Committees

For some task forces, committees provide a way to accomplish a wide variety of tasks, manage group interest and time, and better coordinate and highlight individual skills and interests. For instance, some task forces have upward of 40 members at any given meeting. Separate committee meetings with fewer people allow work to be conducted more efficiently with a greater degree of accountability among individual committee members.

Many task forces are organized into functional committees, the most common of which are a Law Enforcement Committee and a Victim Services Committee. The former focuses on sharing intelligence and discussing current cases; the latter focuses on coordination of the various efforts of service providers who are part of the task force. It is very important that both committees engage in creating resource or asset maps to identify tools and existing gaps in services, referral agreements, and critical services.

Some task forces found a key challenge can be having too many interested parties. In order to retain public interest, other committees may focus on community outreach and public awareness, professional training and curriculum development, policy and legislation, strategic planning, and protocol development, while limiting the law enforcement and victim services committees to members who take an active role in direct service provision.

Note: Committees that become too exclusive or separate from the rest of the group run the risk of leaving other members of the task force feeling marginalized. It is important to have multidisciplinary representation on committees or to include a method of regularly reporting back to the larger task force so that everyone remains informed and engaged.

For additional information and tools, visit the Resource page for Section 3.1 Task Force Membership & Management.