Strategies for Project Sustainability Planning

Project Year 1: Focus on Developing a CLSD Project Sustainability Plan

• Establish a CLSD Sustainability Team

  Identify key stakeholders who see value in the program and can help create a sustainability plan for the project. Begin with your project planning/implementation team, and then consider other stakeholders who are vested in the project’s success (e.g., community partners, other agency personnel, families, and district personnel). At least one representative from a subgrantee should also be part of the sustainability team to capture subgrantees’ needs.

  You might find it helpful to complete a roster of potential CLSD sustainability team members, including their organizational affiliations, areas of expertise, and potential roles on the team. Some examples are provided below:

  Member	Organization	Unique Expertise/Experience/Perspective	Role
  Dr. Serita Cortez	Local university	Program evaluation, strategic planning	Providing a strategic planning framework, and assisting with implementing the framework
  Eugene Samuelson	Community nonprofit	Community needs	Identifying community needs, and aligning needs with existing resources and partnerships
  Tonya Molongo	Subgrantee/local education agency (LEA)	School-based instructional leadership, subgrantee perspective	Offering the subgrantee perspective and supporting sustainability at the subgrantee level

• Review the Project Structure

  Most models for sustainability planning begin with a review of the project’s structure, including the long-term vision, goals, and activities or services provided to achieve those goals. This can aid in framing project elements, as well as prioritizing essential elements for continuation after the grant funding cycle ends. With your CLSD sustainability team, review your application for these foundational elements. A framework may exist in an implementation or evaluation plan. If not, logic models, rubrics, and other tools used in program evaluation might be useful in this process. Some examples are provided in Project Year 1’s “Resources” section. Note that the resources used in Year 1 to establish your plan can also be used in Year 5 to finalize your plan.

  If you have an existing logic model for your project, start by looking at resources, which typically include items such as staff members, expertise, in-kind resources, and partnerships, in addition to funding. These are resources you will need to sustain your program after CLSD grant funding ends. Keeping in mind that sustainability planning will happen alongside project implementation, use the project review to inform both. Starting sustainability planning in Year 1 allows you to build sustainability strategies into project activities from the beginning.

  Consider the following as you outline your project. Examples are provided below:

  Project Vision and Mission Statements: What are the current mission and vision of your project? Does your mission focus on your target populations? Should this mission remain the same after grant funding ends, or have your target populations’ needs evolved?

  Project Vision Statement	The state vision focuses on supporting disadvantaged students and students in traditionally underserved populations, with the goal of improving key educational outcomes across the state, including reading proficiency.
  Project Mission Statement	Our mission is to empower teachers and administrators with the background knowledge, evidence-based practices, and frameworks needed to enhance reading and writing outcomes across various grades, content areas, and student populations. We are committed to supporting educational initiatives and organizations to advance literacy.
  Target Populations	Children in poverty, students in rural areas, and English learners.

  Populations Served: Whom does your project serve—birth to age 5, kindergarten through grade 5, grades 6 through 12, adults? Where are services provided—schools, communities? Approximately how many of each group currently receive services?

  Population Served	Service Location	Number Served
  Children in poverty	Elementary schools	142,793
  Rural students	Schools, K–12	95,516
  English learners	Schools, K–12	57,579

  Primary Project Activities: Review the needs assessment from your grant application. What services does your project provide to support your vision or mission statement? Which grantee or subgrantee needs and program goals do they support? Review any existing logic models or rubrics, or you might wish to complete a table such as the one below:

  Population Served and Priority Need	Project SMART Goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound)	Activities/Services That Address Project Goal	Outcome Measures and Data Sources
  Children in poverty, high need	By the end of the grant cycle, we aim to increase the reading proficiency of children in poverty by 20 percentage points or reach at least 80% as measured by standardized reading assessments in our targeted schools.	Reading intervention programs Professional development for teachers Access to high-quality instructional materials	Reading proficiency rates Attendance and participation

• Assess Project Implementation

  An assessment of a CLSD project’s implementation offers an opportunity to look at key programmatic factors that can significantly affect outcomes. In addition, focusing on deepening key areas of implementation known to impact sustainability can help your program target areas for the project’s sustainability early on.

