Creating a Collaborative Resourcing Team: Maintaining Opportunity Matrix, Funding Database and Partner Directory

Summary: This project opportunity matrix and the RPP site are valuable community assets, but the information herein represents a snapshot of needs at this point in time and is not exhaustive. Building wildfire resilience in Santa Barbara County needs to be an ongoing proactive process. As identified projects are implemented, new needs and opportunities will emerge on an ongoing basis and need to be added to the Opportunity Matrix. Further investment is needed to make the Beta Version of our Stakeholder Mapping Tool more fully reflect the suite of partners and stakeholders that play key roles within the system. Finally, a fundamental need is to develop and maintain a database of funding sources that can be matched to priority projects and tapped to further their planning and implementation. To meet these needs, the RPP team recommends a focused effort to create a Collaborative Resourcing Team that includes representatives from multiple agencies, nonprofits and funders to further develop these key pieces of our resilience system and then to maintain and put them to use. See the Featured Projects section of the website for more detailed information on how this work is accomplished through the creation of a Collaborative Resourcing Team.

The Problem

Climate change is destabilizing the core resilience of our communities. As the repercussions of the climate crisis become clearer to residents and community leaders, new collaboratives are forming to address cross-cutting issues with a united front. In Santa Barbara County alone multiple efforts are underway to enable resilience building including the Regional Priority Planning for Wildfire Resilience (RPP), the countywide Santa Barbara Regional Climate Collaborative (SBRCC), the three-county Central Coast Climate Collaborative (4C), the Climate Resilience Roundtables, and the Central Coast Climate Justice Network (CCCJN). 

All of these collaborative efforts and networks are identifying projects and initiatives we can advance to build resilience. These resilience projects span disciplines and sectors, and require diverse funding streams for management and implementation. They all necessitate pre-funding planning, partnership development and fundraising efforts. State and federal programs are ramping up to fund such initiatives, and requests for proposals are expected in a steady stream. However, we lack the needed capacity in the community to take the key next steps, leaving most projects moored in the concept stage. How will we as a community mobilize to forge the needed partnerships, plan projects, secure state and federal grants, and implement a growing portfolio of resilience initiatives? 

The Solution

To meet those needs, we propose creating a Collaborative Resource Team (CRT) that will catalyze project implementation and maintain three critical open source databases to enable the resourcing and implementation of collaborative resilience initiatives.  An array of partners including LegacyWorks Group (LWG), Santa Barbara Fire Safe Council, Cachuma Resource Conservation District, the Community Environmental Council (CEC) and the Coastal Conservancy are prioritizing this work and discussing how to advance it. If funded, the CRT will provide the framework and fuel for our diverse organizations to continue to engage and our process will be highly collaborative.   By working together to implement projects diverse organizations will be able to better leverage resources and achieve synergy, resulting in improved prioritization, project staging, increased efficiency and greater impact. 

LegacyWorks Group is prepared to facilitate the formation of the CRT and the partners envision a steering committee and working committees composed of key partner representatives and participants drawn from the RPP, SBRCC, CCCJN and 4C collaboratives.  The committees will guide the CRT as it catalyzes partnerships to advance initiatives and stewards these shared resources. The CRT itself will not implement projects, rather, it will play the key missing roles in the system to ensure projects are implemented successfully. Also, because compiling and sharing information is vital to advance this work, the CRT will create and maintain three core datasets (described below): a project opportunity matrix, a funding database and an interactive partner directory.  

To view the complete details of the three core datasets listed above and most up to date information, please click here to open the RPP Collaborative Resourcing Document.

Status: Conceptual

Cost: Medium

Funding Sources: 

Permitting: None

Additional Notes: The ongoing success and funding/ implementation of projects hinges on this project.