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Overview

Overview  |  Guides  |  Project Examples  |  Documents to Download

Because of the social isolation and quarantine protocols required due to COVID-19, most students in the Bonner Program may only be able to engage in Bonner service and training and enrichment in an online setting at this time. As a response, you may explore engaging Bonner students to work on in-reach capacity building projects for your Bonner Program and/or Center. These opportunities are especially appropriate for students on your Bonner Leadership Team, Senior Interns, and those Bonners who can serve remotely during this time but have not been able to find a position or project with a non-profit or government partner.

Below we describe a series of in-reach projects and provide a sample work plan for each. Bonner campus staff should assess their institutional context to determine if these or other in-reach projects are feasible at this point. This is not a requirement from the Bonner Foundation. Rather, we provide these guides as an additional set of resources to support campuses. The guides on this section of the Wiki are designed to help you outline steps and strategies that students can take to work on projects that sustain and strengthen your  Bonner Program and campus-community engagement. Projects include:

• Bonner Leadership Team — Set up a team of students to refine your Bonner Leadership Team structure, operations, training, etc. The team could update, refine, or create an operations manual or handbook, position descriptions, policies, training, orientation, retreat, etc.

• Bonner Program Handbook— Set up a team of students to update, refine, or create, if your program doesn’t have one, a Bonner Program Handbook. 

• Bonner Program or Campus-Wide Assessment/Feedback — Organize a team of students to develop an approach for effective feedback mechanisms and ideas for improvements next year.

• Data Collection — Organize a team of students to review current processes for gathering data on the program and campus-wide community engagement, and explore.

• Training Calendar — Set up a team of students to assess your Bonner Program’s current training and enrichment calendar, plan for next year's T&E calendar, orientation and weekly meetings. 

• Partner Placement & Project Development Process — Organize a team of students to review and refine current partner placement and project development practices and processes. 

• Bonner/Center Annual Report — Organize a team of students to gather content (alumni, partner, and student highlights, stories of impact, photos, etc.) and help produce a Center/Bonner Annual Report. 

• Fundraising Research & Planning — Organize a team of students to support fundraising initiatives for your Bonner Program and Center. For example, students could develop a case statement, conduct a donor scan, and prepare for a future meeting with your dean and development office. 

• Bonner Recruitment & Selection — Organize a team of students to review and suggest improvements to current Bonner recruitment and selection materials and processes, such as application materials, website information, and interview and selection processes. 

• Social Media - Organize a team of students to assess and update social media platforms to best support your Bonner Program and community engagement work (such as highlighting student, alumni and community partner achievements).

• Website - Organize a team of students to assess and update or create a website for your Bonner Program. 

Bonner Alumni Outreach/Engagement is another great in-reach capacity building project. Arthur Tartee Jr., the Alumni Network Manager, is developing a set of resources for supporting teams of students to conduct online alumni engagement. Reach out to Arthur at arthur@bonner.org for alumni-related resources. 

Bonner Foundation Support for In-Reach Capacity Building Projects

The Bonner Foundation understands that organizing students to do in-reach capacity building work requires additional guidance and support. Bonner Program staff capacity may be overextended at this time; therefore, as Bonner Programs organize students to take on in-reach capacity building projects, the Bonner Foundation staff are available to provide multiple kinds of support to Bonner students and Bonner staff. Please reach out to Liz Brandt, Community Engagement Director, (liz@bonner.org), if you have other ideas on how the Bonner Foundation staff can support these in-reach capacity building efforts. The Bonner Foundation staff can:

• Join a Zoom call to strategize and provide feedback with you or the teams working on any of these projects;

• Connect you or your team with another Bonner campus to learn about how their program and practice;

• Host a Bonner Learning Community group or webinar series to bring together multiple campus teams working on a similar in-reach project for more active and on-going networking, learning, and sharing.

• Update the resources on the Bonner Wiki as campus teams develop new ways of achieving these or other in-reach projects. 

Please contact Liz Brandt (liz@bonner.org) if you would like to talk about any of these in-reach projects for your Bonners to complete this spring or summer. 

Also, if you have already or are planning to have your Bonners work on any of these projects, please let us know so we can get a sense of whether a network-wide learning community might be organized.