  One way to do this is to work with your CLSD sustainability team to examine your project through an Active Implementation Formula lens and determine whether any areas of implementation known to affect sustainability require specific attention. The Active Implementation Formula looks at effective practices—such as evidence-based interventions, effective implementation, outlining the extent to which a practice has been implemented with fidelity, and enabling context, which includes outlying factors such as available school supports—and their combined impact on outcomes. For more information about the Active Implementation Formula, visit the State Implementation and Scaling-up of Evidence-based Practices (SISEP) Center’s Active Implementation Hub.

  Active Implementation Formula:

  

  The Active Implementation Formula flow chart is as follows: First, Effective Practice times Second, Effective Implementation times, Third, Enabling Context equals, Fourth, Socially Significant Outcomes.

  (Based on a SISEP Center graphic)

  Another tool you might consider is the Program Sustainability Assessment Tool (PSAT). This 40-item questionnaire is a self-assessment tool for evaluating the sustainability capacity of a program. The tool offers a method for rating sustainability across eight key domains. The tool also includes some action-planning guidance and activities to use with your team related to sustainability planning in each of those key areas.

  
  

  The Understand Sustainability chart consists of eight topics in blue circles. In the center is Strategic Planning. Starting in the outer layer are seven circles in the following order. Funding Stability, Partnerships, Organizational Capacity, Program Evaluation, Program Adaption, Communications and Environmental Support

Through strategic planning, grantees can support sustainability at the subgrantee level by considering (1) the effective practices at the subgrantee level, such as program adaptations; (2) the activities included in effective implementation, such as funding stability, communication internally and with stakeholders, and organizational capacity; and (3) how the grantee can help enable and strengthen additional program context, such as partnerships, environmental support, and program evaluation.

• Develop a Sustainability Plan

  There are many guides for creating a sustainability plan, with varying numbers of steps and phases. Some example sustainability plans and complementary resources are included in the resources section. The sample sustainability plan steps below include approaches from a range of professional fields. Work with your sustainability team to determine the best fit for your CLSD project.

  At a minimum, most sustainability plans address the following:

  1. Sustainability Goals

     What your sustainability plan is trying to achive.

  2. Financial Planning

     How funding will be allocated to sustain the project.

  3. Capacity Building

     How resources will be leveraged to fill funding gaps for sustainability.

  4. Long-Range Strategic Planning

     How sustainability efforts will be broken down over time to enable sustainability plan implementation and success that extends throughout and beyond your grant cycle.

     Use the “Develop a Sustainability Plan” section of the CLSD Sustainability Planning resource packet to record the action items of your team’s plan.

  Optional Templates and Plans

  In addition to developing a CLSD project sustainability plan at the state level, consider collaborating with subgrantees to develop resources such as:

  • (a) a sustainability plan template;
  • (b) a sustainability plan for each subgrantee; or
  • (c) a combination of the above.

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Project Year 2: Focus on Building Relationships

• Start With Existing Partners

  CLSD grantees are required to work with specific organizations. For example, a grantee must collaborate with the state agency responsible for administering early childhood education programs and the state agency responsible for administering child care programs in the state, and the grantee can collaborate with the state agencies administering the Part C program for infants and toddlers under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or with institutions of higher education.

  Different types of partnerships can be viewed as a continuum of levels of engagement, as in the example below:

  

  The Partnership Continuum flow chart- Step 1 - Networking: Exchanging information for mutual benefit. Step 2 Coordinating: In addition to networking, blending activities to achieve a common purpose. Step 3 - Cooperating: In addition to coordinating, sharing resources. Step 4 - Collaborating: In addition to cooperating, learning from each other to enhance the capacity of both. Step 5 - Integrating: In addition to collaborating, completely merging operations, administrative structures, and budgets. The constituent parts are no longer discernable.

  Himmelman, A. T. (2002). Collaboration for a change: Definitions, decision‐making models, roles, and collaboration process guide. Minneapolis, MN: Himmelman Consulting. https://tennessee.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Himmelman-Collaboration-for-a-Change.pdf

  Consider where your partnerships currently fall on the continuum, on the basis of commitments, the degree of change required, the risk involved, the self-sufficiency of each party, power, trust, and willingness to share. With your CLSD sustainability team, determine how you could move partnerships along the continuum toward more secure collaborative or integrated relationships.

  If you have not already spoken to your existing partners about what collaboration will look like after grant funding ends, do so now. Define how you will continue to work together and how services could be further integrated over time. Also, review how subgrantees are working with their partners—such as nonprofits, local businesses, and institutions of higher education—to identify areas for improvement.

