It may be clear from the other articles in the Introduction that building a statewide climate corps does not just happen. It takes time and staff dedicated to the effort. Commissions often do not have the capacity needed, or do not know where to begin.
Within the network of commissions with more robust climate corps programs, generally commission leadership plays a more involved role in these programs. This is because they are seeking strategic relationships with peer agencies and external stakeholders that require leadership support. Additionally, dedicated staff at these commissions also have a more cross-cutting and strategic role than existing program staff. Existing staff usually oversee a portfolio of programs, and therefore likely don’t have the capacity to focus on a new climate corps initiative.
For most organizations with limited resources, you may be asking yourself where the time comes from and who is best positioned for the work. Before getting started with building your climate corps, it is important to address these questions so that your initiative can get off the ground and ideally sustain momentum for the time required to get underway.
As a first step, here are some questions and considerations that can help you assess and identify needed capacity.
Who is likely needed?
There are many types of roles that are involved in supporting the creation of a climate corps and sustaining the initiative. A successful climate corps will need people (or a person depending on capacity) with authority or leadership to move things forward. Another important role is to identify a staff person (or multiple people) who can dedicate their time to building and implementing the climate corps. This role requires time dedicated to an open-ended project that requires a lot of creativity. This is different than the role of a traditional program officer, who may have many different programs they are managing that have set timelines. However, a program officer could also be a great partner in supporting the creation of a climate corps based on their experience and knowledge of running programs. Additional staff are needed to support the design, communications, financing, recruitment, and ongoing implementation of the climate corps.
What types of skills or experience are necessary?
Ideally, it is helpful to identify leaders or staff who already have a climate or environmental background. For those who do not, this toolkit helps walk people through exploring their state’s climate and political landscape in Getting Started. When looking for capacity, it is also useful to lean on people with good strategic, facilitation, and community engagement skills to help manage relationships, build support for the program, and recruit partners and members. Again, these skills may differentiate from traditional program officers because of the nature of an open-ended new initiative, but a lot of the skills may overlap. It is also beneficial to identify people who have a passion or vested interest in building a climate corps in your state.
What are potential challenges?
When assessing capacity for your state initiative, it is important to keep in mind potential roadblocks. Staff will need to be able to strike the right balance between meeting with the right people and making decisions related to the effort and having enough time to dedicate to designing and sustaining the initiative. Someone with insufficient authority may not be able to move the initiative forward or leverage existing relationships to garner support. Alternatively, staff with less authority and competing priorities may be in a better position to spend dedicated time on the initiative.
Another piece to consider is what is driving the initiative. This will influence how you decide who and how to staff the initiative and what potential challenges may exist. For example, if there is a mandate in place, there may be more room to staff the initiative. Without the mandate, there may be less buy-in from the organization and you may need to identify more creative ideas to move the effort forward.
How can you find funding support for capacity?
With anything, additional staff will require additional funding and the initiative itself will require funding. It’s great to have commission-dedicated funding to be creative and strategize the structure of the climate corps, but that may not always be the case. Sourcing funding from multiple sources will require partnerships with state agencies, securing planning grants for outside development of strategy, initial legislative support to assess, and possibly philanthropic support.
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A quick primer on climate change
What does climate change look like in your state?
What is happening with state policies or actions?
Assessing your state’s service landscape and gaps
Defining benefits of a state climate corps
Addressing traditional service program barriers
How to work with a commission and programs
Rural climate corps considerations
Integrating pre-apprenticeships
Joining state agencies at the table