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Making Sure Your Program Is Ready for OY

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2. R.E.C.O.R.D It!

1. Document Your Program Goals and Opportunities

Everyone needs a northstar to navigate by. The bigger the project or organization, the brighter that star needs to be. Even if you are already delivering services, it’s a good idea to take a step back and run this exercise from time to time.

Who is this play for?

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Organizational Leaders

Frontline staff

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Marketing and communication staff

image of what a youth organization staff member who is a person of color and has a comic b

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Programs and Opportunity Managers.

group of racially diverse young adults (18-24 year olds) working together in an office in

Whether you are just starting out working with Opportunity and Emerging Youth or your program is already up and running, it’s always a good idea to pause for a moment to ensure that your organization's goals and programs are aligned with the needs of the people you are serving.

Internal technical conversations can be lengthy and require additional capacity to set up. However, when you maintain good housekeeping practices, you create a foundation of trust and consistency among your employees that can be easily noticeable to young adults and participants

Why this
matters:

Builds trust with youth and partners

Being clear about “why we’re here” shows honesty and prevents disappointment.

One-size-fits-all programming misses the mark.

Without clarity, organizations risk creating false expectations, or pulling youth into programs that don’t serve their actual needs.

Aligns internal teams.

Staff and leadership need a shared understanding of the purpose of youth engagement. Misaligned goals can lead to inconsistent or confusing experiences for youth.

Put it into action

As you read through this playbook, you will see many plays that focus on understanding where participants are at any given time. This is an ongoing process that starts at intake and continues through your program and beyond. Here are the most important things to keep in mind:

Write Your Opportunity

You need to clearly be able to express the following six key things:

Who are you serving?

A lot of youth and young adults fall into the category of “opportunity youth,” and their needs can be really different. Are you looking to serve people within your zip code? Or across the city? Are you focusing on Opportunity Youth interested in a specific set of needs or who are at a specific point in their lives?

Think through what the commonalities of the people you want to reach are and name your challenge statement :

Where do they live? Are you serving a specific area?
Are you serving people of all genders?
Does age matter?
What general issues might they be struggling with?
Are you focusing on specific issues: justice-impacted folks or are you dealing with particular trauma, or Acute Childhood experiences?
Are there any other uniting factors at play? For example, are you focusing on specific communities like young LGBTQ adults, a specific group of immigrants, or people of a certain religious faith?

Opportunity Statement Template : ( Person/Group you aim to serve) needs an opportunity to ( insert most impactful need your organization is aware of and has the capacity to meet ) because (most interesting discovery).

Example Opportunity Statement: First-generation college students working while enrolled need an opportunity to access flexible advising and clear communication channels because confusion and missed information—not ability—often derail progress.

From Opportunity to Accountability

Challenges like “housing insecurity” or “getting jobs” can take the focus off an entire organization. Identifying the root causes or upstream factors that impact or influence young adult decisions that guide your program goals and offering, and clearly articulating how you address these problems, should be clear to each key stakeholder. Each program run-up, your team should be clear with young adults on services and opportunities being introduced, sustained, and have changed from any other written communications that exist about your organization. Clear boundaries are essential for safeguarding both staff and participants.

Answer this internally:

What specific changes should participants experience during this program cycle?
What outcomes are we directly responsible for influencing?
What outcomes are outside our scope?

Example:

We are responsible for increasing civic knowledge and confidence
We are not responsible for whether someone ultimately changes their major or job.

Authenticate Your Opportunity Statement

Your earlier “Opportunity Statement” should now become operational. If your opportunity statement was:

Young adults need meaningful roles in shaping decisions because they are more invested when their voices influence outcomes.

Keep it focused. Fewer, clearer goals are better than broad ambition. Your program goals might become:

Young adults actively contribute to decision-making spaces.
Participants build skills in facilitation, feedback, and communication.
Participants understand how their input influences organizational or policy decisions.

Opportunities Taken

Be sure key roles are assigned to document exactly what is taking place to reflect back to your team later, if and what kind of impact is taking place. Instead of a 3–5 year impact, ask your team:

By the end of this program cycle, what will be different? How can we capture our opportunities?

Examples:

80% of participants attend at least 75% of sessions. Capture this: Attendance sheets, program materials, check-in protocol used that supported participant attendance.
Participants feel confident in their ability to explain how local decisions affect them through written communication. Capture this: If participants have participated in public speaking events or partnered in an event with your orgnization-take photos!
Young adults provide structured feedback at 35% of board meetings over the course of a fiscal year. Capture this: Meeting minutes should accurately reflect young adult involvement, and opportunities for board membership should be publicized.

Make success visible and observable.

Align Internal Systems to the Opportunities

Before launch, confirm with teams:

Do our session agendas actually build toward these goals?
Do staff understand the purpose behind each activity?
Are communication systems strong enough to support consistent engagement?
Are expectations for attendance and participation clearly documented?

List the Opportunities

Young adults thrive with clarity, not vagueness. They also want to know that your organizations and programs thrive in their own way, more importantly, have their own culture of support. Your opportunities should be clearly listed across your websites, recruiting, and other branding materials. At the same time, an internal sense of structure and opportunity should be readily available. Ambiguity is one of the biggest causes of disengagement.

Before launch, document:

Attendance expectations
Compensation (if applicable)
Communication norms
Decision-making authority (advisory vs. co-creation vs. leadership)

Address Early Challenges on the Way to Opportunity

While an appreciative inquiry frame of the root causes and upstream factors your orgnization addresses may be supportive. As we’ve already covered, challenges are inevitable. Planning for course correction is part of readiness. Internally, decide in advance:

What would tell us the program is off track?
What metrics will we check monthly?
How will we gather participant feedback?

Examples:

Drop in attendance after week 2
Participants are unclear about the purpose
Staff spending time on activities not tied to goals

If you need help with documenting these things, try our Young Adult Readiness Checklist.It includes some helpful benchmarks to ask yourself as gearing up for your next opportunity!

To help with this process, we also have these tips to help with documenting your ideas.

Build Documentation into Routines

Add improvement check-ins to existing workflows (weekly staff meetings, quarterly planning).
Keep it light but consistent, so it becomes part of the culture rather than an extra task.
Make feedback loops part of your normal operations
Build in short, regular moments for staff and youth to give feedback (weekly huddles, “plus/delta” sessions, anonymous digital surveys).
Treat feedback as routine, not as a special event.

What's next

Next Play

2. R.E.C.O.R.D It

1. Document Your Program Goals and Opportunities

Who is this play for?

Why this matters:

Put it into action

What's next

THE OPPORTUNITY PLAYBOOK

Why this
matters: