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Partnerships, Placements & Projects
Overview | Guides | Campus Examples | Documents to Download
Contents:
Identify Lead Partners
Selecting the partners for Bonner Student placements can create a foundation for meaningful placements for both the partner and student. It is good to keep the following things in mind when selecting your lead partners:
Mapping Agency Locations and Issues
In identifying lead partners for the Bonner Program and other opportunities for your campus, one strategy is to Map Agencies in your local area. Mapping your surrounding agencies help campuses see how many non-profits there are in proximity to campus, accessible by walking, car, or public transportation, what type of agency they are (public school, community group, non-profit, government agency, coalition or collaboration, etc...) and what issues or services these organizations provide. Mapping Agencies and their needs can be a great way to involve students and others on campus. We have developed guides for Community Asset Mapping.
Community Asset Mapping
Community Asset Mapping is a specific approach to community engagement and development that draws on the 1993 book Building Communities from the Inside Out by John L. McKnight and John P. Kretzmann. They had been working in collaboration with neighborhoods in the Chicago and Evanston area, first in connection with faculty and researcher roles at Northwestern University. In doing so, they observed that some approaches to community partnership and development failed to recognize the strengths within the communities.
Service Providers vs Collaboratives vs Campaigns
We have defined three main types of community partner organizations.
- Service providers are meeting direct individual human, animal, and environmental needs. More than 90% of campus partnerships are with direct service providers.
- Collaboratives are addressing community issues by seeking to bring about systems change. They designate themselves as a network, task force, coalition, hub, alliance, joint programming, strategic alliance or collective impact.
- Campaigns advocate for policy change and take the form of community organizing, social action, or campaigns to elect someone to office.
The nature of the student service opportunities will vary with each type of organization. Since campuses have fewer partnerships with collaboratives or campaigns, we have developed specific guides for each:
Direct Service vs Program Coordination vs Capacity Building vs Advocacy
As you identify and meet with community partners, you should have a clear idea of the range of service opportunities each may offer. Below is a short-hand set of definitions we have been using.
- Direct service as client service (human, animal, or environmental) such as tutoring at an after-school program, serving soup at a homeless shelter, visiting the elderly in a nursing home, or cleaning a park.
- Program coordination as helping with the volunteer management and other leadership or administrative tasks necessary to manage a program's service delivery.
- Capacity-building opportunities can be narrowed down to five areas:
- Volunteer Management: coordinating/managing service program, volunteer recruitment
- Training and Program Development: coordinating programs, developing new programs, writing training manuals, organizing training workshops
- Fundraising: organizing events, identifying grant and funding sources, writing grants
- Communications: website and social media development, coordinate meetings, online networking support
- Research: community-based research, policy research
There are three kinds of outcomes from capacity-building activities for participating organizations:
- Efficiency/Efficacy: Improved outcomes with the same level of resources or improved or consistent quality of services with fewer resources;
- Scale/Reach: Number of new people served, new populations served, and/or new or expanded services;
- Leverage: Additional resources or assets garnered through capacity-building activities such as funding, volunteers, in-kind support, and partnerships.
- Social Action can include community organizing, various forms of advocacy, and working on an electoral campaign. See more on social action here on this wiki.
Note that the service opportunities above are often complementary and several kinds of engagement may be integrated into the roles students are filling with partners.
Visit and Orient Partners
Many campuses have long-standing relationships with a number of community partners. These relationships build over time, as the partners come to know about the campus service program, or through intentional activities, like fairs, luncheons, mailings, phone calls, and agency visits.
Site Visits
Site visits are the most effective strategy for Bonner Programs to recruit, sustain, and manage effective community partnerships. We recommend you make at least one face-to-face meeting each semester with the community partner agency representative with whom you are engaged in a higher-level (regular, project coordinator, or planning team level) placement. Student site coordinators and Senior Interns may be very effective in this role, especially with training and guidance.
Your meeting with community partners lays the foundation for defining the relationship over the next academic year. When you meet with existing or potential new partners in the summer. These meetings should cover the following topics:
- Review goals for the campus: Discuss the student developmental model (five E’s, student leadership, training and enrichment, etc.) and your goals for deepening student service experience. Also discuss opportunities for leveraging other campus resources (community-based research, service-learning courses, facilities, etc.).
