60+ Organizations Leveraging Collective Strength & Leaning into Anti-Racism

Case Study: Strategic Planning with a Cross-sector County-wide Collaborative 

THE OPPORTUNITY:

Build Upon a Culture of Collaboration to Center Racial Equity and Grow Impact & Sustainability

Home visiting is a proven way to help the 100,000+ babies born every year in LA County grow up healthy, safe, and ready to learn, but efforts in the county have historically been fragmented, insufficient for the need, and lacking in sustainable funding.

In 2014, we began working with countywide leaders in home visitation to re-design and re-launch a cross-sector network of providers, funders, and advocates to collectively coordinate, measure, and advocate for high quality home-based support for parents. In 2022, we had an opportunity to build upon that original strategic planning effort with a new plan, this time in alignment with a multi-year effort to build an integrated, equitable home visiting system across Los Angeles County.

When we kicked off our planning process in 2021, Consortium leaders leaned into an aspiration to be a network that could leverage resources and collective influence to increase public and philanthropic funding and favorable policies. Consortium leaders were also eager to integrate racial equity and parent voice more explicitly into the field. They needed consultants to bring a racial equity lens and guide the development of shared vision, goals, and metrics among stakeholders ranging from home visitors to County executives.

OUR IMPACT:

Collaborative Planning and Building Shared Ownership Across Diverse Membership

Our 2014 planning process established a foundation of trust among Consortium members and created direction and tools for ongoing collaboration, including a charter that outlined members’ commitment to practices such as consensus-based decision-making and broad participation. We were able to build upon this foundation in 2021 to co-design a new five-year strategic plan with more than 90 member representatives from across organizations, sectors, and roles. Our process included a comprehensive racial equity audit, focus groups, interviews, surveys, feedback gathering sessions to develop a theory to change, a racial equity commitment statement, five-year objectives and goals, and a scorecard for implementation. The plan now guides the Consortium’s eight workgroups and backbone staff.

P.S. We are big believers in maximizing capacity through collaborative work, and the Consortium is an exemplar of such an effort that we have shared at a national conference for the field. It brings us enormous joy to have cultivated such a long-term relationship with the Consortium and its backbone organization (Los Angeles Best Babies Network, LABBN) so we can support them through stages of growth and greater impact.  We have also guided strategic planning and provided executive coaching for LABBN.