Breakout session 2, Monday afternoon: Partnerships Across Sectors

Goals:

-Build capacity for volunteer monitoring
-Acknowledge and work to overcome barriers to communication between NGOs and agencies. Identify common ground
-Have agency employees and non-profits spend time working together and learning from each other
-Further co-housing of stewardship NGOs and land management agencies. Identify what isn’t working and what is.
-Create a system to match non-profits with agencies.
-Non-profits and land management agencies develop a long-range work plan to take to funders
-Possibly create a community-based clearinghouse of volunteers
-Possibly have a county-level volunteer coordinator to coordinate among stewardship agencies
-Find ways to reach new volunteers
-Address challenges: Conflicting policies that might effect how projects get completed; Different timetables for agencies and non-profits ie different fiscal years, funding cycles, etc.; Training requirements that federal or state agencies have that might not align with non-profits.

Actions:

-Do a cost/benefit analysis of stewardship programs to find out which are most effective
-Compile a directory of CO stewardship organizations, their expertise and contact info.
- Share information on the monitoring and reporting collaborations that are already occurring
-Market trainings to other NGOs and agencies and their volunteers
-Set up feedback structure between government agencies and NGOs
-Work together among NGOs to limit the number of different contacts that agencies have to manage (CYCA model)
-Survey of government agencies to see how public-NGO partnerships are and are not working

Resources:

-Agencies already have monitoring and reporting protocol in place
-Land management agencies have compiled a common “tool box” resource
-Successful existing partnerships between NGOs and agencies to learn from
-A directory of stewardship NGOs and their expertise to facilitate collaboration
-NGOs need better info from agencies on what kind of time line they work on