- Review goals for the partner: Gain an understanding from the partner how they view the relationship and what their needs and goals are for the next year. Reflect on student placements in the past.
- Review Service Opportunities Form: After discussing how students have been serving at the organization, use the Capacity Building Opportunities Form to walk through and assess opportunities for students to support the capacity building needs of the organization. Remember that the capacity building projects can be the entire focus of a student or can complement other direct service they be providing. For example, students often coordinate after-school enrichment programs where they recruit, train, and manage other volunteers, while still serving alongside them to provide educational support to the youth in the program.
- Explain matching process or how to work with existing students (Bonners) to integrate capacity building roles and projects into their positions: Explain that positions and projects will be developed with the understanding that placements will only occur when matches can be made to fit student interests and capabilities. Or, you can work with the partner to add capacity building roles and projects into the work of Bonners that are already at the site, making these modifications to the positions also.
For existing students, this may also involve steps to meet with those students or facilitate the planning and discussion between the community partner and student about integrating these roles.
For students at large (not at the site already), this process will be very similar to a job/internship posting. Therefore, it is very important to emphasize that there is not a 100% chance of matching a student to the position/project.
- Review Capacity Building Accomplishments Form: The mirrors the Opportunities Form but is focused on gathering the quantitative measurements of what was achieved during the semester. You want to review what and how the data will be collected ahead of time so you're prepared to begin collecting the relevant information during the semester (if needed) and at the end when it's completed. For example, if the role includes volunteer recruitment, you'll want to determine the process that will be in place to collect this data.
- Use the Community Engagement Opportunities Form, a four-page form to be used with community partners, to brainstorm possible community engagement opportunities. It may complement your existing tools for identifying service opportunities.
Walk through each opportunity category. Ask the partner to define opportunities as concretely as possible, including products, how they fit into the organization's operations, resources that might be needed, deadlines, etc.
Focus Groups
This document outlines a suggested process for arranging and carrying out focus groups with community partners or other community constituents. While written with staff as the main audience, it is also foreseen that this process could involve student leaders and faculty.
Developing Capacity-Building Projects
This form lists the different tangible projects associated with each capacity-building category (i.e. Program Development, Research, Fundraising, Communications, and Volunteer Management).
This guide narrates how one program (Macalester College) brought partners together to work through the Capacity Building Opportunities Form. Then, the program also integrated an introduction and discussion of the partners' interests in capacity building projects into meetings with students. Together, Bonner staff, students, and partners then created positions that enabled Bonner students to take on new projects. See this guide for more help in how to do this.
Eight-step guide to working with groups of your community partners to define, develop, and manage capstone projects, with a special emphasis on community-based research projects.
This 23-page Bonner Implementation Guide for Community-Based Research (pdf) is a comprehensive guide includes handouts and worksheets for integrating community-based researching into your campus community and civic engagement efforts. For more, see the Community-Based Research section of the Bonner Resource Wiki.
This guide from the University of Houston Bonner Leaders Program provides a template for students to use when setting up a meeting with a community partner to propose a project. It includes a detailed 9-section outline for student project leaders to articulate their goals, measurement for success, and potential challenges.
Mailings
Many schools send their prospective partners a letter informing them about the structure, status, and ways to access student volunteers. A comprehensive example is offered below. This is an example of a more structured way for sharing the key aspects of the Bonner Program and information needed to create an appropriate service placement with partners. It is a longer mailing. This example has the following:
- provides the basics about the Bonner Foundation and Bonner Program.
- explains the hour requirement and/or structure
- cites what types of activities are allowable and prohibited
- explains how individual Bonner students select their placement
- asks agencies to define placement expectations in writing
- lays out basic information about the Bonner Program developmental model and trainings for students
- addresses paperwork and reporting requirements and what partner agencies must agree to do
- provides clear communication information for the Bonner Director/Coordinator and how to stay in touch
- provides some information about the Bonner Program financial structure and what students are allowed and prohibited in terms of payment
Note: This type of letter may be accompanied by a handout describing the Bonner Program overall or the developmental model. You may want to integrate this information into your campus’s version or process for informing partners
Write or Update Position and Project Descriptions
Write Position and Project Descriptions
You should also include description about the service and intended outcomes. Finally, be clear and concise in your write-up. Review these with your partners to be sure you have captured the opportunities correctly. Also, remember that, when appropriate, direct service and capacity building roles can be combined into one position.
