organizations find it helpful to set aside time quarterly, annually, and bi-annually to conduct larger-scale run-throughs. Putting these on an organizational calendar will allow departments and staff to plan and secure needed time for these intense practice sessions.

Another way to test and review your plan is to examine the contingency operations any time a significant change is made to a process or system. The plan can be reviewed and tested in smaller, digestible chunks by examining points-of-contact, lists, and procedures when changes are made. If your organization goes through an annual vendor review, take that time to ensure all contact information in your plan is current and correct.

If you have outside vendors that provide mission-critical services, consider including them in your testing protocols. For example, if your nonprofit is a human services agency that contracts with a bus company to transport clients, this outside partner provides a critical service that should be part of your exercises. At a minimum, make sure you know they have a BCP and who your points of contact will be if there’s a disruption.

Don’t let this valuable organizational resource simmer forgotten on the stove. Bring the discussion to a full boil with staff, management, and your board. The powerful resource that results will ensure the protection and safety of your organization’s mission.

What a deeper dive into BCP? Download The Business Continuity Planning issue of Risk Management Essentials, here.

The views, information and opinions expressed herein are those of the author; they do not necessarily reflect those of the Council on Accreditation (COA). COA invites guest authors to contribute to the COA blog due to COA’s confidence in their knowledge on the subject matter and their expertise in their chosen field.

Whitney Claire Thomey

Whitney Thomey serves as Project Manager at the Nonprofit Risk Management Center (NRMC). Whitney’s diverse professional experience includes project management duties in local government, legal services, web & content development, human resources, and bicycle mechanics and tour operations. Her background in Anthropology and Ethnology brings a refreshing perspective to examining internal operations and processes. Whitney earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the College of William and Mary.

The most vulnerable members of society have also been the hardest hit by the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic. The work of nonprofit organizations serving those populations continued largely uninterrupted over the past several months—despite sparse protective gear for staff, thinly-stretched funds, and minimal to no national guidance about how to safely proceed.

Behavioral health centers, foster care services, homeless and women’s shelters, and many other human and social services organizations have not shut down. They have been navigating urgent and rapidly changing issues on the fly to keep their essential staff safe as they deliver critical services.

The Council on Accreditation (COA) discussed the changes and challenges of recent months with eight of our Sponsoring Organizations, which are nonprofit membership bodies comprised of organizations that provide human and social services (many of whom are accredited by COA).  Sponsoring Organizations serve as critical advisors to the COA, helping us understand the accreditation needs of provider agencies, industry trends, and environmental challenges within the human and social service landscape. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have played a central role in helping their member agencies figure out how to safely continue operating in unfamiliar terrain.

We wanted to take a moment to recognize their work and highlight the innovation and creativity that emerged during this difficult time. Their stories illustrate best practices in “continuous evolution” and “resilience” that help organizations push through difficult times.

Shifting priorities

High levels of uncertainty have been a constant since March. Every organization has had to re-evaluate priorities and re-direct resources accordingly.

“One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned from the past few months is the concept of truly listening to members. Never has that been more critical,” said Mohini Venkatesh, Vice President of Business Strategy at the National Council for Behavioral Health (National Council). “We had to figure out how to represent the full continuum of experience of our members —from those serving wealthy communities to the underserved—in an environment where everyone’s experience was highly variant and changing fast.”

High-frequency membership surveys and town hall meetings facilitated by the CEO of  National Council helped them keep the biggest challenges facing members front and center. Members’ inability to access to personal protective equipment (PPE) surfaced as a high priority early on. A survey of its members found that nearly 83% of behavioral health organizations did not have enough PPE for two months of operations.

When National Council put out a mass call to its members about PPE, it received requests for roughly 2 million masks within 48 hours. Although completely outside of its normal focus, National Council moved quickly to find a manufacturer and contractor that could fulfill and distribute its’ members PPE order.

