For most people experiencing poverty in the US today, opportunities to achieve greater economic success, power and autonomy, and dignity and belonging are blocked by long-standing structural barriers, not by a failure of individual effort. Poverty, precarity, and inequality are not inevitable consequences of market economies, nor are they the result of individual deficits or behaviors by people experiencing these conditions. Instead, these outcomes result largely from policies and practices—both public and private—that have produced deep and persistent racial and other inequities. (See our report on Boosting Upward Mobility and Advancing Equity through Systems Change for how historical and ongoing policies and practices have created structural barriers that block equitable upward mobility).

Increasing upward mobility and advancing racial equity requires dismantling the systemic barriers that keep people in poverty. Doing so will likely require significant investments from public and private resources, as well as shifting the distribution of political power away from the wealthy and historically privileged. It will also require confronting the policies and practices that create and maintain structural barriers to mobility and racial equity—not just their symptoms and results. This calls for reexamining the underlying values, norms, and narratives that shape the processes, relationships, and power structures in your community. In other words, it calls for pursuing systems change, which is one of our six upward mobility principles.

One way to think about systems in the context of upward mobility work is as inclusive of subsystems such as the housing system, justice system, health system, and more. The upward mobility system includes all the organizations and people whose work or actions impact upward mobility, and it also includes the relationships between these organizations and people and the work they are doing. This means that taking a systems-change approach requires looking at how often distinct and diverse efforts can be aligned to address the root causes of inequities holistically. For example, an issue such as high unemployment may stem from a combination of low education rates, poor transit access, unreliable child care options, low wages, and employer discrimination. Solving such a multifaceted problem requires first identifying the underlying causes and then working across sectors to address them. It also requires probing existing norms and narratives around current conceptions of employment and employment rates—for instance, exploring how we might better recognize forms of informal and often unpaid labor, such as child or elder care, within official employment statistics.

Complex policy challenges involving multiple intersecting systems, such as upward mobility from poverty, require collective impact approaches that span sectors and agencies. Taking a collective impact approach means involving a wide range of stakeholders and meaningfully engaging residents (see chapter 2 and chapter 3) to develop comprehensive strategies that consider the full range of a community’s needs and assets. Because structural barriers, political context, and potential resources all vary by place, each community will need to define its own approach to systems change. However, this chapter offers a series of steps your coalition can take to begin the process of articulating your goals and priorities and identifying specific strategic actions that can change systems and ultimately result in better outcomes for the people in your community.

Keep reading to learn how to create a community vision statement, understand how current systems affect upward mobility in your community, develop a logic model and strategic actions, create a theory of change, and determine next steps.

For your team or coalition to move successfully from understanding local mobility conditions to creating a shared plan for action, it is critical to articulate a vision for your work. A community vision statement is forward-looking: it describes what you want your community to look or be like when your work is done. It should be based on your understanding of current mobility conditions in your community and the root causes of those conditions—that is, the barriers that block residents from achieving upward mobility. If you aren’t sure what local mobility conditions are in your community, review chapter 4 for guidance on identifying them.

A community vision statement is different from a mission statement. Instead of describing the purpose of your team’s work, a community vision statement paints a vibrant picture of your destination by articulating the population-, community-, or environment-level impact you hope to have in your locality. Your vision should be ambitious, easy to understand, and demonstrate why your work is important. If done well, a purposeful vision can

• inform strategic decisions and align efforts with your goals and values;
• inspire people while still being achievable;
• build buy-in and support from partners, stakeholders, and community members; and
• help push team members through tough patches by reminding them why they’re doing this.

To create a vision statement for your community, your team or coalition will need to have a shared understanding of the root causes of inequities you’ve observed. It might be helpful to engage a skilled facilitator to help your team arrive at this understanding because people might have different feelings or opinions on why inequities exist in the community. Be aware that these can be uncomfortable conversations, and they might become contentious, so the coalition may have to work through real tensions or conflicts to arrive at a shared acknowledgment of community conditions and the barriers blocking people from achieving upward mobility. This can take time, but skipping over it may undermine the long-term success of your efforts. Your discussion might cover some of the following questions:

• Which policies, laws, and institutional practices have created—and continue to sustain—the conditions we see? Who created those policies and practices? For what purposes were they created?
• What are the prevailing narratives about poverty in our community? About people of color? Why do these narratives exist? How do they get perpetuated?
• What values and constraints dictate the way each of us does our work now?
• How can we champion a new way of thinking about our community’s challenges and strengths? What are we still not talking about—but should be?
• How might conditions in one policy domain block or facilitate progress in another?

