Primary Prevention Institute

Primary Prevention Institute Organizational Development & Sustainability Leadership Brainstorming Session March 21, 2013

STRUCTURES How do we build organizational capacity? ● Mission – including it in our mission and vision statement ● Strategic plan – ensuring there are prevention specific goals in our organization’s strategic plan ● Staff/ board orientation – incorporating prevention into staff orientation and training. Currently this is not happening for new hires, and this seems like a simple way to begin building organizational prevention capacity. The same is true for board member orientations. ● Integrate into existing structures – Some of the organizations have committees comprised of staff and leadership from affiliated agencies or different branches. There is an opportunity to include primary prevention on the agendas of those committees to help sustain the learning and get other staff motivated to do primary prevention work. Another organization shared that in order to build Board buy-in and ownership; they have incorporated a prevention presentation by staff at every board meeting.

Challenges ● Limited primary prevention knowledge and understanding of PPI tools etc. of board and staff members; this may make motivating them difficult. ● Time – Board agendas are tight and they often already volunteer on committees and attend events, etc. This may make it difficult to increase capacity. ● Continual staff turnover means continual training. ● Depending on where you are with your organizations’ strategic planning process, it may be difficult to go back and incorporate prevention. ● Staff may feel like using some of the PPI tools for prevention planning and evaluation is just “one more thing” they have to do; layered on top of their already full plates. ● Money/ resources to dedicate staff time to collecting and analyzing data to improve programs when you are trying to keep programs open and services going with less staff. ● It is really a cultural shift that we are asking people to make – which is very challenging in itself. We are asking people to use a process for planning and evaluating their prevention work that’s different than what they have traditionally done. This “new” process requires commitment, training, time, and support. However, if we can get organizations to buy-in to the fact that this is indeed an effective process that’s worth investing in on the front end; they will see that the money will follow. That has been Women’s Resource Center’s experience and they’ve seen it work at Gaudet Middle School.

PROCESSES How do we build organizational capacity? ● Practice, more staff included ● Staff meetings (program) – provide an opportunity for prevention to be on staff agenda, staff training and strategic thinking about program direction. ● PPI media sound bites – Intentional inclusion of prevention messaging into media interviews or press statements in response to a domestic violence homicide for example. ● PPI orientation – this was a recurring theme – the need to include PPI into orientations ● PPI job descriptions – this also came up several times. By ensuring that PP is in multiple people’s duties, we all share the responsibility of doing the work. ● Annual Review and Annual Meeting includes PPI ● Websites - Incorporating links on our organizational websites (links to prevention partners and resources) lets the community know that we are deeply committed to prevention.

Challenges ● Staff size – if the organization is small and staff workload is great, prevention may fall off to the wayside. ● Staff may not feel connected to the work and view prevention as someone else’s job.

WILLINGNESS/MOTIVATION How do we build organizational capacity?  It’s important that PPI Not feel like it’s coming from the top down. It has to be a spreadable message. There is value of the PPI message coming from the staff up, while at the same time coming and being supported by the top. ● Resources in prevention are limited which is why boards really need to understand the value of it – so that they can look for resources for prevention with the same effort as intervention. ● Leadership support is critical!

Challenges ● Fear that this learning community falls apart/dies after the grant. ● This PPI process for planning and evaluation is time consuming.

Activities/Resources ● Continue this PPI Collaboration thru community learning/(newsletters or conference calls) possibly online. Keep this Community of Practice going beyond the grant cycle. ● Celebrating success with others – sharing with staff and other community stakeholders the impact PPI has had on staff and organization. More ideas on how to capture success stories needed. ● Ongoing prop.dev. for staff – It is critical for prevention practitioners to have access to ongoing training and technical assistance as they apply PPI tools, etc. ● Build PPI into staff work plans as a way to sustain the learning.