Sustainability Focus - Ways to Incorporate into Strategy
| Strategic Analysis | Needs Assessment/ Environmental Scan | Obtain up front participants' perspectives about their organisational and initiative-specific sustainability needs and wants. |
| Analysis of Funding Trends | Get a sense of what other funders are supporting or are willing to support and whether it matches the initiative's focus. Identify regional or community foundations that are potential supporters. | |
| Evidence About What Works | Include sustainability as a criterion when gathering evidence about what works. | |
| Theory of Change | Estimate how long the funder(s) need to commit to the initiative or its focus in order to make a difference. | |
| Theory of Sustainability | Determine what aspects of the initiative need to be sustained. Determine what needs to be in place to achieve sustainability. (E.g., Do long-term large grants engender dependency? Should funding be tapered?) | |
| Strategic Planning | Goals/Objectives | Make sustainability a goal and establish objectives for getting there. |
| Initiative Participant Selection | Develop selection criteria that fit with both the theory of change and the theory of sustainability. Make expectations about the funder's role in sustainability clear up front. Have participants include a plan for sustainability in proposals. | |
| Initiative Structure/Tactics | Provide structure that can support sustainability (e.g., matching funds, technical assistance, funder outreach, public relations). Include grantees whose role is to provide sustainability support. Give funders a role in achieving sustainability (e.g., outreach to community foundations, institution building, spin-offs, and endowments). | |
| Evaluation Design | Make sustainability an outcome to be tracked to feed back formative and summative information. Incorporate opportunities to report back on sustainability. Track contextual variables that will impact sustainability. | |
| Strategic Management | Evaluation Reporting | Build in points to ask, "Does this initiative deserve to be sustained?" Build in opportunities to reflect on and make midcourse changes based on what is being learned about sustainability. |
| Grantee Reporting | Develop periodic reporting mechanisms that can help grantees assess where they are in sustainability efforts. |
Source
"Sustainability: Does Evaluation Have a Role?" The Evaluation Exchange, Volume IX, No.3, Fall 2003: Harvard Family Research Project.
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