Last Thursday at Data Days Cleveland, I shared the inspiring story of a group of nonprofit and public service executives and senior leaders who broke down silos and worked together to “end the cycle of poverty” in my hometown.
The world is moving faster than ever, especially for nonprofit organizations and the people they serve. Funding, regulation, and oversight are constantly changing. To top it off, our community members are increasingly struggling to make ends meet. The challenges we face can no longer be solved with simple, process-heavy answers. Real community change and positive outcomes require us to dig in to the root causes of the issues and then work together, instead of in our own silos, to solve them in thoughtful and collaborative ways.
In my hometown, we decided to tackle this challenge head on. Instead of waiting for funders or the government to set the pace toward a more adaptive, systemic way of working together, we joined forces to better understand how each organization supports our community, where we overlap, and where there are gaps. Then we identified where we’re unnecessarily competing and where we can, instead, pool our efforts to produce stronger, more resilient outcomes.
The result was an aspirational goal with tangible, outcome-focused measures of success, a clear direction, and an experiment designed to test our assumptions about the root causes of poverty in our community.
Special kudos go out the the following executives and senior leaders for their active engagement with, and ownership of, this first-of-its-kind, 15-month effort in our community:
- Steve Andrews at Mansfield Metropolitan Housing Authority
- Brian Hunt at Catholic Charities Diocese of Toledo, Richland County Office
- Duana Patton and Trae Turner at Area Agency on Aging, Ohio District 5
- Allie Watson at Richland County Foundation
- Aubrie Hall at NAMI Richland County
- Julie Chaya and Jennifer Blue at Richland Public Health
We are also grateful for the support we received from Clint Knight at the Ohio District 10 Workforce Development Board, Terry Carter at First Call 211, of Richland County and Dan Varn at United Way of Richland County.
If your organization or community is ready to work together instead of competing, to adapt more quickly to an ever more volatile environment, to make real change, and to deliver positive outcomes to the community members you serve, let’s chat.
And if you missed this talk in Cleveland, you can catch an abridged version on the Agile in Nonprofits website here: https://youtu.be/rXZd-8xijNg
