[Partnerships] "What's in it for me?"

[DFinn11346@aol.com]

Hi all!

I am responding as a consultant who has been working with adult literacy 
providers since the inception of the DOE mandated community planning process began 
back in the fall of 1999. [For those of you who are new to this process] that 
was when preliminary assets and needs assessments were prepared by 
neighborhood parnerships/coalitions as part of their five-year funding requests.  I am 
also responding as a community activist for the past thirty-three years and 
lifelong Boston resident. (That's fifty-six years, for the record.) 

I have to say that I have never (ever) heard one person, either in the course 
of this community planning process or in the course of my work as an 
activist, ask, "What's in it for me?"  Neither have I heard one stakeholder ask what 
would seem to be the more relevant question here: "What's in it for my 
organization?"

I think this is indicative of the kind of commitment most service providers 
have towards the constituencies and communities they serve. For most service 
providers, "Me" does not enter into the service provision equation.  People 
enter into human services either because of a commitment to a particular issue or 
ideology or because it is a career we've chosen at some point in our lives.  
Either way we are getting what is in it for us as individuals.

An organization, however, is driven by a mission and a set of values and it 
is within that mission and those values that the answer to why community 
planning is relevant and important is found. The same is true of businesses. 

I think our stakeholders, service providers and the business community alike, 
understand that an integrated, comprehensive system of adult literacy 
services promises to improve the lives of individual adult learners by providing them 
with the skills they need to improve their self-esteem and future prospects.  

I also think that most stakeholders know a literate population is a 
population that can move forward into higher education or job training and improve 
their families' prospects for economic survival as well as the economic and social 
well-being of our communities.

I think we need to rephrase the question.  The real issue is: "What's in it 
for us as a community and as a society?"

To do otherwise is to sell our stakeholders and our communities short.

Thanks for the soapbox!

finn