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.