Platform of Hope

Strategic Planning
Written By Kristine Neil

In the rapidly gentrifying Adams Morgan neighborhood of northwest Washington, DC, six local organizations—Capital Area Asset Builders, For Love of Children, Jubilee Housing, Jubilee Jumpstart, Mary’s Center, and Sitar Arts Center—formed a strategic alliance, committed to ending multigenerational poverty in their neighborhood. With start-up funding granted by the Meyer Foundation in October 2017, the Steering Committee engaged Mission Partners to guide the group through the foundational process of creating a model for collective impact called The Platform of Hope. 

Mission Partners led the Steering Committee through a Design Thinking process that established a vision and common agenda, guiding principles, governance model, program design, budget, process map, and fundraising plan for a one-year pilot cohort of participating families, with plans to scale over 5 years. Mission Partners developed protocol and trained representatives of each organization to conduct empathy interviews and listening sessions with prospective families. The Steering Committee engaged community members at every step, using their feedback and insights to modify and design the program.

The Platform of Hope launched in September 2018 with a cohort of twenty families and has sustained a unique and forward-thinking model through the second cohort in which families develop their own goals and build a strategy plan for accomplishing them.

Kristine Neil

Fractional Web Partner

I'm Kristine Neil - a communications strategist who has spent 20+ years designing websites, first running a full-scale design and marketing agency, and now leading my own studio. I've been the creative director managing the work, the coder quietly fixing what others couldn't, and the strategist in the room asking why before how. Somewhere between the MBA and the other degrees, I decided web design was just one tool in a much bigger toolbox - the real work is figuring out what you're trying to say, who needs to hear it, and what's getting in the way. A website is just where all of that comes to life.

I mostly build on Squarespace, and after years deep in the platform I know how far it can go and when to push past its limits. These days, I'm especially drawn to working as a fractional partner - getting to know an organization over time and helping with whatever moves them forward, whether that's a full redesign, an ongoing hand with content and strategy, or just being the person who knows their site best. I write here about AI, UX, eCommerce, web strategy, and making the complex feel a little more human.

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