
	Search:

Getting Started: Negotiating With Response Partners

You and your local response partners must address several topics, which include, but are not limited to:

Responsibilities
Jurisdictional and other boundaries
Reporting structures
Utilization procedures
Communications protocols and systems

However, prior to these discussions, you and the local response partners must collaborate and consider what potentially will be required. Specific details will follow from this basic agreement.

Identifying Partnership Opportunities

Which local efforts are underway that the MRC can help support?
Which ongoing community needs might your MRC volunteers usefully respond to?
Which vulnerable populations of your community—low-income groups, non-English speakers, individuals with disabilities, etc.—could utilize your MRC volunteers’ services?

Identifying potential partners can stem from recognizing a shared mission or complementary function. For example, your MRC may be committed to promoting public health, similar to your public health department or other community health-focused organizations. Your MRC may be dedicated to supplementing emergency medical capabilities, similar to your area’s hospitals or emergency medical offices. If these shared missions are not in conflict with one another and do not duplicate services, there may be a natural fit between those organizations and your MRC volunteers.

You also may identify partners whose mission is similar and may want your volunteers to fill niches not addressed in their system. For example, MRC volunteers staffing an influenza clinic in a low-income neighborhood could attract buy-in from neighborhood residents—for the MRC and for public health initiatives. Conversely, a local group may utilize volunteer public health nurses. These volunteers might become part of your MRC during emergencies.

There may be a local volunteer or health exposition in which the MRC can participate in outreach efforts with other groups. Another volunteer group in your community might have developed a database to track volunteers, which can be used as a template to develop your own.

Local businesses also may recognize that your MRC’s ability to augment triage capacity at local hospitals during a complex disaster may expedite community recovery and minimize the long-term economic losses that often follow the immediate losses of any disaster.

If you encounter resistance as you network, consider whether this resistance refers to issues the MRC unit has not adequately considered or addressed in its vision or plan. Adjust accordingly and resubmit your modified proposal for review.

Regardless, agreeing to collaborate can be time consuming. Follow up first with the prospective partners with whom collaboration seems most obvious and easy to negotiate. Meanwhile, maintain communication with prospects that are harder to cultivate. It can take time for some people and organizations to understand how the MRC can benefit them, as it will take time to realize the different ways that MRC volunteers can contribute to your community.

To begin, all you need are statements of substantive interest from prospective partners and agreements to discuss the details of your collaboration. If possible, ask for letters of intent from these partners, which will promote clarity in your dealings with one another and show possible funding sources and other community champions that you have progressed toward developing your MRC. Others are more likely to support an effort if they see that there is buy-in from members of your community.

These agreements will be the strongest indicators that you are on the right track for your MRC. You also will be able to use these interactions and their outcomes to adjust and strengthen your overall plan. The basic idea is to maintain communications and discussions.

Previous | Table of Contents | Next

Last Updated on 8/15/2006