Advancing the Full Potential of Help Me Grow

To accelerate growth and impact of the Help Me Grow (HMG) National Affiliate Network, the HMG National Center has engaged in strategic planning to research and articulate strategic growth priorities for the next five years and define the “full potential” of HMG.

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:

1. Further validate HMG’s impact model and align National Affiliate Network on the outputs and outcomes that systems implementing with fidelity should achieve
2. Accelerate ability for affiliates and systems to use data to create community change at the state and local levels
3. Clearly define the role of HMG systems in advancing racial equity in communities and ensuring services are equitable through targeted universalism
4. Secure robust funding for HMG in several states and build momentum for national policy agenda
5. 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.

Working in concert with the National Affiliate Network, The Bridgespan Group will lead us in these next few months. Their guidance will offer many opportunities for affiliates to learn, participate, and contribute to the strategic growth plan. This will include a broad-based way of gathering input from the entire network to understand perceptions of draft priorities, inform national supports that would be needed for affiliates to execute the priorities, and topic-specific working groups of affiliates focusing in on key pieces of a viable plan.

Read the Help Me Grow National Strategic Growth Plan

Help Me Grow National is seeking input from affiliates on critical questions that still need to be answered 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?