The Network of Jewish Human Service Agencies (NJHSA) also went into action to provide PPE for its members after hearing safety concerns from agencies that interact with high-risk senior populations and hospice patients. It collaborated with several other organizations to do a group bulk purchase of PPE.

Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA)who serves millions of people per year, has distributed $6.1 million to agencies for COVID-19-related disaster grants and helped providing PPE, delivering almost 2 million face masks, 650 gallons of hand sanitizer, and gloves, masks, shields, and gowns.  Across their network of facilities, they have seen a 50%-70% increase in clients seeking assistance including a broader demographic than low-income and poor households that traditionally walk through their doors including an increase in middle-class families who lost their jobs as the pandemic surged.

Rapid coalition-building

Collaboration was also central to the work of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC), a nonprofit financial counseling organization, as states started to lockdown. With many Americans facing sudden unemployment or a dramatic reduction in work hours, financial stresses were running high – people needed short-term relief from paying credit card bills, mortgages, and other debts.

NFCC recognized that consumers needed an immediate short-term solution, regardless of where they sought counseling. They took a lead role in collaborating with other nonprofit credit counseling agencies, credit card issuers, lenders, and regulators to develop a national emergency payment relief program. The program allowed consumers to skip payments without penalties or damage to their credit rating.

“We experienced five years-worth of progress in a period of five weeks,” said Bruce McClary, Vice President of Marketing for NFCC. “It would have been an impossible goal to achieve if we had not already built strong relationships with key industry stakeholders and developed a solid communication framework.”

Facilitating communication and problem-solving

One of the top priorities for nearly every organization we interviewed was facilitating communications between its members to problem-solve.

The Alliance for Strong Families and Communities (Alliance), which is comprised of a variety of nonprofit human services organizations and state associations, initiated regular pulse surveys to assess members’ most immediate needs. The lack of guidance about how to deal with rapidly changing COVID-19 developments was a major stress point.

“Being nimble and taking risks with our communication strategies was crucial,” said Lenore Schell, Senior Vice President of Strategic Business Innovation at the Alliance. “Our guiding principal was to act as the facilitators, not the experts. We launched webinars in the early stages of the pandemic knowing we had few answers to provide, but it created an environment of trust for dialogue with and between members.”

The Association of Children’s Residential Centers (ACRC) also positioned itself as a communications hub for its members, which are residential centers for children. They couldn’t close down services and had to quickly figure out how to keep residents and staff safe in a setting where it is nearly impossible to social distance.

“Meeting the needs of behaviorally challenged young people is already tough work. And the COVID-19 pandemic created additional complexity at every level,” said Kari Sisson, Executive Director of the ACRC. “We quickly realized that the field needed a way to safely exchange information to develop policies, procedures, and best practices – and learn from others’ experiences.”

Affinity groups that were created before the pandemic served as a critical information-exchange for members. An affinity group that served kids with autism and severe brain injuries was able to learn a great deal from an agency in Massachusetts that was hit hard by COVID-19 – it helped peers think through how to plan for adjustments to family visit polices, establishing isolation units, and other safety issues.

Providing opportunities for peer collaboration became an immediate focal point for the Child Welfare League of America as well; it is comprised of agencies that serve vulnerable children and families. In the early stages of the pandemic, they gathered a small group of agencies from the hardest-hit states including New York and Washington to discuss challenges and lessons learned. CWLA also initiated “open mic” weekly conversations to let all member agencies voice their struggles and exchange information about what was working.

“We became a funnel for information for the industry, helping members navigate how to put new policies and protocols into place,” said Julie Collins, Vice President of Practice Excellence for CWLA. “We are still receiving daily inquiries from agencies about how others are dealing with specific issues.”

CWLA shared the intelligence from its various forums with its entire network of members via webinars and best practice newsletters. Topics spanned a wide range of issues from helping foster parents manage e-learning to guidance on recruiting and training staff virtually to establishing protocols for an employee that tests positive for COVID-19. They also arranged for Congressional representatives to hear directly from small agencies about their concerns.

