Making Your Program Sustainable

• Make a strategic plan for the organization.
• Articulate a clear organization mission and strategies.
• Develop innovative leadership.
• Recruit qualified and talented staff and reward them for excellent job performance.
• Understand the client.
• Provide quality service.
• Market services effectively.
• Develop a financial management system that provides information to monitor revenues earned, the cost of services, and revenues not collected.
• Develop policies that allow managers the flexibility to manipulate fixed costs:
  • Personnel: job categories, performance, hours, skills;
  • Contraceptives and commodities: price, source, type, quantity.
• Provide rapid and accurate feedback to clinic and program managers on financial performance.
• Find a balance of service and financial goals that achieves the organization's mission.
• Institute incentive compensation systems that motivate practitioners and support personnel to provide quality services and contain costs.
• Hire reliable and respected service providers at the community level.
• Develop mechanisms for using revenues at the sites where they are generated.
• Develop strategies for cost-containment.
• Develop new strategies for generating revenue.
• Develop joint public and private ventures and community participation to reach the poorest and high-risk populations.
• Create cross subsidies of products and services to support the poor, the hardest-to-reach, and the high-risk groups.