Agencies, MOUs, and outreach

The agency directory is where you track law-enforcement agencies, their MOU status, and every contact your program has had with them: one record per agency, one shared history the whole team can see.

The agency directory

Each agency record carries its name, county, agency type, phone numbers, website, and one or more contacts; mark one contact primary so it’s the first name anyone sees. Search the directory by agency name, contact name, or county, and narrow it by MOU stage. A program admin can add a new agency by hand, or bring in a batch from a spreadsheet file; the same list can be pulled back out as a spreadsheet for a backup or a handoff.

Taking an agency out of the active list doesn’t erase it. The record is set aside rather than deleted, so its contacts, MOU documents, and history stay in place if it’s ever needed again.

The agency directory.

The agency directory.

Tracking an MOU

Every agency carries an MOU stage: not started, initial outreach sent, discussion in progress, draft sent, negotiating, signed, fully executed, active, declined, or withdrawn. Once one is signed, the record also holds an effective date and an expiration date. An agency whose MOU is fully executed and due to expire within 60 days gets a visible flag on the directory, so a renewal doesn’t sneak past.

Generating and uploading a document

Two separate actions live on an agency’s page, and they don’t do the same thing. Generate MOU builds a Word document from a standard template, filled in with that agency’s details and your program’s name; add the executive director’s name for the signature line, or leave it blank. This only produces a file to review and send; it doesn’t change the agency’s MOU stage by itself.

Once a copy comes back signed, upload it as a PDF or Word file, up to 10 MB. Only those two file types are accepted, and the file’s actual contents have to match what it claims to be: renaming a different kind of file to look like a PDF doesn’t get past the check. If your program has virus screening enabled, uploads are scanned before they are kept and a file that does not pass is refused, and nothing about it is written to the agency’s record.

Each accepted upload becomes its own numbered version, and you can set the MOU stage at the same time you upload it. Signed MOUs are kept in storage that isn’t publicly reachable; opening one later goes through a link generated for that one request, and it always comes back as a file to save, never opened directly in the browser.

The MOU pipeline board

The pipeline board lays every agency out by MOU stage, side by side, with totals for the whole program: how many agencies overall, how many are fully executed, how many are in active negotiation, and how many have gone 30 days or more without contact. It’s a view for seeing where things stand at a glance; moving an agency to a new stage is a separate, deliberate action: choose a destination on that agency’s card and confirm the move. Adding a short reason when you do carries it straight into that agency’s contact history, so the move itself is on the record.

The MOU pipeline board.

The MOU pipeline board.

Tracking contact with an agency

Every call, email, meeting, letter, or visit involving an agency gets a short entry on its record: the channel used, whether it went out from your program or came in from the agency, a plain summary, and, if there’s a next step, a follow-up date. An entry with a follow-up date that’s arrived shows up flagged on that agency’s page until it’s handled.

That per-agency history also feeds a program-wide view: every entry from every agency in one list, which you can narrow down by agency, by who logged it, by channel, or by date range. It’s the place to look when the question is about a pattern across the whole directory, not just one agency’s file.

Who can do this

Any program staff member can browse the directory, open an agency’s page, and view the pipeline board. Adding or editing an agency, adding or editing a contact, generating or uploading an MOU, moving a pipeline stage, and adding a contact entry all need program admin standing.

Questions about a specific agency’s MOU or contact record go to your program admin.