Striving for change

What is this Civic Infrastructure?

August 13, 2025

“We are building the civic infrastructure necessary to support every child from cradle to career.” Well, that sounds pretty fantastic, but what does that actually mean? At Strive, we have defined ‘Civic Infrastructure’ as: A way in which a region or community comes together to hold itself collectively accountable for implementing their own unique cradle [...]

Read the full article →

An Introduction to Strive, or a Refresher

August 1, 2025

In his June 2012 Social Impact Exchange presentation, Jeff Edmondson reviewed the history of Strive as well as highlighted the focus of scaling practices, the creation of the Strive framework, the meaning of collective impact, the practice of continuous improvement through data, the understanding civic infrastructure, and the achievement of a greater social return on investment. This [...]

Read the full article →

Guilford County: Collective Impact in Action

July 30, 2025

In 15 years of working with the media, one thing that’s certain is competition among outlets can be fierce as news teams and editors work diligently to get the right story in front of the right people at the right time. In Guilford County, the presence of two major cities – High Point and Greensboro [...]

Read the full article →

Community Support Essential to Collective Impact Literacy Efforts

July 26, 2025

Third grade reading matters. While this critical benchmark is receiving more attention—rates have been trending upward in the region for the past five years—there’s more that needs to be done. Recognizing that early interventions are a better solving mechanism than retention, the Early Grade Level Reading Campaign is dedicated to increasing early reading success throughout [...]

Read the full article →

The Importance of Literacy Campaigns in Collective Impact Partnerships

July 24, 2025

Very recently, the North Carolina collective impact partnership AchieveGuilford reached out to me, asking if I’d be interested in writing a guest post in their blog about the importance of literacy and the effect that reading has had on my life. We all know that reading has the potential to teach children more about themselves [...]

Read the full article →

In Support of Strengthening District Race to the Top

June 13, 2025

Last Friday marked the final day to weigh-in on the new District Race to the Top language. We’re excited about many aspects of the proposal released in late May, and we hope to see the following policies remain in the final regulations to be released this summer: Competitive Preference Priority for Results, Resource Alignment, and Integrated [...]

Read the full article →

Cradle to Career language included in District Race to the Top Draft Regulations

June 8, 2025

Exciting news for the Strive Network! Cradle to Career language has been included in draft regulations for District Race to the Top program. Included in the recently released draft is a competitive preference priority for Cradle-to-Career Results, Resource Alignment and Integrated Services. This is a great moment for the Strive Network, and a testament to the work [...]

Read the full article →

Communications Toolkit for Strive Network Members Unveiled

May 24, 2025

Yesterday, more than 30 Strive Network communities participated in a Network-member webinar focused on the different ways that these Cradle to Career partnerships can best communicate their work to the media and to local community members. After Carly Rospert, Communications & Strategic Assistance Associate for the Strive Network, unveiled the brand new Communications Toolkit, two [...]

Read the full article →

Creating and Adapting to the “New Job Description”

April 24, 2026

I was just recently part of a discussion with several of the Strive Cradle to Career communities about how they’re working to promote shared accountability within networks that are building collaborative action plans. It became clear throughout the conversation that this is one of the toughest challenges that partnerships wrestle through. There is no denying [...]

Read the full article →

The Beautiful Side of “Enlightened Self-Interest”

March 20, 2026

Working with a few sites recently, I came to realize that “enlightened self-interest” is a beautiful thing. It’s often referred to in the negative because of the perception that people are being selfish if they think about how the partnership work could help an individual partner succeed. But in the end, real and sustainable partnerships do [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →