MPACT: Community Consultant

Monterey Partnership for Assessment and Community Transformation
54 organizations
11 team members
5 assessments
3 frameworks
2 clients
1 community

 

M-PACT Background

Creating an identity takes a lot of time and energy…A simple exercise of naming a consultancy group, a name that would be catchy to 11 diverse individuals, and more importantly, be meaningful to other stakeholders, occupied considerable amount of time in the beginning of the semester. However, through this lesson in branding, we learned great facilitation work, how to come to consensus (or rather, when not to), and trust and team building, all of which will be transferable in our future careers.

*M-PACT (Monterey Partnership for Assessments and Community Transformations).

The Project:

The City of Monterey has partnered with United Way Monterey County and the Monterey Institute of International Studies to implement an assessment of volunteerism in our community in order to ascertain how to strengthen and enhance the volunteer sector and promote economic vitality in Monterey, resulting in a more vibrant, healthy community. Eleven graduate students of the Leading Social Change Organizations Seminar, under close supervision and consultancy provided by Dr. Beryl Levinger, focused their research project on finding ways that will enable the City to successfully apply for an AmeriCorps Operational Grant.

In order to implement our project in a more productive and comprehensive way, we conducted our assessments by focusing on the following areas of concern: organizational needs, volunteer base, and organizational capacity. As a separate assessment, we also conducted research on alternative technology platforms and developed recommendations for the volunteer center at UWMC to bridge the  existing gap between volunteers candidates and organizations in the area.
The final report encompassed the methodology, findings, and recommendations that have been developed by the M-PACT consulting team.