Advocating change 

As the COVID-19 lockdown hit different parts of the U.S., health and human service agencies had to abruptly transition as much as possible to virtual mode, often with little warning. Telehealth services suddenly became the norm instead of the exception.

“Initially, the government and insurance providers were only allowing telehealth services that used both video and audio capabilities. We had to help our agencies fight for allowing telephone-only services,” said Reuben Rotman, CEO and President of Network of Jewish Human Service Agencies (NJHSA). “There are big segments of the population that don’t have access to a computer or the internet, or they simply don’t know how to use it.”

For example, one of the agencies under NJHSA was working with a patient suffering from agoraphobia who had not left her house for nearly a year. Her therapist was able to counsel her via Zoom sessions – a more relaxing environment for the patient – and actively workshop steps that reduced her anxiety about getting into her car.

Although shifting to telehealth so quickly presented numerous challenges, it is also brought to light the effectiveness of alternative approaches.

“Telehealth is helping agencies live the true value of person-centered care – delivering treatment remotely to those who prefer that option,” said Venkatesh of National Council. “While many questions linger, the rapid deregulation of telehealth opened the flood gates. It’s clear that virtual services have great value, and we’ll need to help regulators understand the need for a hybrid model moving forward.”

Nancy Ronquillo, CEO of Children’s Home Society of America, the oldest network of child-welfare agencies in the U.S., said that their members expressed similar sentiments about shifting to virtual visits and counseling with families. “For some families, doing a 15-minute phone call a few times per week instead of a one-hour home visit with an agency worked much better,” said Ronquillo. “When agencies were freed from their traditional boundaries, it helped them test and realize how alternative strategies can work better for some kids and families.”

Acting quickly

Health and human service agencies were overwhelmed with the logistics of managing day-to-day operations, leaving little room for them to process new developments. Many of the organizations we interviewed took on this “processing” role, serving as a source of clarity on fast-moving critical issues.

When the U.S. Small Business Administration announced details about the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, Children’s Home Society of America provided immediate guidance to its members so they could quickly plug into the application process. They also facilitated one-on-one calls between CEOs of its member agencies to troubleshoot the nuts and bolts of working with banks on the loans.

At (CCUSA), they have continued to push throughout the pandemic for the availability of stimulus funds and increased funding for programs like the Emergency Food and Shelter Program to support the most vulnerable of populations. 

The Alliance sent communications about PPP almost daily, highlighting key details about eligibility, deadlines, and how the process worked. Many of the Alliance’s members said that without those communications, they would have missed out on the PPP loans.

Looking ahead

Uncertainty continues to linger for the foreseeable future. Short-term changes are putting long-running challenges into sharp focus, giving nonprofit organizations a chance to think more creatively about how they deliver value to those they serve. We are inspired by the spirit of collaboration and resilience within the nonprofit world to continue to serve while tackling unforeseen challenges.

COA’s President and CEO, Jody Levison-Johnson recognizes that COVID-19 has been and will continue to be a game changing experience. “COA is continuing to evolve to ensure that our standards and processes provide the greatest impact on the people and communities served by human and social service organizations.  We thank the entire COA community for all of the work being done during these challenging times to ensure the continuity and quality of service delivery to the most vulnerable of populations.” 

If we can be of any assistance, please let us know how we can help. 

Over the past few months, COVID-19 has forced many challenges and changes to the forefront. Our ability to meet them depends on the strength of our community.  

In that spirit, COA reached out to our Sponsoring Organizations to cover something that hasn’t been in the news as much lately: how those in the human and social service community have been navigating the pandemic. The resulting article includes a wealth of information, inspiration, and lessons learned. From how agencies navigated shifting priorities to how they formed coalitions, from how they facilitated communication to how they are advocating for change, you can read all about it here.  

We want to offer huge thanks to those who participated—the National Council for Behavioral Health, the Network of Jewish Human Service Agencies, the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, the Association of Children’s Residential Centers, Child Welfare League of America, and Children’s Home Society. It is inspiring to see that spite of all the uncertainty, many in the human and social services community have come together to continue to support those in need. After all, the most vulnerable members of society have also been the hardest hit by the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

What have you learned in your community? What resources have been or would be helpful? What challenges still lie ahead? Share it with us here.  

