3.8  Improve Readiness to Sustain Efforts

If the community is deficient in its readiness to mobilize and sustain prevention activities, especially within the context of a coalition, you can employ several strategies for improvement.

Delineate rules, roles, and procedures. Develop an organizational chart with clearly specified roles, responsibilities, and organizational operating procedures. It improves credibility when approaching potential funding sources and helps establish the structure that staff and volunteers need to feel comfortable and understand how their contribution fits with the total effort. It should include job descriptions with duties and performance standards; job classifications and salary scales that delineate career paths; a formal bookeeping and recordkeeping system; policies and forms for reimbursements; and policies and procedures for handling various situations, such as dealing with the press.

Retain professionals. Take efforts to meet the personal needs of professionals, since not doing so increases the likelihood that they will abandon active, contributing participation. Incorporate staff members’ prevention project job responsibilities into their formal job descriptions since not doing so makes it possible that prevention project activities may be viewed as extracurricular and the first task to be ignored during times of heavy work load.

Retain volunteers. Rewards for volunteers are often intangible or not immediate. Help volunteers to feel that they are productive and essential members of the team. Conduct surveys to identify factors that contribute to volunteer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Incorporate that information into the process of recruiting and retaining volunteers. Find ways to publicly acknowledge the hard work of volunteers through awards, ceremonies, and rituals.