How many partnerships can your school operate each year? 🌱
Schools bring in nonprofit partners to fill gaps that the budget doesn't cover. The average number you operate at one time comes down to two things: how many new ones you start each year, and how long each one runs before you have to renew or replace it.
A partnership's cycle is how many years it runs before you have to do the big setup work all over again.
A one-year cycle
You've worked with the same after-school program for six years. But every August you write the same application, recruit the same volunteers, and redo the schedule. Six years long, one-year cycle.
A three-year cycle
You wrote one grant, won it, and the funding runs three years. During those years, you just need to keep it oiled and fine-tuned. That's a three-year cycle.
A partnership cycle is not the same as how long you've had the same partner. You might have had a partner for five years, but if you have to renew it every year, it has a one year cycle time.
Everything updates as you type.
Average over the last couple of years.
How long before you renew or replace it.
Your average number of
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operating partnerships
If you can't start more partnerships each year, longer cycles are the other way to get there.
Your partnerships would need to average
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years per cycle
If the cycles are what they are, this is the other lever.
You'd need to start
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new partnerships every year
One line of math called Little's Law, which has been used to count everything from cars on an assembly line to people in a waiting room. Here's how it works, what it assumes, and why cycle length matters more than most schools think.
Read the reasoning →Put several of your schools side by side. When some start more partnerships than others and everybody gets the same cycle length, the gap between them gets wider, not narrower. This tool shows you by how much, and what would close it.
Compare your schools →This calculator was built by Samantha Keppler — former high school teacher, PhD engineer, and professor of operations at the University of Michigan. Get in touch with feedback or your own partnering stories. She'd love to hear from you!
Get in touch →Or leave a voicemail at (313) 306-7476.