Being a UNP Partner

     Becoming a partner with UNP means that you commit to developing a relationship that is beneficial to you, as well as those you are working with. For faculty partners, that might mean your involvement may lead you to enhance your research or teaching, for example. For University of Utah students, it might mean that you are expanding your learning opportunities and accessing a knowledge base outside of the classroom. For residents, perhaps you will tap into resources that can provide expertise and guidance to help improve and empower your community. For community organizations, it is possible you can access a larger network of resources that complement the goals of your agency. For others who may be looking to volunteer your time, UNP has a resource you can access that can direct your efforts.

     Over the past five years, UNP has become an effective facilitator of these types of mutually beneficial relationships. UNP provides guidance and direction for the mechanisms stakeholders employ to come together and develop campus community partnerships. UNP acknowledges that for each type of stakeholder and for every individual partnership, the experience, goals, and skills are different. However, UNP does operate from a core set of values that guide its partnership work:

 OUR PARTNERSHIP VALUES

UNP will work to create and sustain campus-community partnerships which:

• Are founded on a shared vision and clearly articulated values.
• Are beneficial to the partnering organizations.
• Build interpersonal relationships based on trust and mutual respect.
• Include the voices of those impacted by community work in the decision-making processes of the partnership.
• Recognize conflicts as opportunities for collaborative problem-solving partnerships.
• Short term relationships which meet mutually-beneficial purposes and which may grow into valuable long-term partnerships will also be valued.
• Can, over time, be integrated into the mission and infrastructure of each partnering institution.
• Use a strengths-based approach in which all participants are recognized as teachers and learners in mutually-beneficial power-sharing partnerships.
• All partners will contribute resources (i.e. staff time, space, van use, dollars, other) to the partnerships.

An area of additional work for UNP is how to initiate, build, recognize, strengthen, and understand the elements that make a partnership sustainable. With a goal that every partnership will eventually become an independent sustainable, but affiliated partnership program, UNP has compiled the following elements of sustainability:

ELEMENTS OF SUSTAINABILITY

 for UNP Partnerships and support structures

• Continued high-level University administration support for UNP’s mission and work.
• Clearly identified and committed lead campus and community partner units who value and will commit to coordinate the work and decision-making process of all the partners, including the multi-disciplinary campus units involved in the partnership. 
• Active organizational (not individual) partners whose leaders see the partnership work as central to their agency or academic mission and who build mechanisms to support their commitments to the partners and the individuals who carry out the work.  Committed individuals within the organizational units serve as catalysts and leaders for partnership work and have the time, resources, and institution supports necessary to sustain and nurture their work.
• Constant focus on a clear yet evolving shared mission and purpose that is tied to the mission of each partner.
• Adequate financial resources.
• Effective administration, continuously informed by the partners and their needs, including financial administration, external communication, human resource functions, etc.
• Access to past partnership history and evaluation that continuously informs decisions.
• A strong and inclusive decision-making structure and processes that facilitate adaptability, adherence to the partnership principles, resident voice, effective internal and external communication and interpersonal relationships.
• Structures and processes that welcome and integrate resident as well as partner views.
• Capacity to broadly define the long-term worth of UNP and partners work and make that worth resonate with multiple audiences.