Advancing the Full Potential of Help Me Grow
As our National Network and National Center continue to expand rapidly, we want to acknowledge this important moment of growth and opportunity. Collectively, we have made significant progress toward shared goals laid out in our 2021 strategic plan, and we have pursued major shifts that accelerate our impact.
Hear about exciting changes at HMG National
5 Things You Can Count on From HMG National in 2024
Meet the National Center Branches
Growing Together Background
To support this growth and headway, the HMG National Center is enhancing its structure. The new, intentional design for the HMG National Center expands our capacity and skill set, with five branches of work that align to make a powerful machine of impact.
Over the course of the summer, we offered multiple opportunities for you and your partners to meet and connect with all of the new branch leaders, and to share your thoughts on where we might go and how we grow together.
In June 2023, HMG National introduced each of five branches of work that work together in alignment to maximize impact:
- Meet the Network Relations branch – Connect with Sarah Zucker
- Meet the Impact & Network Performance branch – Connect with Melissa Miller
- Meet the Policy & Community Change branch – Connect with Chelsea Neelon
- Meet the Implementation & System-Building branch – Connect with Melissa Passarelli
- Meet the Business Development & Operations branch – Connect with Sara Sibley
HMG National Center Strategic Planning
To guide this strategy, the HMG National Center partnered with The Bridgespan Group to define full potential across several dimensions and conducted a landscape analysis of the current state of the Network relative to that potential.
5 mutually reinforcing priority areas for Help Me Grow:
- Further validate HMG’s impact model and align National Affiliate Network on the outputs and outcomes that systems implementing with fidelity should achieve
- Accelerate ability for affiliates and systems to use data to create community change at the state and local levels
- Clearly define the role of HMG systems in advancing racial equity in communities and ensuring services are equitable through targeted universalism
- Secure robust funding for HMG in several states and build momentum for national policy agenda
- Pursue growth, primarily within existing systems (greater penetration in existing areas) and existing affiliates (greater coverage of state/region)
The paramount aim of the Help Me Grow National Center is to be as inclusive, collective, and heedful as possible as we move forward in co-constructing an exciting and promising plan for accelerated growth of Help Me Grow.
Read the Help Me Grow National Strategic Growth Plan
Help Me Grow National sought input from affiliates on critical questions including:
- How should the five draft strategic priorities be refined?
- Should national-level current draft growth projections be refined?
- What are the key services and supports that the HMG National Center will need to provide?
- What key roles will affiliate states and systems play in implementing the strategic priorities?
Listening Sessions & Affiliate Input
In August 2023, HMG National held a series of drop-in listening sessions where each branch of the National Center shared thoughts on the vision and direction of the work and affiliates had the opportunity to provide ideas, insights, opinions, and feedback.
Watch the Network Relations Listening Session recording (Password: !Y$&^Ui5)
Watch the Impact & Network Performance Listening Session recording
Watch the Policy & Community Change Listening Session recording
Watch the Implementation & System Building Listening Session recording
On July 26, 2023 the HMG National Center hosted a roundtable with the Affiliate Network to ask some big questions, including:
- What are your greatest goals in your work to build strong communities for families with children?
- In what ways might the National Center help you achieve these goals?
- What is HMG National doing now that supports these goals?
- What are the biggest challenges you face in achieving these goals?
- What past/existing efforts by HMG National have been most valuable to you?
- What do you feel should be the greatest purpose of the HMG National Center?
- What do you wish to see more of/additionally from HMG National?
Watch the Growing Together Roundtable Discussion with the National Network
Following a January 2021 webinar on Defining Full Potential: A Strategic Plan for Help Me Grow, the HMG National Center and consultant Bridgespan hosted five sessions for affiliates to offer input on the strategic growth plan and its five priorities.
During these sessions, we heard from affiliates about:
1. How you might already be approaching each of the five priorities in your communities;
2. Where there is opportunity and momentum for the network to build on; and
3. What types of supports (from the National Center or elsewhere) will be most helpful.
Affiliate Input Session Slide Deck
Materials & Resources
- Watch a video message from HMG National Center Executive Director, Kimberly Martini-Carvell, on the new design of HMG National and how you can contribute to our direction forward.
- Read the Growing Together blog series, which introduces each branch of HMG National and shares five things affiliates can count on from the National Center in 2024
- Defining Full Potential: A Strategic Plan for Help Me Grow webinar recording and slides
- Like the Model Itself, Growth for Help Me Grow Must Be Collaboratively Designed and Implemented blog post
- Affiliate Input Session Slide Deck