Enter Positions into BWBRS
These position descriptions should then be entered into BWBRS.
You may also want to use these position descriptions to produce a flyer or email that can be easily distributed during the recruitment process.
Match and Prepare Students
Approaches for Matching Students to Sites
There are a range of ways to help find students find their placements. These include:
- One-time service projects — During the first semester, incoming students engage in one-time service projects at longstanding partners as a way to introduce them to the range of placements and organizations in the area.
- Shadowing — Some schools rotate students through a series of placements by assigning them to shadow other students who have been serving with their community partners for awhile already.
- Match Day — Incoming Bonner students and community partners are paired together through a match process during which students interview with an average of four community partners based on interest, and community partners get to interview an average of seven students. After the interview process, students and partners rank one another, and staff at Swearer use these rankings to make best-fit matches.
- Volunteer Fair — Organize a volunteer fair to introduce partners to your campus community and students to your partners. This approach offers an opportunity for students and agency staff to meet one another and explore possible matches directly. To bring partners out, Bonner Programs typically send a letter of invitation to partners with whom they have (or would like) a relationship. These letters are typically concise, straightforward, and friendly.
Elements of a letter inviting community partners to a volunteer fair often include:
- Greeting
- Date of the fair /event
- Location of the fair/event
- Directions (may be separate enclosure)
- Basic overview of the event and what to expect
- What to bring and how to prepare
- Clear contact information (name, phone) for the Bonner staff
Sample letter to invite community partners to fairs by Oberlin College: Oberlin Partner Fair.doca
- Site Visits — Some schools simply have students go on site visits, usually in groups, as a way to learn more about the service placement opportunities.
- One-on-one meetings with Bonners — use these meetings to assess the students their interests, strengths, and needed areas of growth.
- Class or site meetings with Bonners — use these meetings to educate Bonners about capacity building projects and begin to discuss their interests, strengths, and needed areas of growth to take on these roles.
- Recruitment flyer or email — distribute these widely to students to identify those who might be interested and able to take on a project as part of a course assignment, internship placement, work-study position, or other service or leadership program.
- Note: You may also want to distribute a recruitment flyer or email widely to faculty to identify those who might be want to include a project as part of a course with a academic service-learning or community-based research focus.
Orienting Students
During first-year Bonner Orientation and the early weeks of the program, you should introduce students to your community partners. In these introductions, you should include the following about each partner:
- philosophy of reciprocal community partnerships
- background on local community
- the development model
- team and community building
Below is a checklist for site supervisors to consider in their orientation of students to the agency, its space, staff, and work, as well as other helpful actions to support a student’s effectiveness.
Orienting Site Supervisors
You should develop structured orientation and training for agency staff and site supervisors themselves. This can be offered at a retreat or annual agency orientation meeting. One example is Berea College, which has recently developed a Retreat for Site Supervisors where they provides training and guidance. Site Supervisors have responded positively to this event.
Guides for Skill-Based Capacity-Building Projects
These step-by-step guides provide specific guidance for a variety of capacity-building projects.
- Guide to Creating Brochures & Flyers — This step by step guide outlines a set of steps in designing and developing a brochure for a community partner organization.
- Guide to Celebrating Volunteers — This guide will show comprehensive research and a step-by-step process through a webinar for students to learn how to conduct volunteer recognition projects.
- Guide to Creating an Email Marketing List — This guide outlines a step by step process of researching email marketing softwares and creating an email listserv for your community partner’s needs.
- Guide to Writing a Grant Proposal — This guide outlines a step by step process of researching potential grant opportunities and submitting a well-written grant proposal.
- Guide to Writing an Operations Manual — This guide outlines how to write a training and/or operations manual for a community partner organization.
- Guide to Writing a Press Release — This guide outlines the steps to develop a captivating and well-written press release.
