In 2014, Growing Home’s leadership understood it was time to work to expand beyond the limits they saw in the direct service they had always done, to a model that included deeper community engagement and community-driven change.
Organizational leaders asked themselves the tough question, are we really moving the needle on helping families make the change they need to find their own paths forward? Or are we just serving the immediate need generation after generation?
Their answer was a concerted attempt to continue the immediate direct service needed by many families while also pursuing a place-based strategy of discovery about what a truly community-led effort for real change could look like. Following listening campaigns in community, priorities and ongoing challenges in need of solution began to bubble to the top. The organic growth of a community advocacy group followed.
While that effort produced fruit for solving immediate community challenges and correcting some local systemic needs, it ultimately wasn’t sustainable as a model that could transfer beyond the first generation of community members who launched the effort. Also challenging was how to bring together the direct service the organization had traditionally provided with the community advocacy and engagement so they could inform each other.
“First and foremost, we had to get all the stakeholders on the same page about how all of our work fits together. And we had to ask the next tough set of questions. Where are we? Where do we want to go?” said Karen Fox Elwell, the organization’s president and chief executive officer. “We needed to bring together these important pieces of our work and agree on what we shared across all the programs to make all our efforts both sustainable over time as well as meaningful to the community.”
What came from that is an organization focused on a more thriving, healthy, and equitable North Denver metro area with a mission of working in partnership with the community to advance equity in food, housing, parenting education, and lifelong stability to create lasting change. What that means in real terms is that about 1,875 households comprised of 7,809 individuals are moving toward better more sustainable futures of their own choosing. With a clear theory of change and animating priorities set by the community, the resources to support this effort began and continue to flow.
“We are seeing true community change because the community is striving forward in the way they feel is best,” Fox Elwell said.
But challenges persist even as Growing Home experiences many years of success. Traditional funding models continue to place barriers to full integration of the direct service aspects of the work with the community organizing. Work in and with community takes time, which is often not reflected in the annual grants and gifts cycle. And reporting requirements for these funding opportunities focused on hard numbers and specific tallies can at times make fundraising a challenge.
“Funders have to be open to hearing a story that evaluates the success of the work, not only through statistics, but also through transformational change,” she said. “We are starting to see more organizations open to this, and we also have to become better at sharing these stories.”
Also challenging are the real limitations of time and resources. Immediate food access needs can’t wait, for example, while strategic planning efforts happen. But thoughtful and careful placement of priorities can help organizations navigate these challenges according to Fox Elwell.
“We have said that integration of our food access and justice is a priority for us.,” she said. “It gives us a clear understanding of what we say yes to. And what we say no to. And that, in turn, defines the progress we will make.”