Consortium Capacity Building

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $2.5M to be invested over two years into increasing the capacity and capability of the Graduate Tacoma community wide movement. The embedded theory of action for the Community Partner Capacity & Capability (CPCC) workgroup was as follows:

IF we increase our partners' capacity and capability to collaborate, align, and integrate strategies at scale for student indicator improvements,

THEN we will yield more effective interventions and sustain shared community ownership for narrowing disparities that impact student achievement.

The two learning goals of our client were as follows:

1. Increase the consortium’s understanding of the various types of inequities impacting young people in Tacoma.

2. Increase the consortium’s understanding of the ways practices, policies, and behaviors influence systems change. To achieve the aforementioned goals, our services (not an exhaustive list):

1. Conducted an organizational audit of the individual consortium members;
2. Synthesized the findings and designed a series of workshops to build the capacity of the consortium to become an effective and culturally responsive collective; and
3. Created a resource guide to support the ongoing development of the group to meet existing and emerging needs of the focus population.