Patrick Foran is passionate about his work and the community he serves as the Director of Parks & Community Services for the City of Bellevue. The department that he manages is broad in its scope of responsibilities and services—from parks and recreation to human services to adult misdemeanor probation. Over 35,000 people participate in programs each year through these community resources. “The challenge is in how we marshal our resources in the most relevant and effective way,” he says.
In 2011, Patrick had what he calls “a light bulb moment” when he heard about the concept of collective impact from Bill Henningsgaard, founder of Eastside Pathways. “I saw a concept and a strategy that could help us, one that I had been looking for, for a long time—how to bring people together and sustain a collaborative working relationship that could better leverage our collective resources for greater impact. I was completely sold on the idea and joined the Board to help shape the organization and ensure its sustainability.”
When asked, what does Eastside Pathways bring to the table to help achieve his organization’s mission? Patrick responded: “Organizations working together to solve a particular problem is certainly not a new idea. As symptoms of complex problems surface, organizations will connect with the most relevant partner and work with them until the symptom is addressed but that is the extent of the relationship. And it is always slow and cumbersome. Eastside Pathways helps me by doing the hard work of bringing partners together to sustain a collaborative working relationship. Keeping us together working within a common framework allows us to be more nimble and act more strategically. What I’m banking on is that the work of Eastside Pathways will help us, the Partnership, achieve strategic alignment of our diverse services in order to produce long-term systemic change.”
“Another value that I’m hoping to get out of our association with Eastside Pathways is relevant data. There is demand for more and more data to prove the effectiveness of an organization’s work and the foundation of the collective impact model is the validation of the work based on data. I appreciate the role that Eastside Pathways is playing in helping to develop a data collection and analysis model that not only informs the work of Eastside Pathways but also will be very useful in validating the work of individual partners. Eastside Pathways is leveraging everyone’s resources to ensure that by working in collaboration, the same effort achieves a greater outcome.”
Learning about the approach and framework was an iterative process that led to Patrick looking at how to operationalize Eastside Pathways’ structure within his own department. Eastside Pathways has eight collaboratives that work on areas such as school readiness, summer and extended learning opportunities, attendance, and career readiness, to support children and youth on the Eastside. Patrick and Helena Stephens, Parks & Recreations Program Manager, looked at aligning these areas with people in the department who were already working in similar areas. “We looked at Eastside Pathways’ collaboratives and the work they were doing, and then aligned our staff to a particular collaborative that seemed closest to what they normally work on. So part of their job is now to interact and directly participate in collaboratives on an ongoing basis,” says Helena.
The process culminated in an organizational setup that mirrored that of Eastside Pathways. Patrick is appreciative of his staff who were responsive and open to the changes. “Our staff is intellectually curious and comfortable with thinking about new ideas.”
He is aware that this is just a beginning and that there is more work to be done, especially in the area of data collection. “We are still in the initial stages of developing relevant outcomes and data sets that support them.”
He would also like to find ways to have the business community more connected with Eastside Pathways through the organization’s business engagement group. “The business community can not only bring resources and positive experiences for youth but can also energize a culture of corporate citizenship to engage in the well-being of the community they do business in. Getting the endorsement of the business community helps validate the work of Eastside Pathways and each member of the partnership.”
Patrick sees the collective impact framework as a continuing and evolving journey. “As we continue to work together the chances of coming up with viable solutions are much greater. And as organizations and people build stronger relationships, it will lead to more communication and better outcomes, not only in our shared goals but also in individual organizational goals.”
Article written by Sujata Agrawal, communications strategist and storyteller, and volunteer writer for Eastside Pathways