Thank you for all that you do and continue to do during these challenging times. 

A big thank you to Ruben Mina, LMSW for this guest post!

Can you tell me the history of your community?

Can you tell me some histories of your community?

Yes, histories.

Do you ever ask these questions of adolescents with whom you work? There is a distinction between the two questions. The first question focuses on one story: the prevailing story of how a community came to be what it is. It feels like asking adolescents to pull something in from the past, make sense of it and connect to it.

The second question asks adolescents to tell histories of their community. It invites them to share the who, what, how, and why about the people, institutions, political forces, cultures, and much more that make their community dynamic. Like adults, adolescents have a range of experiences in the communities to which they belong that are rooted in traditions they observe, inequities or injustices they endure or witness, and forms of oppression about which they are aware. They deserve the space to tell their stories. Each individual experiences and interprets life in their community in ways that cannot, and should not, be captured by a single history. By creating space for adolescents to share their varied perspectives and experiences, we are supporting their social and emotional development.

This is not about adolescents being unable to make sense of standard accounts of history. Nor is it about making up stories. It is about engaging adolescents in critical thinking and critical dialogue so that the histories they see, feel, and live each day are amplified. This deepens their connectedness to their respective communities, cultivates empathy, and provides a foundation for them to work collectively to transform their communities.

Mapping histories

While both questions at the beginning of this blog post could create opportunities for shared learning, focusing on multiple histories of a community does more. It invites adolescents to further develop self-efficacy by telling and showing one another the ways they view the world around them. Youth-serving programs want to build adolescents’ sense of self-efficacy, while letting them know that their voices matter. We let them know their voices matter when the learning that happens in human service organizations honors their perspectives.

Earlier in my career, I developed a group activity called “Community Stories” as a way to center adolescents’ experiences, while facilitating their exploration of ways they could transform their communities. This activity has helped adolescents in the Bronx in grade levels ranging from upper elementary school to high school identify and raise awareness about issues such as domestic violence and a lack of neighborhood parks that were impacting their daily lives.

Community Stories take the form of maps that reflect adolescents’ insights about experiences they have in a community to which they belong. It integrates numerous concepts and approaches, including: popular education concepts (participatory, group-oriented), photovoice, and community asset mapping, as well as literacy-building activities. The maps require basic art supplies and no art skills; they are animated by the dialogue adolescents engage in about the ways a group 1) experiences a shared community and 2) envisions its transformation. 

This activity allows adolescents to explore a community they identify with in creative, empowering ways, and is intended to engage them in a communal exercise. Constructing maps to tell community stories allows adolescents to reimagine their communities and envision their transformation. By trusting and engaging the expert wisdom of adolescents’ lived experiences, you are letting them know that you value their agency.

Before creating maps, the group must identify a community to which they feel connected and would like to represent on a map. Since communities are not strictly defined by physical borders, it is vital to encourage consideration of non-geographic communities (i.e. community of teen activists). This is crucial for two reasons. First, adolescents are in the developmental stage of exploring membership in groups based on interest, values, and identity, not solely geography. Secondly, this allows for greater inclusivity, particularly for adolescents who experience oppression or marginalization as a result of others’ targeting them based on identity or perceived identity.

These maps are populated by what I have termed “characters” (feel free to use different terminology). “Characters” are representations of those elements that impact adolescents the most (i.e. institutions, places, events, policies). As a facilitator, I have found it helpful at this stage to engage adolescents in naming the dynamic relationships between people and other elements of a community and the meanings of such relationships.

Below is a description of the activity, with facilitator instructions.

