The systems changes needed to boost upward mobility will not happen overnight. Advancing equity and racial justice can take decades as communities address systemic inequities built into policies, processes, institutions, and culture. At times it may be challenging to see the direct impact of your work, so it’s important to develop a strategy for sustaining your upward mobility initiatives over time.

While every community will have different approaches to boosting upward mobility, all upward mobility initiatives will need to sustain effective structures that can facilitate collaborative governance, sufficient capacity to carry out the work, stable funding to support ongoing efforts, and adaptive policy and program actions that are responsive to changing landscapes. We refer to these as the building blocks of sustainability. In this chapter, we offer promising examples and suggested resources as a starting point for you and your partners to understand and implement strategies that can strengthen each of these building blocks.

Developing a Strategy for Sustaining Your Work

Figure 7-1 illustrates the four building blocks of sustainability that are necessary to support upward mobility initiatives over the long term. Assessing your coalition’s strengths and weaknesses in these four areas will help you decide on next steps and continue to effectively pursue the strategic actions you identified to advance upward mobility and racial equity in your community.

The cross-sector coalition you build to address upward mobility in your community will cycle through five stages: (1) design and formation, (2) launch and activation, (3) action planning, (4) implementation, and (5) assessment, evaluation, and continuous learning. The building blocks of sustainability outlined at the top of the figure are important to consider at all stages of coalition development.

FIGURE 7-1: Building Blocks of Sustainability

We suggest you begin your sustainability planning process by taking stock of your coalition’s baseline capacities across the four building blocks, which will help you prioritize and sequence your next actions to sustain and scale your initiative. You should also consider developing a written sustainability strategy that can align and connect the four building blocks of sustainability. The strategy should be grounded in your coalition’s vision for your community, theory of change, and priority strategic actions you intend to pursue over the next 12 to 24 months. Your sustainability strategy might outline the roles and responsibilities of coalition members and other partners, coordinate outreach and engagement activities, identify stable sources of funding capable of supporting the short- and longer-term systems changes that your upward mobility initiative seeks to advance, and outline how you intend to measure your impact and implement continuous-learning principles. If your coalition is working on creating a Mobility Action Plan, your sustainability strategy might be one of its components. Alternatively, you may decide to develop a sustainability strategy in an earlier design or launch phase that can help set the stage for a more comprehensive planning process.

A central theme throughout this toolkit is ensuring that communities establish and sustain a strong, cross-sector coalition of diverse organizations, leaders, and community members committed to a common vision and set of actions to advance upward mobility and racial equity in their community. Successful upward mobility initiatives demand a collaborative, collective impact approach that brings together different assets and perspectives to address the structural barriers to upward mobility.

The long-term sustainability of initiatives and the coalitions will hinge on having an effective backbone organization and consistent rules of engagement that outline clear roles for coalition members and other partners. As we discussed in chapter 2, coalitions should consider a governance structure that includes a dedicated management team as well as other members who may engage less frequently. Below we outline several major management and governance milestones that upward mobility coalitions will likely confront throughout their lifetimes, with a few promising next steps and resources to help effectively navigate through them.

Formalize the Coalition’s Management Structure and Provide Ongoing Support for the Backbone Organization

With the coalition’s launch and its shift from action planning to implementation, it will be important to formalize the structure of the upward mobility initiative, outline the rules and customs for engagement, and ensure partners can take on roles that support the backbone organization. Some strategies your coalition might consider include the following.

• Adopt a written charter that captures your core principles, rules of engagement, community agreements, or standards of conduct. The charter’s principles could include a commitment to ongoing learning and improvement (refer to our upward mobility principles in the Introduction for inspiration). Ensure all members of the coalition endorse the charter. You could consider hosting an event when the coalition launches to publicly sign the charter and pledge specific commitments. As your coalition continues working together, make sure to review and regularly revise the charter every year or two.
• Support the backbone organization by having partner organizations lead working groups and/or take on critical program responsibilities, such as data collection, analysis and evaluation, policy development, and outreach and communication. Such contributions can go a long way to ensuring the sustainability of the backbone organization’s pivotal role in coordinating the coalition. They can include actions such as
  • empowering a core management team that can colead the coalition with support from the backbone organization, and ensuring these management team representatives receive resources to defray some of the costs of taking on this critical role; and
  • establishing two to three working groups (or more) that have specific tasks, such as a working group for planning a citywide upward mobility workshop or for community engagement and empowerment.

