Casey Seeks New Partners for its Evidence2Success Framework

The Casey Foun­da­tion is seek­ing pro­pos­als from com­mu­ni­ties inter­est­ed in imple­ment­ing Evidence2Success, a frame­work that brings pub­lic sys­tem and res­i­dent lead­ers togeth­er to improve child well-being. The Foun­da­tion will select up to three new sites to join Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island, Mobile and Sel­ma, Alaba­ma, and Kearns Town­ship in Salt Lake Coun­ty, Utah, which are already car­ry­ing out the framework.

Among oth­er eli­gi­bil­i­ty require­ments, com­mu­ni­ties must have a pop­u­la­tion of at least 100,000 and secure com­mit­ments to par­tic­i­pate from a wide group of local stake­hold­ers, includ­ing res­i­dents, elect­ed offi­cials and the school superintendent.

Evidence2Success com­bines pub­lic health and pre­ven­tion sci­ence to offer a new way of help­ing chil­dren and youth meet crit­i­cal behav­ioral, edu­ca­tion­al, emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal mile­stones. The frame­work is com­posed of five core elements:

• Part­ner­ships among pub­lic sys­tems, elect­ed offi­cials and communities
• Strate­gic use of local data to iden­ti­fy needs and devel­op a con­sen­sus among part­ners on outcomes
• Financ­ing strate­gies to map cur­rent invest­ments, shift fund­ing to cost-effec­tive pre­ven­tion pro­grams and secure sus­tain­able funding
• Capac­i­ty build­ing to imple­ment evi­dence-based programs
• Mea­sure­ment of pop­u­la­tion-lev­el changes

The Casey Foun­da­tion is hop­ing to build on lessons from the exist­ing part­ner­ships and expand the reach of Evidence2Success into oth­er com­mu­ni­ties through­out the South and South­west, where child out­comes are the worst. These regions are home to 40% of the nation’s chil­dren and near­ly 45% of U.S. chil­dren of col­or — and areas where kids con­tin­u­al­ly are behind their peers in meet­ing key mile­stones on their path to adulthood.

Down­load the RFP

“As bud­gets con­tin­ue to tight­en, it’s crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant that com­mu­ni­ties are putting the resources they do have toward the most effec­tive pro­grams pos­si­ble for young peo­ple — par­tic­u­lar­ly in the states we know need it the most,” says Amoret­ta Mor­ris, direc­tor of Casey’s nation­al com­mu­ni­ty change strate­gies. ​“Evidence2Success pro­vides a roadmap for mak­ing smarter invest­ments to improve the lives of kids and fam­i­lies, while secur­ing their input and buy-in along the way. It allows part­ners to under­stand the very spe­cif­ic needs of young peo­ple in that com­mu­ni­ty and imple­ment the right mix of pro­grams to address them.”

Before sub­mit­ting a response, inter­est­ed appli­cants are encour­aged to review a series of one-page briefs that describe the key aspects of Evidence2Success: tools and tech­ni­cal assis­tance; the Youth Expe­ri­ence Sur­vey; the rela­tion­ship between the Foun­da­tion and Evidence2Success com­mu­ni­ties; pub­lic financ­ing strate­gies; and data­bas­es for evi­dence-based pro­grams.

The dead­line for appli­ca­tions is 5 p.m. ET on August 4, 2017. For addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about the pro­gram, please email Mil­dred John­son with the sub­ject line ​“RFP Ques­tion” by July 21, 2017.