CASE EXAMPLES
Helping collective impact initiatives, nonprofits & philanthropic organizations advance racial and economic justice.
Featured Client Examples
826 MSP
StoryArk
Brooklyn Bridge Alliance for Youth
Brooklyn Bridge Alliance for Youth
The Brooklyn Bridge Alliance for Youth (BBA) is a cross-sector collaborative of organizations committed to equity in positive youth development.
The Alliance includes nine partners who signed a Joint Powers Agreement to work toward this mission which include the Cities of Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center in the Northwestern suburbs of Minneapolis, the school districts they encompass, two community colleges, Hennepin County, and youth.
BBA undertook a strategic planning process to identify how they can more effectively advance equity while revitalizing their values.
Problem
The Brooklyn Bridge Alliance (BBA) and its partner organizations desired to more rigorously center equity in the way that the collaborative works together.
Their data showed that addressing persistent inequities among historically marginalized students in their area would help accelerate their mission.
However, BBA and its partners needed a path toward helping their collective take shared ownership and responsibility to address inequities within their systems.
Solution
Acting on their equity commitments, the team at BBA worked with Create Good to engage their partners including school districts, the cities of Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center, Hennepin County, community colleges, and - most importantly - youth who go to school in these communities - to create equity-centered organizational values and strategic priorities for the Alliance.
Results
BBA is working with its partners to implement a new way of collaborating. It is deepening its relationship with its communities, incorporating more equity-based learning, and helping partners exercise shared power with youth.
BBA chooses to slow its work down to gain alignment and cohesion among partners in the short term so that they can go faster in the long term.
826 MSP
826 MSP’s mission is to amplify the voices, stories, and power of K-12 BIPOC students through writing, publishing, and leadership programs. Its work is grounded in its community and specific schools.
Create Good worked with 826 staff and board members to conduct a community engagement process that helped them get input from their key constituents to make more effective, equity-centered strategic decisions.
Problem
826 MSP realized the need to engage its key constituents in its strategic planning process.
Stuck between what felt like a tension between scaling their model for increasing youth literacy quickly and laying the proper foundation for growth, they saw the value in partnering with a third-party perspective.
Solution
Create Good trained 826 MSP staff, board members, and key volunteers to conduct participatory interviews that helped them hear from and get input from their constituents.
We engaged in 1:1 interviews and group-focus conversations, with students, parents, donors, funders, teachers, and community partners. The team then took that data and used it to conduct strategic planning.
Results
826 MSP created a strategic plan that provided the organization with clear next steps to advance its equity work.
In addition to strategic planning, Create Good facilitated implementation planning with staff and helped create the tools for them to track progress.
StoryArk
StoryArk helps students in elementary school, middle school, and high school initiate creative teams in which they communicate, collaborate, and connect to imagine and produce narrative podcasts, short films, and a literary magazine that publishes prose, poetry, and visual arts.
StoryArk chose to use a participatory process for building out its framework for evaluating the outcomes of its programs.
Problem
StoryArk needed evaluation capacity building to help its team create a framework for using data to determine the impact and efficacy of its programs, including its programming to help youth with under-represented stories share their truths with their schools.
Solution
StoryArk partnered with Create Good and used participatory methods to create a logic model and evaluation plan. This plan helped staff become clear on how to use data more effectively.
Staff and board members surveyed and spoke with students and used the organization's existing data to come up with metrics for programming success that were important to students.
They used the metrics identified by students as the anchor point for building out StoryArk’s theory of change.
Results
StoryArk has used the evaluation framework to collect, analyze, and interpret its data and continues to improve its programming.
The organization has attracted more funding and has impressed school districts with their evaluation framework so much so that school districts want to incorporate some of their measurements into their standards.
What We Do
FACILITATE
Facilitate groups toward a unified commitment to equity.
Identify where equity shows up in your initiative’s or organization’s identity - whether in your mission, vision, values, or policies.
EVALUATE
Build your team's muscle to center equity in using data for decision-making.
Understand the data, historical context, and root causes of the inequities you’re working to solve.
PLAN
Co-design strategies that bring your commitment to and vision for equity to life.
Build leadership among team members and partners on how to practice applying equity principles to reshape, reframe, and rebuild their work.
Our Services
There are a variety of ways that we can help you advance equity in your work.
Facilitating
Consulting
Speaking
