ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE – MERGING TO ENHANCE CAPABILTIES: Recent collaborative efforts with both The Texas Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and Healthy Futures of Texas have been incredibly successful and rewarding. We have worked together so far to:
1. Advocate on a Statewide level 2. Create and share messaging 3. Share research 4. The CEOs of the three organizations have had semi-monthly calls to share organizational practices, goals, and needs
The Ntarupt Board of Directors and the Board of Directors of The Texas Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy are interested in strategizing how a partnership would enhance our work in Dallas. Identified topics motivating these discussions, in addition to those listed above are:
OPPORTUNITIES AHEAD:
1) Rebranding:
With or without a merger, both organizations have board directives to rebrand. “Preventing teen pregnancy” is now seen as stigmatizing to teen parents, but also fails to recognize that it is the adults in the community who owe youth and parents information and resources to make the best decisions for themselves. This is more of an empowering approach. Additionally, we need to incorporate not only sex education, but mental health care, LGBTQ support, gender discussions, women’s issues and more. It is no longer just about teen pregnancy 2) Focus on Mobilization projects: Help mobilizing the faith, community and healthcare sectors is a big lift, and a larger staff that can focus on specific projects would be useful. 3) Capacity to perform research; Ntarupt works collaboratively with students from UT Southwestern and some physicians there, but this also takes dedicated time and expertise. The Texas Campaign has a data specialist who generously shares, but being able to collaborate on data and research would be powerful. 4) Collaborative messaging: As stated above, the messaging we create should be shared as the purpose and voice will be similar. 5) Sharing HR and Administrative oversight: Both CEOs need a COO to liberate their time to do more mission centric work. 6) Cross training for programs among organizations: Each of our organizations has expertise on different sets of evidence base programs. A merger would enable cross-training and sharing expertise easier. 7) Fundraising: Finally, fundraising professionals who understand the issue for one of us, understand it for all of us. Though differences exist in each City, combined efforts would enhance efficacy and allow us to pursue funding on a larger scale.
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