Importance of Partnerships

After reviewing our data we found that all of the researched programs operate with a partner. Partners ranged from local governments, local businesses, banks, hospitals, shelters, and other non-profit organizations. The roles of these partnerships included but were not limited to assistance in recruitment, venues for producing food to the communities, assistance in funding programs, assistance with case management (e.g. legal help, childcare, and physical health) and employing program participants after course completion.

Looking at the roles of the different types of partners were quite interesting. There were two major types of partnerships working with these programs; private and public:

Public Partners took up most of the funding role by providing grants to programs. The frequency of grants ranged from one time, annually,  once every other year, and monthly. Funding from public partners ranged from 10% to 50%.

Private Partners played a more active role compared to Public Partnerships. Roles of private partnerships ranged from providing program participants, providing food for cooking and consumption, providing culinary instructors, providing case management for program participants, and basic monetary contributions to the programs. A very interesting private funding source our group came upon were in-kind donors. In-kind refers to services given as donation instead of a monetary donation. One example of in-kind partnerships we observed was that of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and Green Opportunities in North Carolina. AV Tech provides Green Opportunities an instructor to teach program participants culinary skills. Doing so relieved Green Opportunities of monetary responsibility of hiring an educator.