Elevate and Empower Community Members within the Initiative’s Leadership and Management

Sustainability requires activities that can empower community leaders and elevate community priorities. This means that the coalition’s governance structure should include local residents who can contribute their lived experiences to the coalition’s management and strategic direction. Some ways to include community members and people with lived experience in decisionmaking structures include the following:

• Establish a collaborative and fair process for recruiting resident leaders and compensating community members (read the Equitable Compensation for Community Engagement Guidebook for more information).
• Support opportunities for professional development and mentoring to allow community members to advance their individual and community leadership skills.
• Create a community advisory board or resident leadership council that can cultivate trusted relationships with community members who can steer the direction of your mobility work (see chapter 3 and Tools and Resources for Project-Based Community Advisory Boards for more information).

Maintain the Initiative’s Progress and Expand the Coalition’s Momentum

So much energy and resources go into the design and formation of coalitions that often leaders, partners, and champions can experience fatigue once they have successfully launched their upward mobility initiatives. Collaborative implementation of the coalition’s agenda requires strong coordination and execution.

At the same time, external events such as a pivot from a major funder or a shift in political leadership could pose new challenges and weaken commitments to action. Thus, it is imperative for the coalition to host regular events and activities that can expand and energize the existing membership while also recruiting new leaders, partners, and champions who can infuse innovative ideas and additional assets that can help the initiative successfully achieve its goals. Below are a few suggestions for keeping members invested in the work:

• Celebrate successes by holding an annual upward mobility summit that brings together all members of the coalition to report on the actions taken to advance upward mobility over the past year.
• Leverage the summit to recruit new organizations, sponsors, potential funders, and members as the initiative evolves and begins to consider other aspects of upward mobility or expands its focus to additional communities.
• Set aside time during regular initiative management, planning, and program meetings for reflection on what seems to be working and what needs improvement; regular check-ins can go a long way to sustaining the energy and commitment of not only the members but also the partners, management team, and backbone organization.
• Develop a robust communications and marketing strategy that shares compelling narratives about the challenges members of the community face and the coalition’s plans to address these structural inequities. (See chapter 6 for more information on storytelling and sharing your coalition’s impact.)

With the general governance structure in place, the next phases—action planning, implementation, and evaluation and assessment—will require consistent staffing and a series of technical and administrative capacities. While the coalition’s management team or backbone organization generally takes the lead in stewarding the work, many initiatives distribute implementation efforts among several member organizations and/or engage consultants when they have sufficient funding.

During the first few years of implementation, multiple organizations are typically responsible for different program activities and tasks, with a blend of funded and in-kind programming and support. As the coalition implements its strategic actions, it will inevitably confront changes to its staffing, membership, funding, and community dynamics that will require skillful and quick adjustments and recalibration. Below we discuss several common strategies a coalition and its partners can put in place to help sustain the staffing and other core capacities that are necessary to advance their goals.

Execute an Operations and Staffing Plan that Guides Implementation

Given all the moving parts and diverse actors and organizations that need to be involved in an upward mobility initiative, it can be helpful for the coalition to adopt and execute a written plan. The plan should include its sustainability strategy, which outlines roles and responsibilities for management (see sections above), the respective assets and assignments for core partners, and how internal operations support the coalition’s identified strategic actions. The plan should also include strategies for succession planning that capture the initiative’s recent activities, identify temporary stand-ins for specific roles when needed, and create processes for selecting and onboarding new leaders, partners, and members. A robust operations plan ensures the coalition can effectively and efficiently respond to whatever changes it may encounter and make the necessary adjustments to its work.

Designate a Full- or Part-Time Project Manager

Effective implementation requires an organization and/or person to serve as the initiative's “quarterback” and oversee internal operations and programming. Someone within the backbone organization may play this role or it might be shared among several partner organizations as part of a leadership/management team with support from the backbone organization. The project manager can help implement the strategic actions and outline the processes for reporting and holding partners and members accountable for their responsibilities. They should have the authority to engage consultants or contractors to support the work based on available funding.

