The annual budgeting process: a necessary evil involving crunching numbers until you go cross-eyed to arrive at an estimated idea of how much money you will raise versus spend throughout the year — and, of course, which you hope your board will approve. For most organizations, developing a budget is a tedious and painstaking process…
Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside, looking into the shining world? Because, properly attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion. Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit to no labor…
How shifting grantmaking practices leads to better results Authors: Kara Shibiya and Brittany Speed The philanthropic sector is well-positioned to lead and support an equitable recovery in our country; however, redesigning systems amid a pandemic requires rethinking how communities are accessing the resources they need, as well as the role funders can play as a trusted partner. At StriveTogether, we’ve…
Guest blog post by Kimberly Thomas, Parents as Teachers manager at Porter-Leath Through the Prenatal to Age 3 Impact and Improvement Network, I had the opportunity to help impact home visitation in Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee. The Impact and Improvement Network is a collaboration of communities from across the country building strategies to improve…
Earlier this month, I moderated a panel discussion, “Promise Neighborhoods at 10 Years Old,” at the Yale School of Management’s 2019 Education Leadership Conference. Promise Neighborhoods communities share our belief that every child should have the opportunity to succeed in school and in life, regardless of race, zip code or circumstance. The purpose of Promise…
These insights about team composition and other learnings from building capabilities collaboratively will be shared at the 2018 Carnegie Foundation Summit on Improvement in Education, April 3-5. Attend StriveTogether’s workshop, Building Improvement Science Capability Across Communities to Achieve Systems Change, on Thursday, April 5, at 10:15 a.m. PT. When I was in fourth grade, we…
The StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network has committed to measuring and improving six academic outcomes to support student success, from kindergarten readiness to postsecondary completion. Underlying each of these concrete outcomes is an equally important but more elusive concept: social-emotional learning. Social-emotional learning has been a challenging area for the Network for a variety of…
Design and artwork by Tabitha Jordan-Nichols, StriveTogether’s graphic design co-op. Tabitha is a second-year student at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP), where she is majoring in communication design. View more of Tabitha’s work at www.tabithajordannichols.com.
Guest post by Amy Ahrens Terpstra, Senior Director of Network Partnerships at United Way of Salt Lake. Across districts in the Promise Partnership of Salt Lake, chronic absence rates range from 7 to 18 percent, with persistently higher rates for low-income and Latino students. United Way of Salt Lake (UWSL) recognized that chronic absence is a…
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…
Guest post by Becky Hoffman, executive director of Adams County Youth Initiative, a StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network community. In late 2016 our team and board of directors at Adams County Youth Initiative took some time to gain additional clarity on our mission, to define our role as the backbone and to further develop our…
Adriane Johnson-Williams, founding facilitator for the Seeding Success partnership in Memphis, Tenn., is exploring what it looks like to truly do the work of collaborative action. Through stories of challenging conversations and genuine relationship building, she shares her experiences working to change behaviors and practices in pursuit of better and more equitable outcomes at scale.…