• Build Relationships and Establish Strategic Partnerships

  Building strong relationships with community and project partners can help to ensure their vested interest in your CLSD program’s success and continuation. The relationships you build with other organizations and individuals can connect you to new resources and create champions for the success of your project. Successful partnerships and relationships require a strategic approach.

  With your team, discuss establishing and developing new collaborations. As you strategically approach new partners, consider the following:

  • The costs and benefits of establishing a partnership for each party;
  • Creating a shared vision and setting expectations for the partnership;
  • Clearly defining the staff members involved and the contributions they are each expected to make;
  • Making plans for utilizing existing resources from each partner and establishing terms for obtaining shared resources in the future;
  • Paths of communication for each partner; and
  • Outlining how progress will be monitored.

  As you begin building relationships and establishing strategic partnerships, think about recruiting members of the community and partner organizations for your sustainability team.

• Update the Sustainability Plan

  The sustainability plan is a living document that should be revisited and updated routinely. Once you have completed your partnership review, incorporate your partners into the sustainability plan to reflect additional in-kind or financial resources. The CLSD sustainability team should also update the sustainability plan as needed based on implementation changes or data that have been reported on Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) measures or program-specific performance measures.

• Share Successes

  Sharing CLSD project achievements with stakeholders through stories and statistics is an excellent way to enhance community member and partner buy-in. This can be done through community events or by synthesizing evaluation statistics and presenting milestones and achievements through marketing and outreach efforts, such as your state’s, district’s, or school’s newsletter

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Project Year 3: Focus on Conducting Outreach

• Develop Marketing and Outreach Efforts

  A marketing and outreach plan can help build CLSD project visibility and support among important stakeholders, including fellow state, district, or school leaders; policymakers; partners; potential funders; and community members and organizations. Grantee and subgrantee project data—such as results from pre- and post-assessments, participation data, survey feedback, data from subgrantee monitoring, information gained during site visits, and reporting data or analysis from an external evaluator if your project utilizes one—can be used to create materials that highlight project impact and emphasize the importance of continuation.

  Review some additional tips for creating marketing and outreach materials:

  • Highlight your target audience members and what they care about. Use any relevant data and your knowledge of the stakeholders you serve to tailor outreach. The language, format, and delivery platforms (in person, on paper, and/or virtual) should align with your audience’s needs, interests, and preferences.
  • Use catchy titles and subject lines to hook readers. For example, “Five Secrets for Reducing Reading Anxiety” is likelier to capture attention than “Anxiety Reduction Tips.”
  • Tell your CLSD project’s story. Use branding (such as your program’s, state’s, or district’s logo), photos, stories, quotations, data, and anecdotes to show and tell readers what your program is doing, how it’s affecting students and others, and why your work makes a difference to individuals and to the entire community.
  • Share the spotlight. Feature school districts, individual schools, or particular classrooms displaying innovative practices; current and former students and their family members; school and community partners; volunteers; and special guests who are connected to your program and its goals. Inviting people to contribute is a good way to include diverse voices and keep your content fresh.
  • Make your marketing materials visually appealing. Include graphics, icons, and photos that are appropriate, interesting, and relevant to your content and your target audience.
  • Use content with permission. If you want to post photos or videos of staff members, family members, or students, be sure to get a signed release form from everyone involved. If you use graphics or photos from outside sources, be sure to use copyright-free images.
  • Close with a call to action. A call to action prompts readers to take the next step and act on what they’ve read. This is where you make an ask, big or small, about what resources that group could provide to support CLSD project sustainability. Provide specific steps to secure their commitment.
• Share the Sustainability Plan

  Use the sustainability plan to build buy-in. Share the long-term vision of the CLSD project and the sustainability strategies with grantee and subgrantee staff members and leadership so they understand that the project has the support needed to continue beyond CLSD grant funding. This will help establish buy-in with the staff members implementing the project, as they will know that their work is seen as critical and that the initiative will be sustained. Ensure subgrantee school boards, administrators, principals, and other leaders understand their role in the sustainability plan so they can also act as key champions for the project.

• Prepare for Future Funding Reductions/Establish a Sustainability Funding Committee

  Move toward connecting with new funding sources as you prepare for possible future funding reductions. In addition to your CLSD sustainability team, you might want to establish a sustainability funding committee that could focus solely on identifying and securing new sources of funding.