Cultivate and Expand the Initiative’s Collective Community Data Capacities and Partnerships

As outlined in chapter 4 data serves as the essential foundation for any work that advances upward mobility. Community data capacity means that everyone—at the individual, organizational, and collective levels—in a community can access and use data to understand and improve outcomes. To advance upward mobility, your coalition will need to know what data are available and have the skills and systems to access and use the data, as well as identify partners that can help expand your coalition's data capacities. Building on insights and lessons from the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, below we discuss two strategies and concrete next steps coalitions can take to sustain and expand their collective data capacity:

1. Undertake a baseline assessment. To begin, the initiative’s management team and working groups should chart how data currently inform the coalition’s internal operations and its external policy and program activities, and use that baseline assessment to identify areas that will require more investment of time and resources over the next one to three years to sustain and expand its collective community data capacity. Consider where the coalition’s current data resources and capacities live, how those efforts will be resourced, and any key gaps that may exist.
2. Expand community data capacity by establishing data partnerships and collaborating with nonprofit data intermediaries. University centers, community research organizations, regional city and county agencies, private firms, and even individual consultants may make good partners.

Developing a consistent source of funding is a key component of sustaining an upward mobility initiative. In the early stages, upward mobility initiatives often rely on in-kind contributions of staffing and resources from core organizations to support engagement, design, and development. As initiatives grow, transitioning from formation to launch to implementation, they will need to obtain more consistent sources of funding to implement their strategic actions.

Broadly speaking, upward mobility initiatives generally have two main sources of funding: public and philanthropic. Most initiatives will use a mix of funding mechanisms to support their work. For example, local governments already direct significant funding toward upward mobility strategies and programming. Therefore, your upward mobility initiative should consider opportunities for alignment between your priority areas and local government strategic plans. These areas of overlap are good avenues to focus on funding your upward mobility strategies.

A pilot program can be a good way for government agencies to try out new strategies that can then be expanded if successful. Developing an understanding of your city or county’s budgeting cycle will be key to working with government partners to find opportunities for funding. In most local governments, the annual budgeting process begins in departments or agencies, and then their proposed budgets are shared with mayors, managers, or councils as relevant.

Philanthropic funding can complement public resources and be an important source of funding for the nongovernmental partners in your coalition. It may be deployed more quickly and with a greater tolerance for risk than government funding. Philanthropic funding can also be a helpful catalyst for working across policy areas and breaking down silos in government. Philanthropic funders include the following:

• independent foundations
• family foundations
• community foundations
• public charities
• corporate foundations
• corporate social responsibility programs

Philanthropies may fund initiatives through competitive requests for proposals, formal grant cycles, or invited proposals. In all cases, it is important to understand how your upward mobility initiative aligns with the strategic priorities of the philanthropic organization in question. While many philanthropic funders focus on priorities connected to upward mobility, not all frame it in those terms or focus on the cross-sector nature. If your initiative shares priorities with a philanthropic funder, you can focus on that upward mobility pillar and then show the prospective funder that by supporting your coalition's work in this one area they are contributing to broader mobility gains.

Your theory of change will be key to identifying well-aligned funders in your ecosystem. You should look for funders that have strategic priorities, program areas, and grantmaking work that align with your goals, desired outcomes, and strategic actions. A good funding proposal will articulate the problem, explain your proposed solution, and show how your initiative is positioned for success.

When developing a funding strategy for your upward mobility initiative, you will need to work with your coalition partners to consider a collaborative funding approach. Rather than creating a funding strategy to support an individual organization, you should create a strategy to support your collective work. Before soliciting funding, you should define roles among your coalition, including developing a shared budget, determining how resources raised will be allocated across coalition partners and working groups, and deciding which organization will serve as the grantee and hold fiduciary responsibility for any funds raised.

Specific steps your coalition can take include

• mapping the funding ecosystem in your community—consider all types of funders and their alignment with your goals;
• analyzing local government strategic plans to look for areas of overlap and opportunities to influence future funding; and
• formalizing roles within your coalition related to budgeting, funding, and reporting.

Systems change is one of our six upward mobility principles and should be the long-term goal of your efforts. While systems change involves many components, one of the more promising pathways for ensuring the sustainability of your upward mobility initiative is through formal policies and programs that can better weather the inevitable changes your coalition and community will confront. Initiatives must operate within and across these complex policy ecosystems (national, state, regional, and local), which are often in states of flux. The challenge for many initiatives is taking full advantage of the opportunities for change and then maintaining some level of continuous activities that can support the institutionalization of these positive changes to advance upward mobility.

