Right now we use this Google Sheet (private to the YPC team) to track our recruitment and our partners status. Now that we have so many new potential partners, especially, it’s outgrowing our Google Sheet. I’m thinking we need an update!
Hub
Create private categories for only team members to access
We can use our usual project status tags of #idea, #understanding, #exploring, #ready, #implementing, #evaluating, #done, and #documentation
We can use the Assign functionality to track who’s the contact for each member and each partner
Peerdom
We make each partner a “Peer” on Peerdom. They can then be members of different circles in a defined Partner role.
I just invited members of the Outreach Partnerships circle to the Hub and they’ve committed to testing out the Partners Tracker! In that process I figured out that I needed to update the welcome message. Haha. Totally should have done that before I invited new people.
We’ve now tested the partnerships tracker for 2 months. In that time, I am the only one who has used it to add a potential partner and to write updates.
I’m thinking that we can mitigate this by having a role whose domain includes tracking partnerships.
I just demoed the partnerships tracker with William and made the following change
Use chat-integration to automatically send new partnerships tracker topics to Slack to discuss
William recommended that I demo how to use it. Brainstorm:
How to Add Partner
Must tag with circle
Must tag with status
Topic Template
Title
Overview
Contact
Can leave things blank
Assign Partner Liaison
How Partnerships Tracker topic shows up in Slack
How To Update Partnerships Tracker
During Circle Meetings, filter for circle tag
Reply to topic for quick updates and discussions
If partnership moves to movement partner / mission partner status, would be valuable to create a shared permanent storage as well
Partnerships Folder in Google Drive
Partner Meeting Notes (for partners where you want to share the meeting notes)
Every partnerships tracker topic is a Wiki
Consider setting an automatic bump feature in this category so that we are reminded of partners that we have not updated in a while.
What’s each partnership status?
Idea: haven’t contacted or done any real research
Understanding: researching and understanding context
Exploring: in talks
Deciding: have a partnership agreement written out and now going through consent process
Ready: yay, everything’s been decided but not ready ready yet to move forward. Kind of like a holding place.
Implementing: getting next steps done
Evaluating: maybe we always set a 3 month review period and check in after that (make sure evaluation meeting is set on circle meeting notes or on people’s calendar)
Sharing: share out partnership in places that make sense (Peerdom, website, social media, etc.)
Ongoing: partnership agreement has been affirmed
Not-doing: We’ve decided it’s not a fit. Not to say that it can’t restart, but for now the decision was to not pursue.
Done: Our partnership has come to a close. Not to say that it can’t restart again, but for now the term has ended
How to Renew Partnership
Set term dates for partnerships
When partner liaisons move out of organizing roles, search for their assigned partners and reassign
I have another idea, which is to rename this category Partner Reports instead. I think it better captures the goal of the category, to report things in order for everyone to have information needed to foster strong relationships with our partners. Another benefit is that we can now create a sister category called Member Reports and it matches our practice of Meeting Reports. Tracker sounds too management-y in my opinion.
Other Ideas
Partner Updates
Partner Notes
I’m kind of liking Partner Notes. Simple to understand and really friendly. I’m just going to go with Partner Notes. Good enough!
