Backbone Capacity Building Initiative

 Dorchester County, MD

Program Summary

1. Goal: J2W will provide sufficient funding to cover a full-time position fully dedicated to managing the Dorchester County Campaign for Grade Level Reading backbone role. The overarching objective of this investment will be to allow the YMCA to take ownership of the backbone management of the Dorchester Campaign and to do this resourced appropriately to not only sustain the Campaign over its 10-year lifetime, but to grow its influence and impact.

2. Framework: The YMCA of the Chesapeake will manage the backbone organization for Dorchester County’s Campaign for Grade Level Reading strategy. Leveraging the existing resources of the YMCA and its site in Cambridge, MD, this Campaign program position will provide the capacity necessary to take over the backbone role and further the programming, reach, messaging, and impact of the Campaign within the county. The backbone activities will include:

    • Convening, Partnership Development, and Fundraising
      • Bring together all resources including groups and individuals related to learning in the County, in order to build action plans and deliverables to meet and exceed goals. Build the network of community leaders, organizations, and stakeholders that have agreed to be part of the support and growth of learning initiatives across the community. Develop and create the partnerships and meeting mechanisms that best advance our goals, including developing a fundraising plan to bring in additional resources in the form of grants and public/private contributions to ensure sustainable success.
    • Communications & Storytelling
      • Advance all the good work being done by caring organizations across the county and through the Campaign, through multiple media platforms to elevate the messaging and availability of options for learning across the community. Build the brand and messaging that our community turns to for partnership to solve challenging problems, as well as tell the stories of success for improving the learning opportunities available to the entire community
    • Alignment & Coordination
      • Consistent with our vision to bring together the best of what is available to our community to facilitate learning, connect to all the appropriate partners and entities focused on improving learning and skill development across the community. Coordinate all organizations devoted to some aspect of learning in county that advances our goals.
    • Data Analysis, Research, and Reporting
      • Maintain and communicate a reporting dashboard with success metrics that are determined and aligned on with all stakeholders in advance of any work projects to be engaged. Success metrics will be researched against appropriate industry benchmarks, analysis will be used to identify trends that can be utilized for project refinements, and reporting consistent with preset expectations for all stakeholders and reporting requirements and agreements.
    • Professional Development & Capacity Building
      • Assess, develop, and build upon the capacity of all partner organizations to deliver against the action plans put in place to effect change and deliver results needed to meet our goals. We will determine how to be most helpful to the community, school district, and all stakeholders. Our intention is to continue to look for grants, resources, and best practices to bring to all so that they can grow their teams and their capacities to maximize their programs to meet the needs of the community.

 
3. J2W will provide 3-years of funding to the cost of the program.

Brick building with YMCA sign and trees.
YMCA logo with blue and purple design.
Child and adult smiling at a table.
J2W Foundation reading strategy document overview.

Measures of Performance

For more information, please see Data Analysis section at the bottom of the page

Data Analysis

  1. Goal: J2W will provide sufficient funding to cover a full-time position fully dedicated to managing the Dorchester County Campaign for Grade Level Reading backbone role. The overarching objective of this investment will be to allow the YMCA to take ownership of the backbone management of the Dorchester Campaign and to do this resourced appropriately to not only sustain the Campaign over its 10-year lifetime, but to grow its influence and impact.
  2. Theory of Change: With a fully dedicated and well-resourced Campaign for Grade Level Reading backbone agency, the Campaign will have a greater impact in the community. The backbone agency will be better able to maximize community engagement; improve strategic communications and positive messaging on the importance of literacy, attendance, and reduction in learning loss; identify, develop, and fund critical strategies and solutions; collect meaningful data on performance; and ultimately drive impact and success.
  3. Performance Measures: We will begin this initiative with a focus on creating a strong foundation and set of processes by which the Campaign can and should perform most effectively. As the Campaign fully transitions to the YMCA, we will then begin to assess the grant effectiveness by analyzing the following factors regarding our ability to:
    • Expand community capacity
    • Amplify the message
    • Align on targets and outcomes
    • Coordinate strategy across Dorchester County
  1. Initial Goals to measure on the four effectiveness factors include:
    • Meeting Management: Our intent is to host regularly scheduled, well-attended committee meetings for each of the four key working groups (Steering, School Readiness, Out-of-School Time, and Attendance), 100% of the time; and to host two strategic retreats per year, facilitated by the Smarter Learning Group consultants to benchmark our Campaign against like-Campaigns across the country. By the end of Q2/25, the Campaign backbone organization ran all Committee meetings (100% achieved), earning a “green” health score and has so far hosted one SLG strategic retreat (50% achieved), earning a “yellow” score but also knowing the second retreat will occur in Q4/25.
    • Strategic Messaging: Our intent is to develop and broadly distribute a quarterly newsletter outlining the activities and progress of the Dorchester Campaign. Thus, our goal is to deliver 4 newsletters per year. By Q2/25, the Campaign has distributed 2 of 4 newsletters, earning a “yellow” health score but also knowing the final two newsletters will be sent out in Q3 and Q4/25. In addition, the Campaign has a goal of hosting one, annual State of the Campaign public event that is intended to provide an in-person opportunity for the community to learn more about the Campaign’s activities and outcomes. To date, the presentation has not occurred but is expected in Q3 or Q4/25.
    • Program Implementation: The YMCA of the Chesapeake expects to deliver on at least two programmatic activities as the backbone lead agency. One is to provide the SMS text messaging parent engagement tool, ParentPowered, and the second is to provide early childhood education nighttime routine and literacy kits to families birth to 5, called Bedtime in a Box. Year 1 goals for ParentPowered (deliver to 1,600 families) and Bedtime in a Box (deliver to 115 B5 children) are both “green.” Q2/25 ParentPowered usage is currently 1,612 and Bedtime in a Box is currently 157.