Involvement Advocacy d/b/a The Collaboratory

I’m applying for the Elevate Prize because I believe the civic innovation model I’ve been developing since 1992 is transformational in both tangible and intangible ways. The Re-Imagining America: Dayton, Ohio initiative, toward which the Elevate Prize funding would be used, represents the integration of 30 years of diverse, collaborative civic innovation work.

Re-Imagining America (https://www.re-imaginingameric...) is a citizen-driven change movement to co-create a Community of Well-Being that transcends systemic racism and economic injustice. It was borne out of the September 2018 Frontline/ProPublica documentary “Left Behind America” that featured Dayton as a manifest example of what has happened to too many American cities and the people who live there as a result of our current socio-economic model: They have been left behind or left out.

Specifically, funding will support  initiatives to redefine success measures and reframe the conversation around well-being, including:

• Engaging The  Gallup Organization to develop and deploy an Action-Oriented and Citizen-Driven Dayton version of their Well-Being Index, capturing Baseline/Repeatable data-gathering to understand where we are as a community—macro and micro levels.

• Fostering Citizen Journalists to capture re-imagining stories 

• Hosting Community Conversations to engage residents and gather qualitative data

• Launching Pilot Projects created by citizens for citizens

I founded Involvement Advocacy (d/b/a The Collaboratory) in Chicago in 1992, inspired by the Chinese Proverb “Tell Me, I’ll Forget; Show Me, I’ll Remember; Involve Me, I’ll Understand.”

Our first initiative, Sister Neighborhoods, brought together residents from the Cabrini-Green public housing community and the wealthy north shore suburb of Winnetka – two communities with ostensibly little in common. Out of this unusual pairing came an understanding of shared humanity, the only resident-run newspaper in Chicago public housing, and inspiration for the future of our work.

Today, our organization operates as a Civic Innovation lab — equal parts think tank, R&D laboratory, and social enterprise incubator. We believe in the unexpected outcomes of improbable pairings, bringing together community co-creators, regardless of their stations, to move innovative ideas to transformational action.

Our purpose is “Unleashing Dayton’s Potential.” We draw inspiration from the Maximum Power Principle which asserts that “systems with the most available energy will prevail.” Our region will have the most available energy when everyone is realizing their full potential, which is achievable when we live in a Community of Well-Being. Well-being for all transcends systemic racism and economic injustice, permitting even the most marginalized the opportunity to thrive.

The Re-Imagining America initiative is the collective product of Dayton-area citizens organized by The Collaboratory. The goal of the project is to foster community transformation via a new system of measuring success. Globally, economic and social development programs utilize metrics to justify their efforts. The current metrics for success are predominantly economic and transactional in nature. Our initiative pilots the use of the concept of "well-being" as a measurable unit complete with a vetted instrument in doing so. 

By creating a new model for engaging citizens in the process of transforming their own communities, we solve the problem of aligning development efforts with citizen needs. Identifying factors that contribute to increased well-being offers tangible points of entry for effective community development. The Gallup Well-Being Index provides opportunity for communities to measure their own well-being, and to make efforts via our system of community organizing to improve it over time.

The Re-Imagining America initiative aims to impact the Dayton area MSA initially, targeting a population of 850,000. Following the pilot effort, the Re-Imagining America team will edit our process and improve practice until we produce a refined version for adoption by other communities.

(Psychology.edu Article: https://bit.ly/3b3Cw8v)

Our approach starts with our proprietary Theory of Change model which includes change at all levels of the system. We believe in order to change outcomes and impacts, you must first:

• Change the language because words matter;
• Change the framework because context drives engagement;
• Change the people, because power belongs in the hands of the community, not institutions;
• Change the conversation, because we haven’t been having the right kinds of results from the conversations we’ve been having;
• Change the metrics because what you measure is indicative of what you value and drive how you design your model; 
• Change the model because, as futurist Buckminster Fuller says, “You never change something by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”

Our disruption comes from the challenge we present to the existing systemic structures. We propose an entirely new way of viewing successful regional development that benefits all of the people in our region rather than the few who have been calling the shots all these years. We have no institutional or political constraints, structurally or in terms of resourcing, enabling us to disrupt without risk of destabilizing our organization.

Re-Imagining America: Dayton, Ohio is designed as a five-year effort, at which time pilot projects that show promise will be further developed within the most appropriate contexts. The five-year plan is as follows:

Y1 - DIAGNOSIS

• Introduce Gallup Well-Being Index and Complete Baseline
• System Dynamics Modeling
• Promote, Identify, and Directly Involve Citizens in RIA Process
• Citizens Possibility Report
• Metrics Development Planning
• Subject Matter Work Groups Formation

Y2 - PLANNING

• Subject Matter Work Groups
• Pilot Projects
• Design and Implementation

Y3 - PILOT PROJECTS 

• Design and Implementation
• System Dynamics Update
• Well-Being Index Survey

Y4 - PILOT PROJECTS 

• Review and Analysis of Pilot Projects
• Selection of Most Viable for Expansion
• Scale Up Planning

Y5 - SCALE UP 

• Implementation
• Measurement
• Well-Being Index Survey

These steps will be effective because our process is by citizens/for citizens and it involves a feedback loop that includes on-going qualitative and quantitative data-gathering. (Infographic: https://bit.ly/3nK0gDV) 

Our overall approach will be effective because shifting the success metrics from transactional economic constructs to well-being will allow community members to be both happier and healthier. People will have more time and energy to pursue the things that they enjoy and be productive at that which will make life worth living.