Challenge

The leadership of Somerville, MA was analyzing how to improve educational achievement across a diverse student population with a wide array of socio-economic backgrounds and a wide range of past academic performance.

To better enable Somerville students to reach their full potential, the City of Somerville began exploring how it could leverage its strong, dynamic leadership to raise additional resources to continue improving the educational outcomes of its children and youth. The city knew that achieving better outcomes universally requires the effective engagement of families, community partners, schools, and nonprofit services. While conversations around how to accomplish this had already begun, the city lacked clarity on how best to galvanize resources to support the success of all students in a consistent and sustainable manner.

Overview

The Root Cause team provided guidance to the City of Somerville and Somerville Public Schools (SPS) on how to support a community-wide effort and developed a plan for a clear path forward. First, through the SomerPromise initiative, Root Cause worked with the City and SPS to develop a Framework for Student Success, which defined key desired outcomes along the continuum from early childhood to college and career. Then, Root Cause helped city leaders clarify the overall vision and purpose of SomerPromise to focus the initiative on shifting behavior and aligning resources across sectors to address the components of the Framework. Through this process, SomerPromise articulated its commitment to advancing evidence-based strategies at the interface of home, school, and community that complement and go beyond what schools are able to do on their own. To prepare SomerPromise to raise resources for this effort, Root Cause determined the optimal organizational structure and defined key priority areas on which to concentrate first.

Root Cause developed a plan for SomerPromise to publicize and generate interest in the initiative. To estimate the size of the donor market for such an effort, our team conducted research on giving potential in Somerville and researched similar education-related funds in other Massachusetts cities and towns. Root Cause also developed briefs that provide more detail on specific priority areas of SomerPromise, as well as a comprehensive summary of SomerPromise’s organizational structure and overall strategy.

At the project’s end in 2013, SomerPromise emerged well-positioned to align and mobilize resources to address the academic, social, and environmental factors that affect student success. The Somerville Mayor and Superintendent approved our recommendations, and SomerPromise leadership began testing ways to generate interest, support, and better coordination of efforts across the city.

SomerPromise remains an important hub for Somerville’s cradle-to-career activities and an integral part of the City’s Department of Health and Human Services. The initiative has established Somerville Hub, an online resource and community effort that was originally intended for the early learning community and has since been expanded to serve children and youth of all ages and their families. In addition, SomerPromise continues to work on resource alignment and how best to leverage public and private resources for the benefit of all children and families in the city.