When Dr. Jill Biden was a little girl, her grandmother would sometimes take her to work. That meant bringing her to where she taught at an old-fashioned, one-room schoolhouse, crammed with three grades of students. On special days, Dr. Biden got to ring the schoolhouse’s brass bell to call students to class. And when the…
When a community is together then mountains become movable Lights in a collective too bright to be dimmed We didn’t love our communities because they were beautiful. Our communities are beautiful because we loved them. — from Christian Paige’s “Trees” As spoken word poet Christian Paige shared in a performance that kicked off the opening…
In partnership with members of the Cradle to Career Network, StriveTogether has revised the Theory of ActionTM, our guiding framework for getting better results for kids and families. This marks the fourth time we have updated our Theory of ActionTM based on insights from communities from across the country. That’s why we consider it a…
Like so many others, I do this work because I believe that every child in our country should be able to reach his or her potential. The work is personal for me. I know what a profound effect education has had on my life. As a first-generation college student, I was able to achieve economic…
This post originally appeared on the blog of Giving Compass as part two of a two-part series. Read part one here. In 2015, StriveTogether began working intensively with partners from six communities to build their leadership capability to achieve results. And less than three years later, all six of those communities have now shown sustainable systemic change across…
This post originally appeared on the blog of Giving Compass as part one of a two-part series. Read part two here. Eight years ago, USA Today labeled Tacoma, Washington a “dropout factory” with only 55 percent of its students graduating from high school and even larger gaps among low-income students and students of color. Today, 86 percent of…
At the end of this month, StriveTogether will celebrate its first year of independence — and what a year it has been! StriveTogether experienced not one but two major transitions over the past year. First the organizational transition: spinning out from our parent organization to become independent. Second was the leadership transition: the departure of…
Five years ago, StriveTogether embarked on a journey to measurably improve education for every child by bringing rigor and alignment to how people in different sectors work together. At a time when many were claiming to drive collective action and collective impact, we engaged the most advanced community partnerships in the Cradle to Career Network…
I just returned from Salt Lake City after a few days at the Winter Innovation Summit listening to policymakers, funders, nonprofits and social entrepreneurs explore the future of social innovation. This experience brought to mind a blog by Jeff Edmondson about “creating a marketplace for results” where he challenged investors to put results at the…
2017 was a very big year for StriveTogether and the years ahead promise to be even more exciting. I am both thrilled and humbled to be able to lead the Cradle to Career Network into this next phase of our work together. I spent some time at the end of last year reflecting on what…
Six months after becoming an independent nonprofit, StriveTogether has launched a bold and ambitious plan for building stronger systems for better outcomes. Our vision — Every Child, Cradle to Career — has been clear since the beginning, when the local partnership in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky began to take shape in 2006. Since then, change…
Recently I’ve talked with several Cradle to Career Network partnerships that are considering spinning out from their parent organizations to become independent 501 (c)(3) organizations. As I just spent the last year of my life working on the spin out of StriveTogether and have more than a few gray hairs as a result, I decided…