Nurturing Our Retired Citizens		Replication Guide

Steering Committee

Mission

Program Description

The Steering Committee is a group of institutional partners who work in the field of aging or with seniors. It meets quarterly to brainstorm ideas to improve the lives of seniors in the community. This group should include the city government; mayor, city manager, housing authority, county commissioner, county planner, county home care, state Board on Aging, area Agency on Aging, the medical community, senior housing organizations, the faith community and non-profit agencies working with seniors.

Community Goals Met

• Educate residents and service providers about existing resources.
• Develop a collaborative mechanism to identify gaps, coordinate programs and avoid duplication.

Program Leadership

Project Coordinator

• Sets Agenda
• Facilitates the meetings
• Follows-up on suggested projects

Administrative Assistant

• Takes minutes, types and distributes them
• Schedules meeting times and venue

Impact

This work affects the lives of seniors living in the community and serves to communicate NORC activities to all involved organization.

Planning timeline

Before the meeting

• Set meeting times and reserve venue one-year at a time
• Set agenda and include questions for discussion
• Two weeks prior to the event, email the agenda to the committee members as a meeting reminder
• One week prior to meeting, confirm the venue, make copies of all handouts, make packets for each participant and send an email reminder to members.

Day of the meeting

Materials needed

• Handouts
• Flip Charts/White Boards
• Electronic equipment
• Name Tags or Name Cards
• Pens
• Snacks

After the meeting

• Type and send minutes to committee members via email within one-week. Include the time and venue of next meeting for scheduling purposes.
• Follow-up on group recommendations.

PR, Marketing & Dissemination

All communication is done via email, phone or U.S. mail. This committee needs no PR or marketing.

Evolution, Evaluation, & Sustainability

Stakeholders in the community were identified and recruited to participate in this project. Most of the members were recruited before the grant was written, as they were required to sign memoranda of understanding (MOU) for the grant application. Additional members were added to this committee as the project evolved.

This group met quarterly in the late afternoon for one and a half hours. Organizational executives and managers found this time of the day most flexible.

the first task of the group was to identify community stakeholders. The NORC Project Coordinator then met with each stakeholder identified. Program progress was reported to this group for feedback and suggestions for improvement.

A committee member suggested that we use the expertise of this group to problem solve issues relating to seniors in the community. This change in function from reporting to problem solving helped us to better utilize the expertise of the group.

Click to view job description (pdf file)

Budget

Summary

This committee was established with an advisory function and evolved into a powerful group of advocates that helped us create and sustain programs that benefited seniors in the community. For the future, it was recommended that a member of the Senior Consumer Advisory Committee sit on the Steering Committee to enhance inter-group communication.

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