Below is an example of a community vision statement from a member of the Upward Mobility Cohort. If you need ideas on how to go about cocreating a community vision statement with your team or coalition, see our Creating a Community Vision Statement worksheet.

Before you can determine how to change systems in ways that can help you achieve your coalition’s vision, you first need to understand how the systems that impact upward mobility in your community work and what the elements of those systems are. Systems mapping is one way to accomplish this. There are many possible ways to map a system, and your coalition should select the approach that best suits your needs. But one helpful resource is this workbook from the Omidyar Group, which leads users through a comprehensive set of exercises designed to help them visualize and understand complex systems. Some of these exercises include:

• surfacing the core forces that keep the system unhealthy and the forces that can nudge it toward a healthier state
• analyzing each of these forces to understand their causes and effects
• identifying areas where causes and effects feed into each other and capturing these dynamic loops
• pinpointing the deep structure (the central driving forces) of the system
• creating a visualization of the system that shows the deep structure and how the loops are interconnected

Mapping the systems that impact upward mobility in your community will help you identify opportunities to intervene, often called “leverage points.” It will also help you precisely articulate what is wrong with the current system (what problem you are trying to solve in your community), which will be helpful as you move on to thinking about the specific actions or interventions required to achieve your community’s vision. For instance, using the example of Philadelphia’s vision statement above, a problem statement might look like the following: “Many people in our community are financially insecure and unable to access health care, housing, transportation, and other basic needs.” If your coalition is trying to address multiple issues in your community, you may want to create several problem statements rather than trying to describe complex challenges in one statement.

In addition to understanding the big picture of how current systems work, you will need to identify existing interventions—including policies, programs, plans, practices, projects, and even pilot initiatives—that affect upward mobility so that your coalition does not duplicate efforts. Refer to our Cataloging Existing Interventions worksheet as a starting point for the information you might want to collect about each intervention. You might also want to understand how well specific programs or practices embody the factors that evidence shows boost upward mobility and support the autonomy and dignity of those they serve. Our Assessing Existing Programs for Alignment with the Upward Mobility Framework worksheet can help you identify areas of strength and potential gaps in existing programs and practices.

Armed with your coalition’s vision statement and a clear understanding of the current system, you can now move on to developing a logic model. This tool can help you identify what your coalition needs to do to achieve its intended impact and what inputs you will need for your work. Developing a logic model involves three steps:

• First, articulate the outcomes you want to see based on your community vision and what you know about local mobility conditions. You may want to refer to the predictors in the Upward Mobility Framework as a guide to selecting outcomes of interest.
• Second, identify the strategies and activities you will need to pursue to generate those outcomes.
• Third, name the inputs you will need to perform those activities.

Figure 5-1 shows a simplified logic model with an example of one possible outcome that you wish to see. You’ll find additional details about each component of the logic model below. You may also want to refer to this guide for more information on developing a logic model.

FIGURE 5-1: Example of a Logic Model

Outcomes

The example logic model above builds on Philadelphia’s vision statement. It starts with outcomes (or goals), which you can identify by asking what changes you want to see in your community. Outcomes are typically long-term, aspirational changes and may include:

• changes for the entire community or specific groups, such as changes in conditions, capabilities, or relationships
• changes in systems, including policies, practices, norms, and narratives

You may find it helpful to identify both long-term outcomes and intermediate and medium-term outcomes. In the logic model, “greater health and well-being for all residents” is the long-term outcome. Returning to Philadelphia’s vision statement, other potential desired long-term outcomes could include:

• every resident has access to affordable and high-quality health care
• employers no longer discriminate based on race/ethnicity or gender

The logic model highlights “increased number of jobs that pay living wages” and “more hospitals and health care providers per capita” as related medium-term outcomes, but it’s possible that you will identify more. Your logic model should contain one row for each long-term outcome you hope to achieve. A template for creating your own logic model is available in our Creating a Logic Model to Achieve Your Community’s Vision worksheet.

