For an AmeriCorps program, you cannot meet your goals, have the kind of impact you want to have, or fulfill the grant obligations without your partners. When it works well, partnership can bring your idea to scale. Partner sites (host sites) allow you to reach more people with your current resources or even bring in more resources. You have the chance to do more with more.
However, you can’t control partners. If you place AmeriCorps members at a partner’s site, you are putting so much trust in that site and the people you partner with. You have to trust them and develop a relationship with them so you can depend on them to create a great member experience and follow the grant requirements. And you can not fire your partner, or discipline them, or have any other direct control over them, other than removing the member from the site and deciding whether or not to work with them in the future.
Mutually beneficial partnerships are what dreams are made of. When you hear a member talking about the great relationship they have with their supervisor at a host site it is a thing of beauty. When a host site is celebrating their AmeriCorps members’ work at a community event, your joy is doubled. When you work with multiple partners, it can translate to a network of trusted community members throughout your service area who can give AmeriCorps members a unique and attentive experience. It can give your organization a revenue model, balancing site match with grant funds. It can spread your reach to locations and within networks you never would have reached on your own.
We have big plans. We are solving big problems. We can’t do it alone. The relationships we build with our partners will last longer than the relationships with members. They are just as important, if not more so. Important and challenging.
This is why we are bringing you Managing MultiSite Programs on May 5th from 10:00-11:30 AM Pacific with Sharon Tewksbury-Bloom. Sharon oversaw one of the largest multi-site AmeriCorps programs in Arizona for 5 years. Since then she has provided training and technical assistance to more than 50 AmeriCorps programs throughout the United States as well as 16 State Service Commissions.
If you are an AmeriCorps program staff member who places members at multiple host sites, this workshop is for you. Whether or not those sites are connected to your parent organization or not, this training will still be relevant. This workshop may also be helpful to State Service Commission staff who are interested in better understanding the challenges that programs face in overseeing grants where the members serve at different locations or with partner sites.
Registration
If you’re an AmeriCorps staff member with an organization that uses the Impact Suite, the workshop is totally free for you! If you haven’t already received a free registration link, please connect with our Customer Success team.
For all others, use this link to register.