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Establishing: Securing Long-Term Sustainability

The easiest time to maintain the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) mission is during and immediately following an emergency, as adversity often unites a community.

Although adversity results in many positive effects of spontaneous efforts to collaborate in times of need, we can improve our response capabilities by planning ahead and implementing a response system that can be activated responsibly during an emergency.

One of the challenges faced by the MRC is ensuring that the effort is an ongoing, national volunteer movement during non-emergencies. The MRC’s long-term sustainability supports emergency activation, but also contributes to the ongoing health needs of our communities. The MRC can support medical and health volunteerism during the year and in the future.

Ideally, everything you do to support coordination with local response partners, develop your volunteers’ capabilities, and establish a solid internal organization will contribute to your MRC’s long-term sustainability.

However, from an organizational and administrative perspective, issues key to these efforts consist of:

• Ensuring that your mission and community contribution are sufficiently broad
• Securing the resources you will need to maintain your organization over time

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Last Updated on 8/23/2006