Partnerships

Open Communication and Transparent Decision-Making

We created mechanisms that facilitate open and regular communication with staff at each social service organization (SSO). From regular, standing meetings to open office hours to dedicated relationship managers at C3, our SSO partners have a number of avenues to communicate with us. From the beginning, we saw communication as key to the success of these partnerships, so much so that we told SSOs the only non-negotiable element of their scope of work was a requirement to meet on a regular basis.

C3 is available. They are there. They are supportive. You can reach out to them at any time and request assistance or throw out an idea and they will go to bat for you to see if that is something allowable through FSP.
– Felisha Marshall, Director of Housing Supports, Chief Strategic Partnership Officer, Metro Housing|Boston

Importantly, these opportunities for regular communications mean we are able to regularly share information about how and why various program decisions are made. SSOs don’t feel like they are “in the dark” about updates to the program or why a particular program element has to be done in a particular way. From issues around compliance to billing to contracts to reporting, we use communication avenues already in place to explain why a particular process is necessary and, most importantly, provide additional support and infrastructure to the SSOs to address the stressors they are experiencing as they shift to a new way of doing business.

They did a great job of engaging us as their SSO partner so that we felt both heard and also not surprised about what was coming.
– Erin DiBacco, Director of Strategic Growth and Business Development, Community Servings