Other chapters of this toolkit outline strategies and tools that upward mobility initiatives can use to develop their policy and programmatic focus, better understand the underlying stakeholder and organizational interests at play, and map the relevant ecosystems. In this section, we discuss how to sustain the momentum of your coalition’s work by ensuring your strategic actions remain responsive to the evolving policy landscape and by maintaining your relationships and partnerships with relevant actors and organizations.

Adapt Your Strategies in Response to Evolving Policy Landscapes

When it comes to changing the myriad systems that impact upward mobility, public policies and programs offer perhaps the most promising pathways to initiate and, more importantly, institutionalize positive change. As outlined in chapter 2, upward mobility initiatives operate within a complex ecosystem with a diverse range of actors within somewhat discrete policy domains. Below we offer some strategies to help you and your coalition stay responsive and adapt strategic actions as needed:

• Undertake periodic scans of new or revised federal, state, and local laws, programs, and grants, as well as pending actions relevant to your initiative’s areas of focus. Are there recently enacted or pending proposals that would make your initiative’s work easier or more difficult?
• Update your ecosystem map to reflect changes that have occurred since you formed your coalition and launched your upward mobility initiative. Consider whether the changed ecosystem will be more or less receptive to your planned work. What support and strategic guidance can your coalition’s champions provide?
• Revisit the policies and programs you identified as part of your strategic actions. Are they still relevant given changes to the ecosystem? If not, how can you adapt them to stay relevant?
• Document and assess the initial list of successes your coalition has had. Which of your desired outcomes have you achieved, and what is still left to do? Are there any preliminary or short-term impacts you can attribute to your work? Do you have the right data and compelling narratives to build on as you continue expanding these systems changes?
• Monitor developments in the field of upward mobility as new research, policy analysis, and program evaluations continue to emerge. You may want to follow relevant research organizations and nonprofit groups that work on upward mobility, as well as national and state associations of local governments that often provide resources or summaries of relevant developments and produce case studies and other tools highlighting promising new policies and programs.

Maintain Strong Relationships and Partnerships with Actors in the Ecosystem

By their very nature, policy ecosystems involve a constant shift in priorities, frequent pivots, and a consistent churn of actors that will have implications for your initiative’s systems change efforts. It is important to understand the policymaking processes in your community and leverage your coalition’s relationships to advocate for policy and program changes that advance upward mobility. Perhaps more important now than in the past is to closely monitor how changing federal and state political administrations can lead to potential preemption of local government actions. To sustain your work, your coalition must maintain strong relationships with policymakers, local government staff, and civic, institutional, and community leaders who operate within your upward mobility ecosystem. Below are some suggestions for doing so:

• Cultivate champions among policymakers, nonprofit organizations, community-based leaders, and other actors within the policy and program focus of your upward mobility initiative.
• Partner with departments, agencies, and organizations that administer the policies and programs and/or provide direct services that are relevant to your strategic actions.
• Monitor shifts in policy agendas and be prepared to adjust and realign the policy direction of your initiative with the policy priorities and goals of current and new policymakers. Consider which local leaders must be at the table, how to get them to the table, and what to do at the table to move forward.
• Convene regular briefings (workshops, orientations, etc.) for new and existing policymakers and their staff as well as nonprofit, civic, community, and institutional leaders.
• Align your initiative’s work and strategic actions with the design and development of relevant local government agency budget planning and discussion.

Determining Next Steps

As your coalition continues to work toward its desired outcomes, consider actions that can formalize your work, institutionalize practices, and change systems and organizational cultures to advance sustainable upward mobility initiatives in your community. These actions may include the following:

• Draft a resolution that endorses the launch and ongoing activities of the upward mobility initiative and recruit a state and/or local policymaker to introduce it for adoption by the legislature, county commission, city/town council, or other relevant body.
• Launch a public Mobility Action Plan. Consider creating a public-facing Mobility Action Plan that describes your coalition’s intended work. Formally adopting such a plan can institutionalize commitment to the strategic actions your coalition has developed. You can also look for ways to incorporate your Mobility Action Plan into existing local government plans, such as a comprehensive plan, a local housing plan, or other strategic plans.
• Advocate for the creation of an upward mobility office or coordinator role within the local government. Such a person or office could provide dedicated attention and resources to help align policies and programs and facilitate connections across government agencies and departments to ensure the interdisciplinary nature of upward mobility work is carried forward.