North Dakota Women's Network
Report date
May 2017
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
The Summit that launched FUSE was an instrumental activity to the coalition’s success. We were able to use the Summit as a platform to debut the relationships and support we had in entering into the work, and also to highlight the expertise we were able to bring to the table. It allowed us to demonstrate to the public that we had the ability to be a change maker. It was also an opportunity for the founding organizations to grow their relationships by taking on different aspects of the work that went into executing the Summit. We also utilized the attendees’ time to contribute ideas to the formative period of the coalition. By not only putting together content for the attendees, but also creating a community forum for them to contribute their ideas, we believe it helped increase buy-in to FUSE.
FUSE’s role in supporting stakeholders during the Legislative Session was also very instrumental in showing the value of our Coalition. FUSE was able to coalesce the voices of various direct service providers and programs to educate the North Dakota Legislature about the problem of human trafficking in North Dakota. Up until FUSE formed, there was very little information sharing and coordination between many programs in the state. There was a lot of leadership coming out of the Fargo/Moorhead region. FUSE was instrumental in highlighting the successes of this collaborative to educate legislators about the dynamics and impacts of trafficking, and also to illustrate the importance of supporting collaborative approaches to the problem. As a result, the Legislature passed new laws that strengthened and funded victim services in North Dakota. In addition, FUSE’s diverse leadership was able to partner with State agencies to assist in incorporating collaborative work into services for at risk populations in the state.
Establishing the Advisory Committee of FUSE was a critical aspect of the work, and one that brought together a broadly representative group of leaders who were able to enrich the work of the Coalition. While the founding organizations had different perspectives and insights into FUSE’s work, seating the Advisory Committee from 25 additional organizations brought many more institutional leaders together under FUSE’s umbrella. In addition, FUSE established subcommittees, which gave the Advisory Committee membership an opportunity to do more focused work. The decision to create smaller subcommittees helped the Advisory Committee move past just having “update” focused meetings into a structure where they were able to bring their diverse talents to bear on projects such as a needs assessment in various sectors, work on a governance structure for FUSE, and conducting a phone survey and focus groups to discern public opinion around the issues of prostitution and trafficking.
Key lessons learned
Coalition work is challenging. FUSE, throughout the grant period, has been engaged in a constant tension between seeking group input and consensus, and making sure that work is done in a focused and effective manner. At the beginning of the Coalition’s work, the FUSE founders were very focused on leaving a lot of the structural and strategic decisions open, to be decided by the Advisory Committee. As this strategy played out, it became difficult to move discussions forward at the Advisory Committee level due to the size of the group. It became clear that the Advisory Committee wanted the Founding Organizations to make some decisions, or provide proposals rather than having the Advisory Committee start from scratch. In addition, due to some of the lack of structural clarity, it was sometimes difficult to navigate the waters of how the responsibility for the work of the Coalition was divided between the Founding Organizations, the Advisory Committee and the Coordinator. Out of some of these failures, the Founders and the Coordinator continued to work toward collaborative management of the Coalition.
Reflections on the community innovation process
The “gears” in the diagram were the most important to completing our work. Because FUSE, at its core, is a coalition that provided centralized organization and coordination of anti-trafficking efforts, it requires the buy in and partnership of direct service organizations in order to help best practices reach the victims of trafficking in our state. Much of FUSE’s training and advocacy efforts were very focused on equipping social workers, advocates, law enforcement, prosecutors and politicians to better do their work. In order to actually execute or test the coordination and training that FUSE has been providing, it requires these equipped partners do the work and give FUSE feedback. In this regard, launching FUSE by way of a Summit that sought to bring in community voices was very helpful in gaining the support and trust of direct services partners. We were able to build upon the different skills and resources that our partners brought to the table and to hone them in the context of anti-trafficking work.
Progress toward an innovation
As FUSE worked with the coalition of service providers, Youthworks rose to the top leading the charge on innovation. FUSE worked with Youthworks to develop the Navigator program as part of NDHTTF. The 3 Navigators each have a region of the state and have established multi-disciplinary teams in 11 communities. The MDT’s have developed emergency protocols in each of the communities so that there is a coordinated response if/when a potential trafficking victim is identified. In addition, the Navigators provide case management support, and have increasingly been working directly with victims across the state. This is a very different approach than existed before and helps ensure that trafficking victims are served by direct service providers that are developing expertise in in the field. Much of this approach came out of combining approaches that were learned from partners in MN, child advocacy centers, and other national anti-trafficking programs that the Coordinator visited during her Bush Fellowship. Having a collaborative backdrop to this program helped us reach this innovation. As FUSE’s work progressed, natural leaders rose up, and were willing to take the work farther.
What it will take to reach an innovation?
n/a
What's next?
In the fall of 2015, the FUSE Advisory Board held a strategic planning session and voted to move the coalition toward becoming a standalone organization. As a result, a Board of Directors was seated in the spring of 2016, and have been meeting to discuss the structure and sustainability of FUSE going forward. There is a lot of energy within the Board around continuing FUSE’s role as a clearinghouse for best practices, policy advocacy, fundraising and training development. In addition, there is an active examination going on of the best way to sustain FUSE’s work in a viable and effective manner. That discussion has led, over time, to the board’s decision that FUSE will become a strategic partnership between CAWS and Youthworks. This will allow FUSE to benefit from the back office and staff support of each of these established organizations. The Board is now in the process of consulting various partners on the structural aspects of ensuring FUSE’s sustainability and longevity.
If you could do it all over again...
The Bush CI Grant served as a crucial spring board to establishing a formal network of partners that will carry anti-trafficking work forward in North Dakota. The funding provided by the CI program also enabled FUSE to coordinate and lead further fundraising. FUSE, along with its partner agencies has now established human trafficking work as an ongoing appropriation within the state budget. FUSE was able to serve as a source of subject matter expertise to inform and increase buy-in from political leaders. As a result, several individuals with an immense amount of influence, including our Attorney General, have taken up human trafficking as a key platform issue. Putting human trafficking on the radar screen of state officials will ensure that addressing this problem was remain a long-term priority. Along the way FUSE’s work was made more responsive by incorporating survivor voices and leadership into a primary role in the coalition’s work. In addition, FUSE’s commitment to establishing data collection methods has moved the issue of human trafficking past a speculative problem into an evidence-based response.
One last thought
Please note on the budget report, that two sheets are included in the document. The final expenditures for the last period of the grant are in the second sheet.