The work to build and sustain cradle to career civic infrastructure is extremely complex and interconnected. One of the biggest challenges early on in this work is just organizing the different pieces and players that all impact the education pipeline and our students’ success. Developing an accountability structure to start organizing the different pieces of a partnership has become crucial to effectively managing, communicating, and involving partners in this work.
An accountability structure is the organizational framework that depicts the different groups within a partnership and includes an outline of the roles and responsibilities of each group, describing the processes, people, and supports necessary to function effectively. An accountability structure for a cradle to career partnership can be likened to an organizational chart for a company. To support communities in developing this crucial piece of the work, Strive has released a ‘Building an Accountability Structure Toolkit.’ This toolkit is part of a larger ‘Getting Started Playbook’ that will be focused on helping communities meet the key benchmarks in the Exploring Gateway of Strive’s Theory of Action. The ‘Building an Accountability Structure Toolkit’ aims to help Network members:
- Understand the importance of an accountability structure
- View different types of structures and their respective advantages and disadvantages
- Understand and outline the roles and responsibilities that need to be accommodated in a structure
- Clarify the decision making roles of different groups in the accountability structure
- Develop necessary agreements that need to be in place to operationalize an accountability structure
- Create an accountability structure that fits their partnership’s needs and context.
With the help of Network members who agreed to share their stories and examples with the Network, the toolkit also includes narratives around different accountability structure groups, designs, and agreements. This provides you with an on-the-ground perspective of how other communities have designed and convened the various groups in their accountability structures.
The ‘Building an Accountability Structure Toolkit’ is available to Network members through the Strive Partner Portal: http://www.striveportal.org/resources/strive_network_documents/buildinganaccountabilitystructuret
Be on the look-out for the next pieces in the ‘Getting Started Playbook’ to be released in the upcoming months!