You might find it helpful to revisit “Establish a CLSD Sustainability Team” in the “Project Year 1: Focus on Developing a CLSD Project Sustainability Plan” section as you consider how best to establish a sustainability funding committee. It also might be helpful to use the table below to begin selecting members. Some examples are provided below:

Member	Organization	Unique Expertise/Experience/Perspective	Role
Kim Li	School district	Finance director	Assisting with budgeting, identifying additional sources of funding, and providing the subgrantee perspective
Professor Joann Burke	Community college	Head of community engagement	Well connected to many organizations in the community and could help with establishing relationships with new partners
José Alvarez	SEA	Budgeting and federal grant management	Could provide additional guidance on budgeting, federal grant management, and blending and braiding funding

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Project Year 4: Focus on Securing Funding

• Review Organizational Capacity

  A review of your project’s organizational capacity can help you to align that information with the resources necessary for the continuation of each element. You might find it helpful to revisit your CLSD project’s objectives, the results of your Year 1 project review, and/or your PSAT results. The next step would be to reassess your sustainability goals on the basis of the most recent outcome data available.

  A simple SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis can also be useful in kickstarting this process. The following table is an example of a SWOT analysis conducted by a CLSD sustainability team.

  Internal Factors
  Strengths What does your program do well? What unique resources can you draw on? What do others see as your program’s strengths?	Weaknesses What could your program improve? Where do you have fewer resources than others? What are others likely to see as weaknesses?
  We have an established process to collect and analyze data and communicate the findings with subgrantees. We have a research-based phonemic awareness curriculum, with over 20 hours of professional development offered to all teachers in K–3 statewide. Many view our capacity to gather data points from statewide literacy assessments and effectively communicate these findings to subgrantees as a notable strength.	We have an opportunity to enhance our phonics instruction through third grade by investing in high-quality research-based instructional materials and aligning them with corresponding professional development for K–3 teachers. We face a weakness in our resource availability, particularly in the later grades, where we lack sufficient high-quality research-based materials for phonics and vocabulary instruction.
  External Factors
  Opportunities What opportunities, collaborations, and resources are available to your program? How could you turn your strengths into opportunities?	Threats What external variables and forces could have a negative impact on your project? What services or activities are other programs already providing? What threats do your weaknesses expose you to?
  We offer quarterly communities of practice for district administrators, each focusing on a new topic. These sessions facilitate collaboration and resource sharing. We may be able to offer sessions focused on evidence-based literacy instruction, literacy leadership, and high-quality instructional materials. We excel in data collection and analysis, and we have the opportunity to harness this strength by utilizing data analysis to continually enhance and refine our state literacy plan, driving a process of continuous improvement.	An external variable of concern relates to student attendance and the potential for teacher attrition rates, both of which might adversely affect the project’s overall success and could pose challenges to the project’s stability and effectiveness. Other state programs currently offer one-on-one tutoring and after-school literacy programs targeting the same age group and population as our initiatives. This direct competition poses a threat to our program’s ability to secure and retain participants and funding. A threat to the success of our program lies in the possibility of high-quality instructional materials not being implemented with fidelity in the classroom. This concern revolves around the potential inconsistency or inadequate utilization of these materials, which could undermine their intended impact on student learning and achievement.
• Integrate Cost-Effectiveness and Efficiency Strategies

  Some CLSD grantees may have included prioritizing and addressing cost-effectiveness and efficiency in their grant applications to address sustainability challenges without disrupting programming and may already be implementing these practices. The strategies identified to support these priorities will help streamline funding needs and therefore support sustainability planning. Ensure the sustainability team and the sustainability funding committee know about these strategies, and encourage feedback developed during sustainability planning to increase or enhance those strategies.

  Grantees that did not write these priorities in their grant applications can still take a cost-effectiveness and efficiency approach to identify strategies that could be implemented during and after grant funding to facilitate long-term sustainability.

  The tools used in the Active Implementation Formula might be helpful in evaluating the fit and feasibility of continuing or modifying aspects of your program. One example, the Hexagon Discussion and Analysis Tool, is illustrated below. This tool includes three program indicators in green (supports, evidence, and usability) and three implementing site indicators in blue (need, capacity, and fit) and can be used to organize feedback and to inform decisions. Use the Hexagon Discussion and Analysis Tool instructions to guide your CLSD sustainability team’s discussion.

  

  This hexagon tool is a chart divided into six different sections.

  The Implementing Site Indicators side consists of the following:

  Capacity to Implement

  Staff meet minimum qualifications

  Able to sustain staffing, coaching, training, data systems, performance assessment, and administration.