- Guide to Designing a Program — This guide outline the steps to design a new program outlining community needs, develop a program mission, vision, and goals, conduct an analysis of strengths and challenges/risk factors (SWOT), create an implementation plan, and execute an assessment plan.
- Guide to Evaluating a Program — This guide will teach you a basic understanding of what is and how to conduct a program evaluation.
- Guide to Creating Promotional Videos — This guide covers the following steps to create a promotional video: Before Making the Video, Crafting Central Message of the Video, Compiling Images and Audio Files, and Editing Video.
- Guide to Craft a Case Story — This guide explains how to successfully craft a case story in partnership with a non-profit organization.
- Guide to Training Design — This guide outlines a set of steps in researching, creating, and writing training and/or curriculum sessions for a community-based program or partner.
- Guide to Social Media — This guides outlines how to create a social media strategy and content for a nonprofit program/organization and how to sustain the social media presence over time.
- Guide to Survey Design — This guide outlines how to create a survey questionnaire for their community partner.
- Guide to Volunteer Orientation — This guide outlines how to plan an orientation or training for new volunteers.
Manage and Support Students
Tracking Bonner Service Hours
The following are the components of managing your Bonner student service.
- Community Learning Agreement
The two-page standard Bonner CLA which should be completed for all placements beyond the one-time short-term service project.
- CLA Form.pdf
- CLA Quick Start Guide.pdf
- Short Objective Worksheet.doc — A one-page worksheet for developing solid objectives for the CLA, which should include the activity, result, measure, standard, and beneficiaries. This may be used to train partners in working with students on their objectives, in addition to training students directly.
- Objective Writing Worksheet — A more comprehensive four-page guide for developing solid objectives, including a worksheet (that is also available as a full training in the curriculum: Setting Goals and Objectives for Service).
Students should report their service and training & enrichment hours on at least a biweekly basis, logging those hours into the Bonner Web-Based Reporting System (Bonner WBRS). If needed, this web-based system can generate a hard-copy hour log report with signature lines for site supervisors and students. Alternatively, the hours can be e-signed using the web-based interface.
Here are a series of mini-guides for users of the Bonner Web-Based Reporting System (BWBRS).
The Coordinator, the Bonner Scholars and Leaders, and their respective community partners are responsible for ensuring that hours served are adequately and consistently documented. However, successful completion of this program does not entail simply “getting one's hours done and reported.” The transformational goals of the Bonner Program challenge Bonner Scholars and Leaders to:
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Participate and complete training and reflection exercises;
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Use the Community Learning Agreement process to develop and work towards meeting learning and service objectives;
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Promote service on the campus and in the community; and
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Exemplify a desire to do more than just the necessary hours, but rather engage in community problem-solving activities that have both societal and personal benefits.
Staffing Structures for Managing Student Placements
There are different model on how campuses may approach their community partnerships.
- Clearinghouse: In this approach, the civic engagement office collects projects and opportunities from non-profits to advertise them within the Bonner Program or across campus to recruit volunteers. These opportunities may be one time service projects or volunteers for an ongoing program like an after school program or food bank. Many campuses are beginning to use online systems such as Org Syn or GetConnected to collect opportunities, share information, and have student sign up for the projects.
- Individual Student Placement/Internships: Students have different passions and interests that can influence where they want to service. This approach connects students one by one to organizations that align their interests and community partner needs. Campus might collect opportunities at the beginning of an academic year and meet with student individually for placements.
- Student Service Club: Civic Engagement Offices and Centers may find that student clubs and organizations have relationships with community partners and create opportunities for service. These can be student run clubs and organizations with a service emphasis or requirement as part of their bi-laws. Also, many Greek affiliated organizations have a specific philanthropy they support. This approach includes bringing these students together for collaboration and awareness of projects.
- Department Programs: Civic Engagement Offices and Centers may find that other academic departments or institutes have relationships with community partners and create opportunities for service. These can be issue- or competency-focused academic concentrations or certificate/fellowship programs. These programs often link academic coursework, undergraduate research in the form of community-based research, and civic engagement internships.
