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The Closed-Loop Referral Readiness Checklist
Six questions to ask of whatever you run today, whether that is a platform, a module inside your record system, a shared spreadsheet, or a phone and a good memory. One page. Nothing here requires buying anything.
Download the checklistPDF, one page. Fill it in on screen or print it.
Most organizations can count what they sent. Far fewer can tell you what was delivered.
A referral crosses five points before it is complete. The need is identified, it is routed to a partner, the partner accepts, the service is delivered, and the delivery is confirmed. Four of those five break quietly, and most tracking never gets past the second one. For what fails at each point and what to do about it, see where referrals break down between organizations.
This checklist walks each point in order and asks one question about it. Answer for the process you actually run, not the one on the workflow diagram, and answer for a normal week, when someone is out and the queue is backed up.
Then mark your earliest No. That is where to start, even if a later one hurts more.
The checklist is vendor-neutral. It is written to be used against a platform you already pay for, a purchase you are considering, or a manual process nobody has questioned in a while. If you work through it and decide your current process is fine, that is a legitimate result.
What you will be scoring
- Intake. Every need your staff identified, including the ones nobody acted on.
- Routing. A named recipient at the partner, and a response window both sides agreed to.
- Acceptance. Acknowledgment when a partner takes a referral, and a signal when they do not.
- Delivery. A record of what was delivered, by whom, and on what date.
- Confirmation. Whether the loop closes on its own or depends on someone remembering.
- Reporting. Whether you could produce what your funder asks for without rebuilding it by hand.
Take it to your next partner meeting.
The scored version is the useful one. Fill it in, save it, and bring it to the people who would have to fix whatever it surfaces.
Download the checklist
