Power up your organization today
Running a successful self-advocacy organization is hard work! Making business decisions, communicating with members, getting the right support, and working together to reach your goals are difficult tasks for most leaders. Combining these tasks with the need to build your membership and raise money can seem almost impossible.
Self-advocacy organizations all over the country want to make a difference in peoples’ lives. However, many organizations that don’t focus on building a strong foundation, eventually lose energy, fizzle out, and are unable to make a real difference in their communities.
Here at the Human Services Research Institute, we have been helping self-advocacy organizations build strong foundations to grow on. The most successful groups are strong from the inside out. This means they have a strong organizational structure or foundation to work from. We want to help you do the same for your organization!
Power Up is an innovative service that draws on years of experience helping organizations to reach their goals. We carefully designed each step in the Power Up process with help from self-advocate leaders and others. They told us what is needed to run successful organizations. Now, we are ready to help you power up the self-advocacy movement in your state!
Contact us today, to learn how we can work with you to power up your self-advocacy organization for success!
We will:
- Assess or measure how well your group is working using the Indicators of Excellence in Self Advocacy.
- Recommend actions your group can take to get stronger
- Make a plan with your group to get stronger
Assess how well your group is working
The Power Up Assessment is led by two trained facilitators – a self-advocate and an HSRI staff person. The self-advocate facilitator guides discussion with local self-advocacy leaders while an HSRI staff person takes notes and provides support.
A group of self-advocate leaders from the statewide self-advocacy organization participates in the assessment process. These people may include:
- The leadership group, or
- Board members and officers, and
- Members who represent self-advocate interests from around the state
The self-advocate facilitator works with this group to lead a two-day meeting. During the meeting, participants answer questions from the Power Up Survey and talk about their group. The survey covers eleven focus areas:
- Self-advocacy
- Purpose of the group
- Membership
- Leadership and structure of the group
- Support
- Communication
- Goals and action plans
- Budget
- Decision making and problem solving
- Public relations
- Control
After this meeting, the facilitators will review information gathered from the discussions to develop a series of recommendations for the group to consider.
Recommend actions to get stronger
Our recommendations will include a list of actions that the group can take to make their organization stronger. Based on the eleven focus areas, these actions build on the group’s strengths and target areas that need improvement. We promise not to shy away from topics that may be hard to talk about.
We share these recommendations with the leadership group during a half-day meeting or a series of teleconferences or webinars. During these discussions, we listen carefully to what self-advocates want and fine-tune the recommendations to fit the unique qualities of each group.
After leaders make decisions and we finalize our recommendations, the group is ready to set goals and make a plan for the future!
The planning process is all about creativity and looks different for each group. Now, self-advocate leaders use the recommendations to:
- Set specific goals to take action
- Choose unique ways to reach their goals and plan the steps they will take
- Identify allies or supporters that can help
- Name individuals who will be responsible for each step, and
- Set a timeline to get things done.
We usually hold a one or two day meeting with groups to complete the planning process. We are always available before, during, and after this process to listen to how things are going, help you solve problems, and celebrate your accomplishments.
Terms are negotiable based on your needs and the expenses we anticipate. After talking with you, our team will develop a proposal for your review to describe the work we will offer and related costs. All terms are subject to mutual approval.
Contact us
Jaime Daignault at 503-924-3783 x 14 or email her at jdaignault@hsri.org.
We want to thank all of the self-advocate leaders, groups, and others who helped us develop Power Up. This tool was developed to help statewide self-advocacy groups get stronger, enabling them to reach their goals and make a difference in people’s lives. Putting together a tool like this was not an easy thing to do. We could not have done it without help from several people. These people gave us their time, ideas, and of course, their opinions too.
For their financial support, we would like to thank the North Carolina Council on Developmental Disabilities.
Many self-advocate leaders and others helped us develop focus areas, questions, reviewed drafts, and let us know what improvements could be made. Specifically, we would like to thank:
- James Meadours and Ricky Broussard, Texas
- Nancy Ward, Oklahoma
- Teresa Garner and Bryon Murray, Utah
- Liz Weintraub, Maryland
- Michael Rogers, Washington
- Janet Hunt, Advisor, People First of New Hampshire
- Mary Lou Bourne, SDA, Maryland
We especially want to thank Julie Petty from Arkansas, Teresa Moore from Arizona, and the Association of Self-Advocates of North Carolina. These individuals helped us test Power Up and make it better. They gave us insightful feedback and have greatly improved the quality of the Power Up process and materials.
