How do you identify and prioritize potential community partners for your project?

Partnerships would be about creating shared goals as well so one may need to be willing to Co-create programs with community partners in ways that are mutually beneficial.

When researching potential partners, you can use visual mapping tools to help you find the gaps in engagement, and make sure that you are seeking out support from community partners that is representative of the community you serve. You should minimize the chance of working with folks who are all from the same ZIP Code. You should maximize equitable engagement across the footprint.

Attend collaborative and/or networking meeting to help you learn more about your community and potential organizations and partner. This is a good way to also find commin ground, get to know individuals and build relationships.

Should not just consider how they will contribute to you but also how you can also contribute to them and have a bidirectional relationship. One should not just expect other organizations to give without consideration to thier needs.

This is a key point in the process to do a self-check to make sure that your own biases aren't influencing your conclusions. To avoid this, it is helpful to have them add to your assessment criteria in that step.

Missing the relationship elements of creating and sustaining partnerships and building relationship and trust with community partners. To continue a successful partnership it helps to build an open line of communication, build a strong relationship in meaningful ways such as supporting thier events and programs and vice versa.

It’s very important to build trust and reciprocity in community partnerships, ensuring a long term mutually beneficial relationship. Otherwise you risk partnerships being tokenizing or extractive.

Patience is the key. Strong relationships don't happen overnight, so take the time to build trust and establish the relationship. You want it a partnership relationship, not a transactional one. Though it may take time before you see the payoff, in the long run, the benefit will be much greater.

Building successful partnerships is also contingent on communication. I love having round table discussions with my partners to ensure that our goals stay aligned and that if there are any changes, they are communicated timely. How are you tracking your projects? I create spreadsheets and share them with my partners. They have full transparency of everything I am working on and the tasks that have been completed vs. pending. Communication is critical to building trust and long-term meaningful relationships.