Client Challenge

JF&CS is a 133-yr-old $20M municipal social services agency running 30 specialized programs across a large metropolitan area. With a staff of more than 200 people the agency provides after-school programs, career assistance, tutoring and college application resources, meals, and older adult programs and services. The client also operates 8 homes for those affected by intellectual and developmental disabilities, along with life skills day programs. Unfortunately this program regularly turns away applicants who have lower support needs.

The client’s vision was to create a campus for applicants where residents learn how to live independently in the general community, and find fulfilling employment. In addition to apartments the residents would receive life and job skill training, grow their social interactions, and have an opportunity for meaningful work.

The challenge was that the vision needed far more detail before securing funding. The list of questions to turn the vision into a fundable concept was extensive (e.g., client profile, facility siting, vocational opportunities), and answering them would require a great deal of research. This in turn would require engaging a long list of stakeholders. A reality in the disability community is deeply-held perspectives which often don’t align on issues ranging from the right language to the right way to help those affected by disabilities integrate into the community.

Fortunately the client had early interest from a large Foundation. The challenge set forth by the foundation: we can’t make a funding decision based only on your vision. Bring us your research, design criteria, proposed concept, and 5-year financials including the philanthropic requirements. This was the point that the agency engaged us.

Our Approach

We recognized early that how we did this project was at least as important as what we did; given the wide range of deep feelings and strongly held perspectives on what was needed, we needed to build alignment and buy-in along the way. We knew that we would need to approach each conversation with humility and empathy in order to help stakeholders trust us. Our job was to listen and to balance the ideas, best practices, and needs we heard with the practical realities of our client’s capabilities and funding.

Our work proceeded in 3 phases:

1. Deep care and understanding of the needs of prospective clients and their families via interviews, focus groups, best practices research, client segmentation, and peer site visits

2. Assessment of JF&CS needs and capabilities (incl. staff, programs, and facilities) via interviews and analysis

3. Concept development via design sessions, financial modeling, and stakeholder iteration

The final step was to build the narrative of our proposed concept and its development which could be used by the JF&CS CEO to seek funding as well as alignment with the Board, employees, and community stakeholders.

The Impact

Throughout the project we received strong positive feedback on our approach. Our client’s CEO said that this approach was crucial in steadily building alignment, buy-in, and momentum. Her feedback was roughly this: “This could have been much more contentious, which would have slowed us down a great deal. Instead, the stakeholders feel respected and included, and that has made them open to wherever we land”.

The feedback from the Foundation was: “This may be the best proposal we’ve received in some time: organized, specific, actionable, compelling, well-researched, and with a clear and well-supported ask. We agree that the next step is engaging an architect and lawyer, and we’ll award substantial funds to fund that work. We want to see this happen.”

The presentation was built with a strong narrative arc, with the knowledge that it could (and was) used to build buy-in with many audiences: the Executive Leadership Team, the Board, community members, donors, partners, and disability professionals. In the months since the project was completed the presentation has served as an anchor point for alignment across all of those audiences.