- Site/Issue-Based Team: Site and Issue based teams group students in either two ways — students serving at the same site or student at different sites serving a similar issue. Site Based Teams are created with established community partners where three or more volunteers are at the same site who meet on a regular basis that continue to build capacity at that specific organization. There is usually one student leader that coordinates the team of volunteers. Issue Based teams are organized where students are serving on a similar issue, but at different locations (e.g. environment, homelessness, education, etc…). Issue Based Teams meet on a consistent basis to learn more about their specific issue, find ways to collaborate, and spread awareness about their issue.
Support Students on Capacity-Building Projects
Capacity building roles will often require students to develop specific skills and identify resources to make them successful. Therefore, you should consider what skill-based training and enrichment activities would be useful to your students serving in these positions. You also should consider identifying a faculty or staff member at your school who could serve as an informal advisor to the student. For instance, recruit someone from the development office for grants/fundraising projects, someone from the communications office for social media project, etc.
Managing Summer Service Placements
Summer internship positions with nonprofit organizations, schools, and government agencies are often a critical component of the four-year Bonner Program experience. Bonner Scholars generally complete two or three summer internships, and they have financial support (in the form of a working and living stipend) for (at least) two of them. Bonner Leaders also often find and carry out such summer internships, which may be paid by the campus, another funder, or the organization itself.
Other Student Support Issues
- Volunteer Retention — A one-page set of simple ideas to consider about ways to encourage Bonner and other volunteer retention. These ideas may help underscore a relationship of respect, open communication, and appreciation between an agency’s staff and students/volunteers.
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Handling Problems — A two-page description of direct actions that partners may want to take to address any issues arising with a Bonner student/volunteer. This document also guides partners through a helpful set of questions for being ready to effectively structure, supervise, and benefit from a student’s work.
Sample text for transportation form (from DePauw University):
The Bonner Scholars Program provides transportation for Bonner Scholars to their local agency sites, which are not within walking distance from campus. It would be very helpful if your agency could schedule one or more Bonner students at any given time in order that the students could car pool, thereby saving on gasoline and leaving our other vehicles available for other Bonner students. We realize that this may be difficult to arrange due to the Bonner Scholars’ class schedules, but any flexibility and assistance you can give us in this matter would be greatly appreciated.
- Medical Emergency Accident Procedure — Here is a sample procedure:
In the event of a medical emergency call 911. If 911 service is not required, please make arrangements to transport the injured person to the nearest hospital emergency room. In the event of an accident while using a Hartman Center vehicle, all necessary reporting procedures and information can be found in the glove box of the Hartman Center vehicle. If, for some reason, this information is not in the vehicle, please follow standard operating procedures as with any accident. Contact the local law enforcement agency to report the accident, exchange insurance information, and call the Hartman Center as soon as possible at 658-4622 or 658-4620. Never leave the scene of an accident.
Assess Accomplishments, Placements, and Partnerships
Collect Direct Service Accomplishments
At the end of the semester, someone from your staff should meet with the student(s) and community partner to fill out the Service Opportunities Form. This meeting should also be used to reflect on the semester, revisit the Opportunities Form, and then review and revise (if necessary) the position descriptions for the next semester or summer. Some schools have their Bonner Senior Intern participate in this process, while others have developed a specific Community Impact Intern position to help manage this process.
The results of the completed Accomplishments Form should be entered into the Bonner Web-Based Reporting System form linked to the partner profile. These results will be available in BWBRS reports at both the school and national level.
Collect Capacity Building Accomplishments
After a semester or year, carry out follow up (again using interviews, workshops, or surveys) using the Service Accomplishments Survey. This survey essentially looks the same as the Capacity Building Form but allows you to ask the partner the following simple questions:
- Who worked with you? To what extent and depth?
- What got done?
- How would you describe the value or impact of that work?
You want to collect narrative information as well as data!
Example: Let's consider a Bonner Program partnership with the Village Area Soup Kitchen (VASK), a local nonprofit. VASK serves meals to 50 homeless people daily. But it also does a lot more. It provides job training and career assistance to homeless individuals. It takes donations and provides other goods (like food items, clothes, and household items). It has an advocacy and policy department that works on city and state policies that might better address homelessness, its roots causes, and solutions. It networks with other agencies like it across the city, state, and region. When VASK completed its form, it said it also wanted:
- Help with developing new training and curriculum both for volunteers and for homeless individuals in a job training program
- Help with researching and writing a grant to the state to obtain HUD and other governmental funding
- A program evaluation of the soup kitchen
- A research project to find out how to build and sustain more partnerships with local businesses and chains that could donate products (like personal care products) that clients wanted more of
- Help with researching best practices and policies for creating more short-term and affordable housing options
- A research project on the best models for supporting homeless moms with children under 14
Through the survey and/or interviews (and student site leaders can help!) turn this information into a more detailed summary of outputs...then impacts.
