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Home > State and Local Stakeholders > Community Stakeholders
Community Stakeholders
You know the value of promoting healthy marriages and relationships. How do you use that knowledge to gain the support of community leaders? This section will help you turn your knowledge into action. We offer tips on how to build a healthy marriage coalition. We can also provide you with ideas on how to engage partners from different sectors of the community.
As a community leader it is often valuable to learn from those who have gone before you. Healthy marriage coalitions have encountered many of the same challenges. Here you can learn what has worked and what has been tried. We also provide resources for getting a program off the ground, keeping a program moving and accessing funding.
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Your Community Healthy Marriage Initiative: A Guide to Getting Started
Although many people are passionate about healthy marriages and are motivated to get involved in their communities, the hardest question is "Where do I begin?" Here are some suggestions, based on what has been successful for Community Healthy Marriage Initiatives (CHMIs) around the country, to help guide you as you begin the process of developing your own CHMI. It's a big job, and, as with all big jobs, how you begin makes all the difference.
Personnel
- Decide early on how your CHMI will be organized. Do you want an advisory board? Will you develop by-laws? Will you file for non-profit status?
- Be clear about roles. Make sure every member of your team has a role and that the roles complement each other. CHMIs that have diverse teams of individuals that bring their own unique strengths to the table often accomplish more.
- Be honest with yourself about time commitments. Very few CHMIs have start-up funding, and most work done in the initial planning phase will be done without compensation. Make sure you or the founding group has enough time and resources to even get the CHMI started.
Community Support
- Be intentional about whom you want to reach. Do you want to reach newly-wed couples? Troubled marriages? Low-income couples? Once you've selected your audience you will have a better idea of how to reach them.
- Begin to develop relationships with local media outlets. A small newspaper story or nightly news special goes a long way in getting the word out about your CHMI.
- Don't be discouraged if it takes awhile to reach the community; generating broad community support takes a lot of time and resources.
- Try to involve every sector of the community in the CHMI, including government, media, and clergy.
- Don't wait to begin generating support. Start meeting with local officials, businesses, and leaders even if your CHMI is not yet formally organized.
Financial
- Brainstorm possible funding from local, state and federal sources and be honest about your ability to compete for available funds.
- Prioritize your budget. Most CHMIs do not have enough money, so make sure the most important activities are getting funded first.
- Based on available funds, find a balance between volunteers and paid employees. No CHMI is able to provide compensation for everyone, so make sure you have enough volunteers to get the work done.
- Large grants are not the only source of funding. Sometimes local businesses may be interested in sponsoring one-time marriage events. Be creative with how you seek funding.
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Tips for Building a Community Healthy Marriage Initiative (CHMI): Advice from the Front Line
Developing and building a Community Healthy Marriage Initiative (CHMI) is an exciting and life changing endeavor, according to ten CHMI directors we interviewed. The process is meaningful and challenging, slow, and often messy. What follows is the advice, lessons, and wisdom from those doing this work in communities across the country for those who are thinking of creating their own CHMI.
- Be clear about why you are doing this work. Why is a CHMI needed in your community? Why now? Develop a compelling argument for why your initiative is vital to the health of individuals, couples, and families in your community.
- Be clear about what your own strengths and challenges are as a person. Find others to complement your talents in areas where you aren't as skilled. You cannot do this alone.
- Take a team approach. It takes at least one motivated person to lead an initiative. But in order to reduce burnout and to maximize the initiative's community wide impact, it's important to have a group of dedicated individuals with different roles who are working on specific tasks.
- Recognize that people are your most important resource. Surround yourself with people who have a passion for healthy marriages, are persistent, and will persevere.
- Develop a clear vision and purpose for your CHMI, with specific long-term and short- term goals, steps to achieve these goals, and ways to evaluate them.
- Think big, but start small. The going is often slow, so hold onto your big dreams but work on smaller, concrete goals that you can do well right now.
- Expect skepticism and be ready to answer questions about the purposes and reasons for your initiative. Be patient and expect some criticism; many people have misconceptions of what a CHMI is really about.
- Understand that community building and coalition building take a lot of time. Start with people that you and your coalition partners know. It's all about the relationship and tapping into a common vision and purpose.
- Be generous in saying "thank you" and in giving credit, no matter how small, for contributions of time, money or effort.
- Connect with others who are doing this work. Their advice, support, and sympathetic ear will be vital during times of frustration and despair.
- Expect turnover. Expect individuals or groups to drop out over time either because their own agenda is not the focal point of the initiative or because it's not a priority for them at this time.
- Don't give up! Developing CHMI is a long process and will have its successes and failures. Take one step at a time and keep moving forward.
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