As you identify your desired outcomes, avoid confusing outcomes with outputs. Outputs are the short-term observable results of actions that could lead to desired outcomes, but they may not get you all the way there. In the example above, an output for the “launch a campaign to pass a local living wage ordinance” strategy might be to “gather 5,000 signatures for a petition to city councilors” or “hold 10 community meetings to build support for the ordinance.” Gathering signatures and building community support are both important steps toward getting the ordinance passed, but alone they will not lead to more jobs paying living wages or greater levels of health and well-being for residents. However, identifying the outputs that may help you achieve your desired outcomes can be a helpful exercise to establish short-term goals. We provide guidance on how to measure your impact, including both outputs and outcomes, in chapter 6.

Strategies

Strategic actions are the activities and interventions your coalition will undertake to achieve its desired outcomes. In the logic model above, the strategic actions are “launching a campaign to pass a local living wage ordinance” and “establishing programs to attract and retain health care providers.” Identifying these actions will likely involve several iterations as members of your team or coalition meet to brainstorm ideas, vet the ideas with community members and leadership, and revise and rank the ideas. Finally, for each action, outline key steps, responsible actors, and associated success measures.

For guidance on how to identify and select these actions, see our Selecting Strategic Actions for Your Logic Model worksheet. As you engage with members of your coalition and your community to identify actions that can boost upward mobility and advance racial equity, keep the following considerations in mind.

Focus on systems change, and don’t forget about narrative change. Remember that systems change is a fundamental shift in practices, underlying values, or norms by local actors that reshape policies, processes, relationships, and power structures. As you brainstorm strategic actions, you may find it helpful to keep in mind the six conditions in the Water of Systems Change framework: policies, practices, resource flows, relationships and connections, power dynamics, and mental models (figure 5-2).

FIGURE 5-2: Six Conditions of Systems Change

Source: The Water of Systems Change Framework, John Kania, Mark Kramer, and Peter Senge,  FSG 2018.

Changing mental models (also known as narrative change) is arguably the most important — yet most overlooked — strategic action a group of key stakeholders can take. The narratives that people hold in their heads about why certain groups of people have less wealth than others or why some people are left behind while others succeed can either help support a specific change agenda or prevent solutions from making transformative changes. For example, if the prevailing narrative in your community is that people experiencing poverty are lazy and just need to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” you might find passing universal basic income legislation difficult. On the other hand, if the prevailing narrative in your community is that people experiencing poverty face barriers to accessing the supports they need to move out of poverty, then you might be more successful in passing policies that address those systemic barriers.

Center equity and racial justice. As noted throughout this toolkit, a focus on equity and racial justice is fundamental to upward mobility work. As you consider actions your coalition can take to advance upward mobility, consider how you can dismantle the specific barriers resulting from structural racism that Black people and other people of color face daily. Rather than focusing on universal strategies that lift all boats, consider a targeted universalism approach, which entails setting universal goals but using targeted strategies tailored to the needs of different groups of people to achieve those goals.

Prioritize strategies that can affect multiple domains. Because the factors that impact upward mobility span many different policy areas, it can be tempting to work in silos and address one area at a time. However, as you begin to brainstorm your strategies and activities, remember that all five pillars of upward mobility are interconnected. Any strategies you identify that are centered in one policy domain should be considered in light of challenges in other domains that could hinder their success. The strategies should then be expanded to tackle those related challenges (see our report on Boosting Mobility and Advancing Equity through Systems Change for more on structural barriers to mobility and how they intersect). For example:

• An economic development strategy that creates new, living wage jobs should also consider workers’ transportation and child care needs so they don’t experience barriers to applying for or keeping those jobs.
• Programs that aim to improve high school graduation rates should be coupled with efforts to address the cost of higher education and the racial wealth gap, both of which make it harder for students of color to pay for college. Without tackling these two components, these programs will have a limited impact on college attendance.