Students from The State College, including 6 Bonner Scholars and 8 other students, worked with VASK in the past year.
Example: Staff at VASK answered the following:
- Who worked with you? To what extent and depth? This can involve some basic counts of people and hours, but don't stop there!
A total of 14 students worked regularly at VASK. Six of them worked 6+ hours each week over 30 weeks (over 1,080 hours). Eight of them worked on average 3 hours a week for 20 weeks (480 hours). One class of 12 worked on a special project, including research on several of these projects (another 360 hours of time). One summer intern worked for 40 hours/week for 10 weeks (another 400 hours). This also included deep involvement by 3 faculty members and 1 administrator from The State College.
Synthesize the partner's work into projects. Some assessment people call this "outputs."
Students helped prepare and serve over 300 meals. Two students researched and developed an 8-session curriculum (which involved many local presenters) that included topics such as skills trainings, professional writing, networking for job searches, applying for jobs and interviewing, completing taxes, connecting with other support services, and financial literacy. Two students helped carry out a program evaluation of the soup kitchen, identifying ways to save about 10% of the budget and make the meals more nutritious. One student did a capstone research project ("Engaged Signature Work") to research the best practices for affordable housing, writing an issue brief and highlighting "Housing First" as a recommended policy. With help from students and faculty in the course, a new marketing campaign was devised, new social media presence was created, and VASK launched a new partnership with local small businesses and retailers to routinely get donated items.
- How would you describe the value or impact of that work?
You may be able to describe the value or impact in a number of terms including:
- monetary (convert the hours and/or projects into value - such as dollars)
- real value (i.e., have the agency describe what happened as a result from the work
Indeed, this is what nonprofits often have to do to demonstrate their value and impact for funders.
- Here, a monetary conversion (from the state's $9.75 minimum wage) might allow you to say: Students from the State College contributed over $20,000 worth of time; the value of the volunteer time of students was $22,620 (2,320 hours @ $9.75).
- On top of this, VASK valued the capacity building work provided through research, reports, marketing, and other support at over $15,000.
- VASK was able to apply for and receive another $250,000 in state grant funding for work on affordable housing and job training.
To summarize this strategy just involves three steps:
- Step 1: Carry out the Capacity Building Form in order to find out what the partner wants. Build these projects into the work of Bonners, other student volunteers, the faculty, and curriculum.
- Step 2: Do the work and then carry out the Service Accomplishments Form, making sure to collect both narrative information and counts. Use BWBRS for this too (or your campus-wide tracking).
- Step 3: Aggregate and summarize this information (for each site) to report. Think about creating a nice annual report, infographic, or other visual summary (that you can share widely on campus and with relevant community constituents). Then do the same for the whole program. See an example on Documents to Download.
Introduction to Partner Evaluations
Creating an Introduction
Your program may want to create an introduction to the Partner Evaluations This may take the form of a cover letter or a simple form that is enclosed in the partner materials/binder. Elements of the introduction should include:
- Greetings and/or context (addressing the importance of evaluations)
- Overview of the evaluation process (e.g., completion by partners and/or students)
- Time frame/deadlines for submitting evaluations
- Contact information for Bonner Program staff
Sample Text for Evaluation Introduction
The sample text below is for an introduction enclosed with the Evaluations in a binder/folder of materials, as opposed to cover letter.
As you know, the Bonner Program has three main goal areas: (1) student development, (2) community impact, and (3) impact on the campus itself and its culture and infrastructure for service. In order to achieve the outcomes and reach the goals of the Bonner Scholars Program, evaluations are a central piece of the process of community partnerships and a key part of a student’s growth and development in the program.