Creating the maps

Benefits of the activity:

Framing questions to ask at the beginning, and revisit throughout to encourage dialogue:

Step #1 – Map design

Ask participants to name a community they belong to and want to transform and/or take action in response to an inequity and/or oppression that has been individually or collectively experienced. Instruct the group to create a map that features “characters” (i.e. places, buildings, institutions, policies, rules) that comprise their community (geographical or non-geographical). Pay attention to group dynamics to ensure an equity of voices in the decisions of what gets placed on the map. For non-geographical communities, participants could use systems, policies, and/or institutions as “characters” that impact the community. Relationships and power dynamics can be shown by giving “characters” different sizes (i.e. the bank is the biggest thing on the map because of its impact on the community’s economic state).

Step #2 – Mapping the story

Introduce the word balloon for dialogue between “characters” on the map and thought bubble to see the inner thoughts of a given “character”, and explain their purposes.  

Word Balloon Thought Bubble.png

Present the reflection questions below and instruct participants to use word balloons and thought bubbles to represent dialogue between the “characters” about the transformation or oppression that was identified in step #1. Reflective questions may include:

Participants should then discuss the questions or other questions that may resonate with the group and write responses on the word balloons and thought bubbles. Participants can then place the shapes on the corresponding “characters” on the map.

Step #3 – Expanding the story

Introduce two tools (adapted versions of “flashback, flash-forward” and “hot-seat the character”) that the group will use to engage in critical dialogue. Prompt the group to think about what the “characters” would say if they could flashback or flash-forward in time. For example, if a park is represented on the map, a flashback question could be: what would this park have said was its experience with gentrification 10 years ago?  

Next, invite a group member to “hot-seat” another “character”. Group members then get to pose questions to the “character” that are discussed as a group. The focus can be on expanding upon what was written in the word balloons/thoughts bubbles, or what was shared in the flashback and flash forward discussions. For example, a group member might “hot-seat” a group mate’s school “character” and ask: why do you want school administrators to do more to make families feel welcome in the school? Such a question, and others, could engage the group in deeper discussions about school-community relationships.

Step #4 – Processing, closing, action steps

This final step provides a way for the group to reflect on their experiences going through the activity. The group may also draw connections to potential future actions they could take related to the issues represented on their maps. I have found sitting or standing in a circle with the map inside of the circle as the most engaging way to facilitate this step.

The questions below are recommended, but are not the only ones that you could ask.

These steps are about adolescents’ ability to make meaning of their community, and treats them as the subjects of their own learning. My experiences facilitating Community Stories have shown me that adolescents grow more comfortable discussing issues that resonate with their individual and collective identities when given the space to do so. While that can take various forms, hopefully, Community Stories will serve as another approach that you can use with adolescents who are looking to change their communities.

The views, information and opinions expressed herein are those of the author; they do not necessarily reflect those of the Council on Accreditation (COA). COA invites guest authors to contribute to the COA blog due to COA’s confidence in their knowledge on the subject matter and their expertise in their chosen field.

Ruben Mina, LMSW

Ruben Mina, LMSW, is a social work community practitioner with close to 15 years of experience in youth development and education. He currently works for the New York City Department of Education alongside an amazing group of folks who are dedicated to achieving equity for students in all schools and districts throughout New York City. His work involves leading workshops for educators on topics like implicit bias awareness, racial equity, and anti-oppression. He also works with educators at the school- and district-levels on creating equitable policies and practices. He serves on the Masters Exam Committee for the Association of Social Work Boards. As a born and bred Brooklyn native, he loves music from any and everywhere, and classic Twilight Zone episodes. He is excited to begin pursuing a doctoral degree this fall.

A big thank you to Shondelle Wills-Bryce, MSW of Sisters Keeping InTouch, inspires, LLC for this guest post!

The peace and serenity of a spring morning is undeniable. Take a moment wherever you are and observe the synergy of nature surrounding you. During my moment, I heard birds chirping, I felt the cool breeze on my arms, and I saw greenery all around. I smiled in amazement, thinking about how nature seemingly effortlessly comes together to bring us beautiful days. I then found myself perplexed about how we as people and we as professionals make “coming together” –aka partnership–so complicated.  