Remember that strategies should focus not just on economic success but also on advancing people’s power and autonomy as well as dignity and belonging. Read our report on Boosting Upward Mobility: Exemplars for examples of interventions that have successfully addressed all three dimensions of upward mobility.

Make sure selected activities can actually achieve the scale of your goals. For example, if one of your desired outcomes is that “everyone has access to high-quality health care,” but your strategic actions will only affect a small number of people, then either that goal is not appropriate or that action is not significant enough.

Strike a balance between “sure things” and longer-term aspirations. Although boosting upward mobility and advancing racial equity won’t happen overnight, it’s important to have “sure things” (ideas that you are almost certain can be accomplished) on your list of selected activities that can demonstrate the success of your work and help build momentum among your team or coalition for longer-term efforts.

Inputs

Once you have decided on a set of strategic actions, you will also need to identify the necessary inputs or resources for implementing those activities. Inputs can include things like funding, staffing, partnerships, political will, technology, evaluation capacity, data, and regulatory approval. Figure 5-1 above includes the following inputs:

• “funding to hire organizers and campaign managers”
• “connections to advocacy groups and community-based organizations doing related work”
• “data on local wages and cost of living, disaggregated by race, industry, gender, and neighborhood”
• “connections to employers like anchor institutions and small businesses”

You should have a specific list of inputs for each strategic action in your plan, and they should all be measurable, even if the measure is about quality rather than quantity. To develop this list, consider the following questions:

• What organization or person should lead the effort to adopt and implement the action? What other partners need to be involved? What type of expertise is needed?
• What technology, staffing, or infrastructure is needed to implement this action?
• Where can you obtain funding for this action? Can funds be reallocated from elsewhere or will you need a new source of funding to implement this action?

Articulating these inputs will help you and your coalition move beyond a planning mindset toward implementation and increase the chances that your work will lead to measurable change in your communities.

Once you’ve created your logic model and identified the strategies your coalition plans to pursue to increase upward mobility and racial equity, a final step is to create a theory of change, which can help you communicate succinctly about your work and the changes you intend to bring about in your community.

If a logic model articulates the what of your work, a theory of change articulates the how. Use figure 5-3 to create a theory of change statement for your work.

FIGURE 5-3: Example of a Theory of Change Statement

As figure 5-3 shows, there are three questions to ask as you develop a theory of change:

1. What problem are you trying to solve? In the example, many people in the community are financially insecure and can’t meet basic needs like housing and health care.
2. How do you plan to address the problem? In the example, the problem could be addressed by campaigning to pass a local living wage ordinance and establishing programs to attract and retain health care providers.
3. How will you know if your efforts are successful (i.e., how will your strategies achieve your desired outcomes)? In the example, medium-term success is defined as having more jobs paying living wages and more health care providers serving the community. In the long term, residents will be healthier and enjoy greater well-being.

Answering these questions should leave you with a theory of change that follows this formula:

In order to [insert your problem statement], we will [insert your strategies], which will lead to [insert your medium-term outcome(s)], thereby [insert your longer-term outcomes(s)].

You can use the template in our Developing a Theory of Change for Your Upward Mobility Work worksheet to craft a theory of change statement with your coalition. You may also find it helpful to engage a designer or artist to help you present your theory of change in a more visually compelling way. Below are examples of theory of change statements and graphics you can draw inspiration from.

• Examples highlighted by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, from organizations such as KUA Hawai’i
• Race Forward
• Fresno DRIVE

Once you’ve developed a community vision, a logic model, and a theory of change, you should seek feedback from stakeholders outside your team or coalition, because your efforts won’t succeed without support from elected officials, partner organizations, and the public to adopt, implement, and fund the strategies you identified. Although the process for seeking feedback will vary from place to place, you may wish to consider developing a plan for public review to ensure that community members who are not in your coalition have plenty of opportunities and ways to engage (read chapter 3 for more information). A public review plan might include hosting both in-person and virtual events, using online crowdsourcing platforms, or leveraging community partners to help engage key groups for more targeted review events.

Once you’ve finalized the set of strategic actions your coalition intends to pursue, you will need to move into implementing those actions. Chapter 6 guides you through how you can evaluate whether your work is having the intended impact, and chapter 7 offers a framework for thinking about how to sustain your work over the long term.