We are asking that each Partner Site Supervisor take evaluations very seriously and submit them to the Bonner Program Office in a timely manner at the end of each semester or summer. The evaluations assist the Bonner Program in developing clear outcomes and help them prepare themselves for a profession or career.
We also encourage and expect all Partner Site Supervisors to discuss their evaluations with the Bonner student before they are returned to the Bonner Office. Once an evaluation has been returned to the Office, the Director or Coordinator will schedule a meeting with the Bonner student to discuss their experience and review their evaluations. As you may know, one-to-one meetings with students are a key part of our program.
In addition, at the end of each semester, the Bonner student is asked to complete an evaluation of the community partner and the experience in working with the organization. Once the evaluation is completed, the Bonner student is encouraged to share the evaluation with the Site Supervisor. In some cases, we may suggest that the Partner Evaluation be a collaborative effort between the Bonner student and the agency supervisor. Once the evaluation is completed, it is returned to the Bonner Program Office and used in evaluating the agency at the end of the year when reviewing renewal applications for acceptance.
If you have questions or would like to discuss the evaluation process or the student’s performance, please contact the Bonner Program Office at (XXX) XXX-XXXX. We would be happy to talk with you.
Partner Evaluation of Student
- Basic Evaluation: A two-page rating form evaluation for a partner to complete about the student, addressing job performance, working with people, professionalism and maturity, and open-ended questions about the student’s strengths and areas for improvement.
- Advanced Evaluation: A more advanced for Partners who incorporate all levels, including Project Coordinators and Capstone level placements (Level 3-4). A two-page rating form evaluation for a partner to complete about the student, addressing job performance, communication, attitude, working with people, responsibility, and leadership and open-ended questions about the student’s performance and development.
Student Evaluation of Partner
- Basic Evaluation: A two-page rating form evaluation for a student to complete about the partner supervisor/agency, addressing organization, training, supervision, guidance, support, and development, and open-ended questions about recommending this placement for the future.
- Advanced Evaluation: A two-page rating form evaluation for a student to complete about the partner, addressing job structure, communication, attitude, responsibility, and leadership and open-ended questions about the partner’s investment in the student’s work and development.
Partner Recognition
Below are a series of ideas for recognizing your community partners:
- Partner Luncheon or event: Many campuses hold a special luncheon, picnic, or dinner for partners themselves. Not only is the event substantively a thank-you, but the programming intentionally recognizes partners for their work.
- Invite partners to the Senior Presentations of Learning or Capstone presentations: Several campuses employ this strategy. At times, the Bonner student invites the partner representatives directly, especially if presentations occur at different times (e.g., at Bonner Meetings) throughout the year. Other campuses invite partners to a special event, like a Senior Recognition Dinner, a convocation, or an end-of-the-year picnic.
- Special awards: Some campuses engage students in creating an award or certificate for community partners. A template for such an award is available in these resource. Through this certificate, the student can personalize his or her thank you and appreciation. Some campuses also have a special award that goes to only one or a few partners at a public event, like a Community Service Awards Celebration.
- Special invitations to present and speak: Some campuses are consistent in inviting partners to speak at forums and in classrooms.
- Special resources or publications: Some campuses develop a resource booklet for partners or a written publication in which they are highlighted.
- Participate in partners’ work: Some campuses work to find ways to participate in partners' special events, sit on community boards, and otherwise integrate with their efforts. Some even engage in collaborative grant-writing and fundraising.
- Special trainings and retreats: a few campuses have begun exploring special trainings and events that appreciate partners also by investing in them and their success. Programming may include workshops on service-learning, community service programs, campus/community partnerships, and other topics.
- Integrating with site visits and regular communication: saying “thank you” and sharing appreciation in an ongoing way is also incredibly important. Whether through cards or small tokens of appreciation or simple, direct words, these efforts can go a long way to make partners feel appreciated.
Service Abroad
Summer Service Exemption Process for Social Impact Experiences
The University of Richmond Summer Service Exemption Guide: for Bonner Scholars completing research fellowships and for-profit internships related to positive social outcomes.
In this guide, you will find the following:
- the process for exempting one of the two required summer internships
- previously approved Bonner fellowships and for-profit internships
- summer credit requirements
- compensation
