Partnership management

Key planning actions and operations activities

An important stage in the formalization of anti-trafficking partnership work involves agreeing on what trafficking looks like locally, how members define human trafficking, and on how to acheive goals set by the partnership to address trafficking in the Colorado context. There are multiple stakeholders involved in trafficking work and diverse strategies engaged to end trafficking. In order to be successful it will be vital to both honor the work that has already been done in your community and bring in new perspectives from those that may not have been invited to the table historically. It will also be essential to understand how your partnership relates to other local or regional bodies with an interest in human trafficking.

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Building your partnership

Form a planning team

Here are some tips for defining partnership vision, mission, and goals:

Get familiar with the current services for survivors in your state/region/community

Here are organizations that are funded specifically to support the needs of trafficking survivors statewide in Colorado:

Begin relationship-building and gain the support of local leaders

Here are some tips on building relationships within your partnership.

Here are some tips on building community engagement to support your partnership.

Here are some tips on navigating partnership dynamics:

Here are some tips on maintaining ethical communication standards.

Here is some guidance on using images ethically:

Setting goals in your partnership

Does your partnership foster shared goals?

Here are some tips for developing goals:

Developing a mission with clear goals supports trust and stability in a partnership and decreases the likelihood of conflict based on confusion around the role of partnerships.
Partnerships with clear and attainable goals were able to partner more effectively and build rapport as they worked together to accomplish specific tasks.
Partnerships that appeared most effective at meeting goals were those that combined representatives from multiple Ps and supported each of those partners to exercise equal voice and leadership in the group.
Explicit goals that were attainable in the short-term to medium-term were often met, providing measurable progress toward ending human trafficking and building trust and momentum within partnerships.

Developing a strategy for the work of your partnership

Do you have an action plan or mandate?

Here are some examples of action plans and partnership mandates:

How will you monitor and evaluate the work of the partnership?

Prepare your evaluation

Refer to your goals and decide what you want to assess and why.
Identify resources in your community to support evaluation, including existing data that may be available.
Determine the type of data to collect and collection methods that will be useful and feasible.
Select an evaluation design to fit your partnership needs (basic vs. advanced).
Determine the need for external help with evaluation planning and implementation.
Consider ways staff or members might be involved that will permit them to gain an understanding of how other programs or systems function.
Consider timeframes for data collection, review of results, and data-to-action planning.

Consider a logic model

Logic models can be used to guide the overall evaluation of the partnership.
A logic model is a systematic, visual method of describing the relationship between the partnership’s resources, planned activities, deliverables, and desired outcomes.
Issues addressed in a logic model should include: purpose/goal, external factors, inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes/impacts.

Understand the benefits of evaluation

Evaluation enables partnerships to improve their services and outcomes.
Clear data enables partnerships to engage stakeholders including the community, identify new members, and secure funders through shared findings.
Evaluation allows partnerships to identify gaps in services and better meet survivors’ needs.
Partnerships can track the effects of systems change.

Other questions to ask

How will knowledge from this evaluation increase the partnership’s ability to collaborate?
Which tasks, if done by team members, will build trust between members?
How can evaluation activities enhance relationships with people in the community?
How can evaluation activities be used to improve survivors’ access to services?
What are the limitations of evaluation? (What will not be learned and who will not be included?)

Have you considered conducting community resource mapping?

Here is why that can be useful:

Partnership operations

How will you conduct successful partnership meetings?

Identify the right team members to attend meetings

Create and prioritize goals

Sharing a mission, goals, and objectives is necessary for effective partnerships.
Members must be willing to break down barriers between disciplines and seek common ground to reach mutual goals rather than rely on agency-specific objectives.
Sharing common goals is integral to good leadership and creating a healthy environment for a team/partnership setting.

Develop ground rules for meetings

Set the norms norms or standards for partnership meetings.
Get members trained in appropriate procedural rules for specialized interactions.
Emphasize mutual respect, survivor confidentiality, and methods of conflict resolution.
Assure that members of the partnership understand and attend to power dynamics amongst members and work to build trust within the partnership.
Respect different views and opinions.
Acknowledge small successes along the way.