Impact Foundation
Report date
October 2017
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
The increase of Coalition membership has been critical in representing a cross section of the Fargo Community. The work groups have three main goals: Creating the Data Dashboard, Actionable Report and Blueprint Guidebook. The Data Dashboard completed the Social Capital Survey which was given to a sample of Fargo students last year. After survey administration, youth focus groups were asked to provide input to improve the survey. Student suggestions were taken into consideration when finalizing the survey and the revised survey is being administered this fall to all students grades 6-12. The survey results will be compiled with data sources to complete the Actionable Report by April 2018. This report will also include data from the CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey in addition to police and juvenile court reports. This information will be summarized and disseminated throughout the Community. Our first Town Hall will be held in collaboration with the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Addiction and will address adolescent brain development and what happens when they use substances. LevelUp Fargo is our new name and has assisted us in our branding process (please see attached pyramid).
Key lessons learned
As we moved forward with building our Coalition’s capacity and working on the Social Capital Index, Dr. Jeff Schatz, Fargo Public Schools Superintendent and member of the Coalition, said we needed to review our mission, vision and create values statements. He was concerned we were not moving in a clearly defined and strategic format. He is an expert in strategic planning and took us through the process. His leadership provided the Coalition with a solid structure to move forward. This could be seen as a failure we experienced. Another lesson we experienced was how much time was needed to create our own Social Capital survey instrument. We worked with multiple sectors of the community to ensure the instrument was reliable and valid. We had two North Dakota State University Graduate students assisting in the process of research and creating the instrument. This input was extremely valuable delayed the process more than anticipated. These factors, even though they may have slowed down our process, helped us create a new Social Capital survey which we are proud to be currently administering. We will gain great insight from these survey, moving us forward in a positive direction.
Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving
We have moved from inclusive to collaborative as members have become fully engaged in the Coalition. Many have volunteered to serve in to make the Coalition much more efficient in helping the community to understand engaging with youth. We have realized the contributions of our Coalition members and how they are able to be active to support youth thriving in the Fargo Community.
The individual that we hired as an evaluation consultant voluntarily took time out of his busy schedule to attend a full week of CADCA training. He actively participated in all components of the training and has suggestions for what we can do to make our Coalition perform at an even higher level. Other indicators of progress are the number of Coalition members who helped the strategic planning process and how engaged the Coalition members were through the strategic planning process. Coalition members have volunteered to plan the Town Hall meeting. This will be the first of a series of Town Hall meetings which will be held every six months. Two of our Coalition members have volunteered to provide cultural respect, policy and environmental strategies training for the good of the Coalition’s members.
The individual that we hired as an evaluation consultant voluntarily took time out of his busy schedule to attend a full week of CADCA training. He actively participated in all components of the training and has suggestions for what we can do to make our Coalition perform at an even higher level. Other indicators of progress are the number of Coalition members who helped the strategic planning process and how engaged the Coalition members were through the strategic planning process. Coalition members have volunteered to plan the Town Hall meeting. This will be the first of a series of Town Hall meetings which will be held every six months. Two of our Coalition members have volunteered to provide cultural respect, policy and environmental strategies training for the good of the Coalition’s members.
Other key elements of Community Innovation
Another key element that has factored into our work has been the strategic planning that we completed combined with the work to create our developmental pyramid. All of this work has helped guide us and engage the Coalition in understanding our strategic direction. The Coalition members are fully engaged, excited and extremely passionate about their roles. We needed to step back and take a true inventory of what was and wasn’t working, and what we needed to do to navigate in a more distinct and effective direction. Through this new process of navigation, we have begun to see a path of our work that is even more clear and effective. This clear path has lead to the excitement of Coalition members in a way that is almost indescribable. The excitement that our Coalition members have demonstrated has led to such positive change which has been a critical driving force to get things done.
Understanding the problem
The clarity about the need surrounding Youth Social Capital, or as we like to call it in a simple form, “connectedness” has become apparent not only for youth but also for adults. The world has become a very disconnected place, lacking social capital; it has become evident through the research of Harvard's Dr. Robert Putnam and others that we all need more human connection. One of our innovations has been the newly developed Social Capital Survey instrument and the progress we are making on creating our own index for the survey. The work we are doing has many implications for what is to come. For example, we have had other communities reach out to us with interest in our survey and the process we are undertaking. We are willing to share whatever we have learned in the process and anything which can be helpful to others. However, we are still in our own process and need to ensure that it is done at the highest level of proficiency as possible. We feel an urgency to complete our survey and summarize the results so we are able to determine what our concrete next steps are to improve youth thriving in the Fargo Community, and also to then share our findings with other communities.
If you could do it all over again...
A major piece of advice or learning that was not considered until Dr. Schatz, the Fargo Public School Superintendent, brought it up formally in a Coalition meeting, was the lack of clarity on our mission, vision, and values. Until we were firm on what we were really all about, it didn’t make sense for us to proceed with business as usual. It was his insight and willingness to share with the Coalition his ideas and how we should proceed in developing a more cohesive and comprehensive strategic plan. This plan assisted us to become a much stronger and more clearly directed Coalition today. Another area that was a learning process was the time it took from the beginning of the survey development until the actual administration of the instrument was conducted within the schools. The process to create a survey took one and a half years and we are proud to be administering the survey currently. We had not anticipated it would take nearly this long to develop a new survey instrument that is so comprehensive and useful to the community. It was difficult at times to be patient with the process. Our patience has paid off and we are ready to gain insight from this new Social Capital Survey.
One last thought
We have worked diligently on our strategic plan over the past few months and have clarified our mission, vision and values statements. From all of that information gathering and the development of our new Social Capital Survey and the work we are currently doing to create a Social Capital Index; the Coalition created the attached pyramid as a summary of our efforts. Our pyramid is a combination of theoretical information taken from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs integrated with the Hawkins-Catalano Social Development Model (Communities That Care), the Native American Circle of Courage and Search Institute’s, Developmental Relationships framework. We developed this pyramid model to assist us in describing the contents of the survey questions and how they relate to “Youth Thriving” and ultimately “Building Community”. This will be used when helping the Community to better understand our framework and what Social Capital means in a simple format. We hope the attached pyramid model will assist us in explaining our work to the community at large.