Whether you choose to use science, religious beliefs, observation, or a combination of all three, you cannot deny that Mother Nature is the queen of partnership. According to the Oxford dictionary, nature is “the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations” (emphasis mine). Each part of nature’s collective does its job without hesitation, and as a result, the system operates successfully.

The system of nature is so effective that even when humans disrupt its natural order, the system automatically adjusts. You may call one such adjustment global warming. However, if Mother Nature could say anything about her adjustment, she might simply say, “I am getting back on track because I am clear about my job and purpose for life on earth.” 

In my opinion, the words of Henry Ford describe partnership best:

"Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success." -Henry Ford

So, I challenge you to ask yourself, am I clear about my job and my purpose in my partnerships?

Successful partnerships at work

In my various personal and professional roles, I have witnessed the transformational power of partnerships. Some successful partnerships are used for positive impact; others, not so much. Let’s agree to spend our time focusing on the impact and qualities of successful partnerships in order to improve our own. 

The annual journal Partnership Matters examines the current thinking and practice in cross-sector partnerships. This journal was developed as a result of the growing recognition that partnerships between business, government, and civic organizations can effectively tackle the social, economic, and environmental challenges of the world. However, based on my experience “aging out” of NYC’s child welfare system, working for the New Jersey Department of Children and Families, and coaching millennial women, I would challenge the journal to include individuals, families, and communities in its examination.

NYC’s Child Welfare System

I was a timid and terrified 15-year-old when the Bureau of Child Welfare (BCW) (today known as New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS)) placed me in a Bronx group home with 21 other girls. The back story of how and why I was placed in the care of the state isn’t relevant at this time. What is relevant is how the partnerships within the child welfare system helped me become a valuable addition to society.

 To wit: The hospital that admitted me did not solely care for my fractured arm.  

  1. The hospital used a collaborative tool to ask me questions about my injury.
  2. The collaborative tool then triggered the hospital’s need to contact BCW for a closer look at my situation.
  3. BCW did not solely decide to remove me from the care of my family. BCW spoke to countless community partners (hospital, my school, my family, my neighbors, and me) to make that decision. 

The evidence of this successful partnership—and all the communication that it took — was me. Although I was a terrified 15-year-old with limited exposure to the realities of the world, I did not feel lost, and I did not feel alone. After spending six years in the care of BCW, I emerged an educated, responsible, and psychologically sound member of society. That was in large part thanks to this teamwork.

NJ Department of Children and Families (DCF)

15 years after leaving the care of New York City, I began working for New Jersey’s child welfare system (the Department of Children and Families, or DCF) as its Assistant Director of School Linked Services.  During my nine years with DCF, my office monitored the distribution and service delivery of $38M in state and federal funds to support school-based prevention and intervention programming. Partnership was key to DCF’s ability to serve children and families effectively, and critical to that was DCF’s strong partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF).  

During my last five years with DCF, my office was awarded an additional $6.5M in competitive federal funding.  In addition to putting forth and strong comprehensive grant application, I am confident the historical strength and integrity of DCF’s partnership with ACF played a role in the award decision. As a result, the funds expanded services to support NJ’s expectant and parenting youth (including young fathers) with evidence based services. My office had to partner within the department, across state departments, and with the local communities throughout New Jersey:

I will be honest: The time to coordinate, the patience to listen, and the willingness to compromise with these partners was not always easy. However, what made it a little easier was agreed upon goals, clearly documented working agreements (MOUs/contracts), and some good old fashioned open and honest dialog.

As a result of our collaboration, DCF more than doubled its support of expectant and parenting teens from 208 (female students) to 500+ (male and female students). One of the program goals was to prevent subsequent pregnancies while students were in school. I am proud to say that the outcome data reported less than 1% subsequent in-school pregnancies.

