Sustainability Tools

The Lifespan Respite Sustainability Toolkit, developed by The Finance Project in collaboration with ARCH, includes:

The Finance Project's Sustainability Planning Workbook, a comprehensive tool composed of five modules and a CD-ROM that helps users clarify their vision, identify key issues in sustaining their work, and develop strategies to achieve long-term goals. While the materials in the Workbook are focused on services for children and families, the strategies and training modules for sustainability planning are relevant across the age and disability spectrum.*

• Sustainability Planning Workbook Implementation Guide for Lifespan Respite Grantees and Partners designed to guide you through the Sustainability Planning Workbook. The guide highlights sustainability strategies specific to sustaining Lifespan Respite grant activities and State Respite Coalitions.
  
• A Matrix of Modules, Tasks, Tools, and Resources for Sustaining Lifespan Respite Systems serves as an interactive table of contents for the Workbook and its five modules.
• Worksheet 1: Workplan for Sustainability Planning to help you get started.
• A sample Sustainability Plan Outline to guide you through development and writing of your final plan.
• Finance Project Logic Model  (posted with permission from The Finance Project)
• Financing Strategies Matrix

If you want to start more slowly with self assessment and figuring out what to sustain, see Getting Started with Sustainability Planning on this page. 

Getting Started: A Sustainability Self-Assessment Tool

Sustaining initiatives such as Lifespan Respite programs, coalitions or networks depends on developing a clear, sensible, and convincing plan for marshalling the key resources that are necessary to continue (and often to expand) your work. However, in order to develop a sustainability plan detailing where you want to go, a necessary first step is to take stock of where you currently are.

The Uses of the Self-Assessment Process

This tool is intended to help leaders who are working to sustain respite services to assess their progress and identify areas that need extra attention, resources, or technical assistance. This diagnostic process can provide valuable information to guide the development of your sustainability plan, for example, to capitalize on the assets in your community, as well as to plan for the development of additional capacity in areas that need strengthening. This tool can also help you make decisions about how to target scarce resources to move toward sustainability. This tool is part of The Finance Project’s Sustainability Planning Workbook, a comprehensive toolkit for developing a sustainability plan.

Access the Sustainability Self-Assessment Tool

Getting Started: What to Sustain and the Needed Resources

Adapted from the Finance Project Sustainability Project

Acess the Getting Started Worksheets

If you don’t want to tackle the full Finance Sustainability Project Workbook and its five modules, it’s too overwhelming currently, or you aren’t sure you have the time, committed stakeholders, or resources to do so, a productive and much simpler way to begin is to figure out what you want to sustain and to brainstorm needed resources. Using these four worksheets is a pragmatic first step to sustainability planning.

See also the webinar on Introduction to a Framework for Sustainability Planning

Please find state sustainability plans, logic models for sustainability planning and other written sustainability materials that states have chosen to share with their peers across states.

Massachusetts

Massachusetts Lifespan Respite Coalition Sustainability Logic Model

Nebraska

Respite Sustainability Plans

• Respite Across the Lifespan
• Nebraska Lifespan Respite SFY 2017 Sustainability Plan
• Northern Region Respite Network
• Central Region Respite Network
• Southeast Region Respite Network
• Southwest Region Respite Network
• Western Region Respite Network
• University of Nebraska Medical Center - Munroe Meyer Institute

Work Plans

• Nebraska Respite Network - Center on Children, Families and the Law

• Northern Region Respite Network
• Central Region Respite Network
• Southeast Region Respite Network
• Southwest Region Respite Network
• Western Region Respite Network
• University of Nebraska Medical Center - Munroe Meyer Institute

Logic Models

• Eastern Region Respite Network 
• Nebraska Respite Network - Center on Children, Families and the Law
• Northern Region Respite Network
• Central Region Respite Network
• Southeast Region Respite Network
• Southwest Region Respite Network
• Western Region Respite Network

Nevada

Nevada Lifespan Respite Care Coalition 2020 Strategic Action Plan to Increase Awareness and Access to the Coalition

Listen to the recorded presentation of Cory Lutz from the NV Lifespan Respite Coalition on this tool. 

New York

Lifespan Respite Final Sustainability Report 2022

New York Lifespan Respite Sustainability Retreat Agenda

New York State Lifespan Logic Model for Sustainability 

Lifespan Respite Financing Strategies Logic Model 

Pennsylvania

PA Lifespan Respite Summary Report

PA Logic Model with Recommendations for
Sustainability Planning

States Share Sustainability Planning Process and Progress at the 2014 Lifespan Respite Grantee and Partner Learning Symposium, Nashville, TN

• Joan Rafferty and Amy Nazaire, MA Lifespan Respite Coalition, PPT Presentation
• Ellen Nau, VA Lifespan Respite grantee and VA Caregiver Coalition, PPT Presentation 

The group meets on the fourth Friday of every month at 12:00 PM Eastern for one hour to share progress made in sustainability planning using the Finance Project Toolkit or other useful planning tools.

Discussions focus on challenges encountered by group members and strategies used to overcome barriers, successful collaboration building techniques, financing strategies, data collection and more. Participants actively seek guidance and suggestions from each other about the sustainability planning process, and share their own progress in real time. The group is facilitated by ARCH consultant, Susan Janko Summers, PhD. 

Visit the Sustainability Planning Learning Collaborative for meeting recordings and shared resources. 

To complement and enhance discussions of the Sustainability Planning Learning Collaborative (LC), the following documents and presentations were developed and shared by the LC facilitator, but may be of interest and use to others:

The Easy-Peasy Sustainability Planner for ACL-LR Applicants

Writing a Comprehensive Sustainability Plan and Finance Project Work Group Written Plan Case Study

Case Study for Writing a Sustainability Plan

Succession Planning Tips

Checking-in to Sustain Our Work

Defining Collaborative Communities

Contributions of time, talent and treasure in sustaining Lifespan Respite

Coalitions as a Tool for Advocacy

Sustainability Planning and Business Planning Compared

Forming, Building and Maintaining Coalitions

Respite Systems, Shared Leadership and Collaboration

What do you wish to sustain? Implications of Covid-19 on Lifespan Respite Sustainability Planning

Creating, Repairing, Reviving and Sustaining Lifespan Respite Systems: A Sustainability Planning Framework