  • Financial capacity
  • Structural capacity
  • Cultural responsivity capacity

  Buy-in process operationalized

  • Practitioners
  • Families

  Fit With Current Initiatives

  Alignment with community, regional, state priorities.

  Fit with family and community values, culture and history.

  Impact on other interventions and initiative.

  Alignment with organizational structure.

  Need

  Target population identified

  Disaggregated data indicating population needs

  Parent and community perceptions of need.

  Adressses service or system gaps

  The Program Indicators side consists of the following:

  Evidence

  Stregnth of evidence - for whom in what conditions:

  • Number of studies
  • Population simularities
  • Diverse cultural groups
  • Efficacy of Effectiveness

  Outcomes - Is it worth it?

  Fidelity data

  Cost - effectiveness data

  Usability

  Well-defined program

  Mature sites to observe

  Several replications

  Adaptions for context

  Supports

  Expert Assistance

  Staffing

  Training

  Coaching and Supervision

  Racial equity impact assessment

  Data Systems Technology Supports (IT)

  Administration and System

  Metz, A., & Louison, L. (2018). The Hexagon Tool: Exploring Context . Chapel Hill, NC: National Implementation Research Network, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Based on Kiser, Zabel, Zachik, & Smith (2007) and Blase, Kiser, & Van Dyke (2013).

• Identify Additional or Increased Funding Sources

  When CLSD program elements are selected for continuation, the identification of resources necessary to sustain these elements can begin. Project Year 4 is the time for a detailed breakdown of the project’s budget, existing resources, and resource gaps that will exist when grant funding ends.

  With your CLSD sustainability team, review and discuss the questions listed in the “Questions to Consider in Year 4” section. You might also want to revisit the sustainability goals created in your grant application, implementation plan, or sustainability plan and add financial details. It might also be helpful to break down costs at different levels and highlight gaps that will occur when grant funding ends before attempting to identify replacement resources. Consider working with your team to explore additional grant opportunities, maximizing fiscal resources, and the possibility of blending, braiding, or layering funds. If you have established a sustainability funding committee, you will want to include its members in your discussions.

• Build New and Mutually Beneficial Partnerships

  As grant funding nears its conclusion, it is time to consider the partnerships and collaborations built so far and ways to leverage these relationships to support program continuation. Meeting with project partners to reflect on strengths and challenges can help determine whether continuing the relationships in the future would be mutually beneficial.

Questions to Consider in Year 4

• Overall CLSD Program Costs
  • How much does the project currently cost to operate?
  • How has this changed over the course of this funding cycle?
  • Will budget cuts occur in the remaining years of the grant cycle?
• Participant Costs
  • What is the cost of services per student per year? Per month? Per day?
  • Will you continue to serve the same number of students after the grant expires?
  • Will you provide services/activities at the same dosages after the grant expires?
• Activity Costs
  • What is the cost of each program element or activity, including the costs of materials, supplies, other resources, instructors, and fringe benefits?
  • What is the total cost of sustaining a selected set of activities, including the cost for administrative staff and any overhead costs?
• Current Funding Sources
  • What resources do you currently have that support activities?
  • What percentage of current resources comes from grant funding?
• Resource Needs for Sustainability
  • What additional resources will you need to cover costs without grant funding?
  • What resources are allowable under your state’s or district’s guidance?
  • Do the additional resources meet the supplement-not-supplant requirement?

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Project Year 5: Focus on Preparing for Project Continuation

• Prepare for Project Continuation

  Review the financial breakdown of costs created in Year 4, and consider updating your capacity assessment to reflect the funding and resources you have secured for the future. Use this information to finalize the components of your project that will continue after grant funding ends, and begin to implement your sustainability plan.

  Sustainability planning is an ongoing process. As you approach the end of your grant’s life cycle, you should maintain your sustainability plan as a working document. Sustainability from a dynamic perspective1 is one such process that considers adaptations or modifications in the implementation process. The process supports building adaptive capacity for stakeholders to make changes on the basis of need.

  Your team should finalize the CLSD sustainability plan, which includes determining what program components can be sustained at this time on the basis of secured funding and resources; final program implementation; subgrantee and grantee capacity; and outcome data.

  ¹Chambers, D.A., Glasgow, R.E., & Stange, K.C. (2013). The dynamic sustainability framework: Addressing the paradox of sustainment amid ongoing change. Implementation Science, 8, 117. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-8-117

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