Coaching millennial women

At the age of 21, I was no longer allowed to be dependent on NYC’s child welfare system. The system prepared me to be on my own to the best of its ability; however, there was so much I had to learn on my own. I knew if I stayed focused and made all the “right” decisions, I could make it on my own. It worked. I did it–I learned how to survive by getting my college degree and a job to pay for my basic living expenses.

I may have been 28 years old when I felt like I could pause and take a breath. The breath allowed me to no longer worry about failing and worry about what “people” would say. That breath allowed me to truly look at life for its beauty and possibilities. That breath allowed me the luxury of connecting with myself to understand my goals and purpose to thrive in life.

It was about that age that I felt that maybe, just maybe, I was thriving in life. At the same time, I knew then and I know now that there is still so much thriving for me to do. At that age, I didn’t know who in my “real” life to ask for guidance. I’m not sure I even knew to ask. I wonder if my school or the system partnered with me more, I would have known how to really thrive.

What worked for me was finding incredible virtual mentors like Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey, Iyanla Vanzant and Suze Orman. The character of each of these women were attractive to me because they were authentic and partnered with the world to make it a better place. Today, I look around and see my former self in young women who have amazing potential but are struggling and doubting themselves.

According Pew Research Center, millennial women (women born between 1981-1996) are better educated and hold a bachelor’s degree at a higher rate their male counterparts. I strongly believe that when the millennial woman takes leadership in her life, she will positively impact her partner, family, and community.

Therefore, approximately two years before I left DCF, I began my own personal development firm, Sisters Keeping In Touch, Inspires (SKIT). In this work, I am committed to partnering with millennial women and those who want to help them not just survive but thrive. This purpose-driven work is accomplished in partnership with millennial women through public speaking, blogging, and facilitated experiences.

In these partnership with millennial women, we work to uplift and strengthen them, so that each can build the personal and professional life of her dreams.  When a woman does her building, she will avoid and/or minimize unhealthy relationships with her partner(s), children, finances, friends, and career.  We work through an ART process, where she is the artist in her life:

Awaken the millennial woman's awareness of her conscious and subconscious thought and its influence on her life. Reveal to the millennial woman how to identify and lead her support team who will celebrate and hold her accountable to her dreams. Transform the millennial woman's thinking and behavior to confidently build the personal and professional life of her dreams.

In my work with millennial women, they have felt heard, encouraged, and connected with people and resources needed to thrive. Visit our site to see some stories of success. 

These are just three examples from my world of successful partnerships. I am quite sure you have examples of successful partnerships surrounding you as well. 

Closing thoughts: Recipes for success

There is an abundance of articles, journals, and opinions about what ingredients go into a successful partnership. My personal favorite is the guidance provided in Don Miguel Ruiz’s book, The Four Agreements:

1. Be impeccable with your word by speaking with integrity and carefully choosing your words before saying them aloud. 2. Don't take anything personally by having a strong sense of who you are and understanding that we each person have unique experiences that shape our thoughts. Therefore, another person's behavior truly has nothing to do with us. 3. Don't make assumptions by asking questions to make sure the communication is clear between you and everyone involved. 4. Always do you best by not judging yourself and doing your best at all times to avoid regret.

These four agreements have served me well as a recipe for my success in cultivating and managing partnerships. I challenge you incorporate these agreements in your partnership relationships and experience the transformation. When you do, you may be able to replicate the clear and effective partnership synergy mother nature has shown us in all her splendor.

The views, information and opinions expressed herein are those of the author; they do not necessarily reflect those of the Council on Accreditation (COA). COA invites guest authors to contribute to the COA blog due to COA’s confidence in their knowledge on the subject matter and their expertise in their chosen field.

Shondelle C. Wills-Bryce, MSW

Shondelle C. Wills-Bryce, a master’s level administrative social worker, public speaker and conversation facilitator founded Sisters Keeping In Touch, inspires to help millennial women thrive and not just survive. Shondelle has developed personal resilience having lost her mother to Breast Cancer at 18 months and aging out of New York’s foster care system.  Shondelle is the mother of two amazing young women and she is married to her husband and best friend who motivate her each day.