Grantee Learning Logs | Bush Foundation

An important part of creative problem solving are the lessons learned along the way. As a learning organization, we realize how important these discoveries are and have intentionally included time for reflection and sharing as part of how we work.

In that same spirit, we ask our Community Innovation grantees to share their reflections and learnings through interim and final reports. Their learning logs are a great resource for what went well, what didn't and what others might take away as they work to make our region better for everyone.

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The pilot was successful because of our mistakes, and what we learned from them.

Small relationships taking small steps are really the big goal in the making.

In a perfect scenario we would add more resources for data collection. This has been an invaluable resource and to have more time to dive into the data and expand a bit more on the front end may be very helpful in going forward.

A major lesson we have learned as a small organization is that the capacity needed to attempt a major community innovation was greater than we anticipated, especially in terms of staff and volunteer time for partners, adequate resources, and concurrent continuation of other programs.

I think persistence is a huge key. We were told that our plans would not come to fruition but we kept with it and kept looking for ways to make it work and it ultimately happened. Just because something doesn't necessarily work right now, it might just mean the time is not right.

General community members, on the other hand, had positive reactions to our message and plan, but weren’t equipped to provide feedback for refinement, sometimes giving us the “deer in the headlights” look when we asked them for advice.

We need a space to develop inter-cultural social capital. When people of color are at the decision making table, ideas arise that are collaborative, culturally relevant and concrete in a way that avoids exacerbating systemic disparities.

There’s a lot of attention to the problem, but in some communities little attention on solutions.

While we strive to be inclusive of all stakeholder groups, it has been the collaboration of leaders in human health, animal health, livestock industry, and educational institutions that have provided the expertise, passion, and momentum to move project initiatives forward.

The more intentional community building portion of our work was crucial, not only building strong relationships with our allies and partners around the table - but also pulling together community leaders and elected officials and building deep and trusting relationships.

We quickly learned how each person we were engaging preferred to communicate and then used that channel of communication for that relationship. We found that face-to-face, hour-long conversations were the most effective.

Understand that people’s motives for behavior are diverse. We often base our opinions on personal experiences and our own belief systems.

Developing strong partnerships built on trust and accountability has been key to our progress. This process gave us the time and resources we needed to formalize some of those partnerships and develop a plan to work together in the future.

If we find that what we are doing is not effective, we will revise it until we get it right.

While it is important to maintain that drive, test innovations, and focus on results, it is also important to recognize that the barriers to homeownership on trust land are complex and deeply entrenched, and will take time and innovative strategies to overcome.

Our work has brought cross-sector entities together for the first time, to discuss their most critical community need, and how that need might be addressed through the collaborative use of the former hospital building.

In retrospect, MHAN underestimated the potential for a shift in agency imperatives, priorities, or vision and were caught off-guard as a result.

After learning from the previous attempts at collaboratives in western North Dakota, we consciously decided to pull together a small group of local, influential, and largely unaffiliated members who shared a passion for the Badlands

We increased communication and depth of our relationships with key community partners... Working more closely.... helped us further consider and define how the path to employment in fields related to environmental science and natural resources management could be forged for diverse youth

We have more clarity about serious issues that need to be addressed in the short term to improve living conditions for incarcerated people. We also have more clarity about how few people and institutions really understand these conditions.

The innovative breakthrough is that we now have a community-based evaluation process to assist clinics and healthcare providers work toward LGBTQ health equity. The standards are not only an expectation of what providers should be doing but also what LGBTQ clients should expect.

A key lesson learned here was that honesty and clear communication are critical to any collaboration, especially one that brings urban communities to rural communities.

There is no doubt that our commitment to being inclusive brought many challenges and delays.... Nevertheless, this commitment to an inclusive process is undoubtedly what led to some of the greatest discoveries - innovative ideas that are different from the status quo.

Twenty interviews were completed in January 2017 and in February 2017... themes for In School Youth included: School Involvement, Study Skills, Support in School, Family Support, Dropping Out of High School, Challenges in School, and Future Plans.

Reflecting on our work and reviewing our progress versus our stated outcomes is helping us keep our focus on areas where we need to make more progress.

[T]his work has made it clear that there is a need for greater space and time for dialogue between school leaders and communities of color in the U.S. system and shaping school practice and policy with the input from historically marginalized communities in Minnesota and nationwide.

People really do want to work together to find a solution to an identified problem - they may have different opinions on how that should happen, but when people feel they are heard they are able to join together to make a difference to work on developing and implementing a solution.