We will be recruiting local affiliates (primarily colleges and universities in the Bonner Program network) that will create a community research or information bureau that looks like something like this:

The research and publishing process will be managed by participating campus-based bureaus under the direction of a lead faculty member. They will be supported by a local advisory board drawn from the local community, other faculty, and student leaders actively engaged in civic engagement activities.

Students will do the research and writing work, as part of their academic and community service roles. Specifically, the news and resources content will be gathered by students taking public policy courses, in academic internships, or supported through community service work-study placements. These positions will be advertised widely on campus, and will require participating students to have already taken one of several public policy and/or community journalism courses to be eligible for selection. We anticipate hiring three students to work full-time during the 2006 summer to complete the initial research that will enable the website to go live in the September 2006. We will then recruit three or five students to work 10 hours per week during the fall and spring semesters to keep the site up to date. The faculty project director will be the managing editor for the site.

The PolicyOptions Issue Briefs will be written by students in public policy courses.

Summary:

Local campus affiliates will have the following staff:

• research director (initially faculty on part-time basis, later as full-time staff)
• student researchers
  • part-time student interns who will conduct community and policy news and information
  • students in policy courses and graduate students assigned to or focused on specific types of research
• advisory board of community and campus leaders

Faculty members are probably the most critical people involved in the success of your PolicyOptions.org bureau. They will teach the courses that train students to do the public policy research and analysis. Through their courses and related internships faculty will recruit the students who continue to be involved in your bureau's activities beyond their enrollment in the related course or internship. Finally, faculty will help recruit outside policy experts and practitioners

The inspiration for this initiative grows out of our years of experience in supporting campus-community partnerships both in direct service (e.g., tutoring/mentoring, hunger outreach at area soup kitchens and homeless shelters, etc.), community-driven research (e.g., analyzing all non-school hour youth programs, evaluating transitional housing programs for runaway youth, etc.), and capacity building workshops.

We are designing forms for community members and leaders to submit news, calendar, and resource items for inclusion in the website and e-newsletter.

We will also solicit feedback on the website, e-newsletter, and related publications through a preliminary and during our a series of issue forums and study circles with our 50+ community partner agencies.

The start-up for a local bureau might be organized as follows:

[1] Recruit leadership team

Begin recruiting individuals who have an interest in participating in developing your local community information bureau. Among that initial group you should recruit one or more faculty members since you'll need them to recruit and train students who are interested in public policy research and action.

[2] Meet with community leaders

It's also important early in the process to meet with community leaders from various positions, including non-profit directors, government agency staff and other policymakers, neighborhood leaders, and potential funders in the area. Two examples of interview questions are from the Pew Partnership for Civic Change and ConnectRichmond.

[3] Initial data collection and analysis

The initial local research is a labor intensive process that take a team of students a semester or two to complete, depending on how many people are involved in the process. We piloting this step in Trenton, New Jersey this summer (read more here).

[4] Launch

The launch of your bureau's website and weekly email news update should be a highly publicized event, perhaps featuring an event on campus or in a community setting. It is critical that the launch occur after their is sufficient information gathering for users to access on your website, and that you have the capacity in place to maintain it moving forward.

[5] On-going data collection and expansion of topics covered

On-going updating of the local news and resources content on these websites could be accomplished by two or three students working 5-10 hours per week. But, until we are fully engaged in the pilot phase at multiple sites we will not know for sure. Of course, this figure will be influenced by the size and amount of activity in the state, city, or region covered by your bureau.

[6] Assess implementation and impact

For our initial pilot phase, we have strong interest from faculty from colleges and universities in the following locations:

• The College of New Jersey: Bonner Center for Civic and Community Engagement (Pat Donohue)
• Lynchburg College: Center for Community Development and Social Justice (Professor Lisa Whitaker, Associate Director)
• University of New Mexico: Community Learning & Public Service (Professor Michael Morris, Director)
• Washburn University: Center for Service & Service Learning (Professor Rick Ellis, Director)

We are actively recruiting additional individuals and institutions that might be interested in joining this initiative.

Each of our campus partners in the pilot phase has a successful track record of raising additional funds from other sources to sustain and expand their efforts. At the local level the operational model we have developed a cost effective approach because of the following features of our approach

• Housing local PolicyOptions.org bureaus on affiliated college and university campuses offers several financial advantages, including:
  • Use of students as primary “community reporters” paid for with work-study which only requires a 25% matching contribution of their stipends (with the other 75% covered by the Federal Work-Study Program).
• Use of students as “policy analysts” who receive academic credit through their academic courses rather than any financial compensation.
  • In-kind support in technology access, workspace
  • Our web-based platform for all PolicyOption.org affiliate sites effectively removes technology development cost from their budgets
• Research provided based on academic rewards/recognition
  • Open source model for PolicyOption.org research means all affiliate sites benefit from shared information databases while only being responsible for local content they manage.

Almost all of the activities proposed in this grant will be connected with academic courses, which will make them cost-effective since those courses are taught every year and the students and faculty who are in them do not need to receive additional funding beyond the start-up mini-grants for faculty who are revising or developing these courses for the first time.

In the future, the sub-grantees will consider the following strategies:

• applying for an AmeriCorps VISTA member to further develop the community partner's capacity to engage in research, planning, and community dialogues;
• applying for AmeriCorps Education Awards to supplement Community Service Federal Work Study students receive to support their activities.