Partnering with Community Organizations to Provide Out-of-School Programs for Youth in Glendale, Arizona

The Challenge

As a result of an economic downturn and slow recovery, the City of Glendale could not devote as many resources to after-school youth programming as it once had. In lieu of terminating the programs entirely, the City outsourced operations to the nonprofit sector for several of its community centers located in low-income neighborhoods. While the new partnership model allowed service provision to continue, it also presented multiple challenges. The initial solicitation process received no responses from qualified operators, leading the City to establish operating agreements with multiple community-based organizations.  Additionally, communication between community partners and staff was limited, and the City had insufficient and inconsistent information on program performance.

The Innovation

To design the procurement strategy and develop a partnership model built on collaboration, the GPL worked with Glendale to release a request for information (RFI) to understand the capabilities of the local marketplace for providing after-school services. The city also released a results-driven request for proposals (RFP) for qualified operations to provide free and/or low-cost youth programming at City-owned recreation centers. Finally, the GPL worked with Glendale to design an active contract management (ACM) process to track program implementation and troubleshoot issues in real-time.

The Results

The new RFP received responses from four organizations, with qualified operators identified for almost all of the City’s community and recreation centers. The structure of the RFP, along with the response workbook, made the procurement process easier to navigate for vendors. The city is continuing its efforts to improve the structure and format of its RFPs, incorporate results-driven contracting into annual procurement training, and work with departments to identify opportunities to evaluate vendor performance.

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