CRITICAL EXPANSION PROJECTS
In addition to Communities of Excellence 2026’s current programming, we have identified several projects that would be a significant benefit to the organization and the leaders we serve in communities across America. With philanthropic support beyond COE 2026’s annual budget, we will be able to add the following:
PROJECT
Community Scorecard and Measures Project
Thanks to a startup grant in 2020, COE completed a Common Community Scorecard of high-level interdependent measures to help communities early in their journeys and for benchmarking against communities across the country. We are continuing this project by developing a series of cascading measures to help tell each community's story and track progress over time. Our goal is to identify either a funding source or a venture philanthropy partner who would help us develop a web based tool that each COE site could use to measure and communicate strategies and progress across multiple platforms and devices to make data collection and action transparent.
Community Coaching and Facilitation Certification
To be successful, community formal and informal leaders need to come together in new ways. Our goal is to develop a training and certification program that prepares current and future leaders to take an active role in the systematic improvement of their communities and engage leaders and residents in new and innovative ways. Community Coaches trained in performance excellence, facilitation skills, and the ability to seek out and include the range of diversity in a community will help communities to excel. We need additional resources to build out and pilot this certification program, which will facilitate COE national expansion.
Community Member Participation at 2023 Baldrige Quest for Excellence Conference
This year's conference focuses on innovation and healthy, thriving communities. COE is hoping to sponsor community participation at Quest by providing scholarships to participate and learn from role model organizations AND share their successes with attendees from across the country. We anticipate costs being approximately $3000/community member. Would you or your organization be willing to sponsor a COE community member who is engaged in grassroots work to actively participate in this national convening?
Evaluation of Impact
Help us secure a research team to conduct an objective evaluation of the National Learning Collaborative’s effectiveness and impact on community development priority outcomes.
Communities of Excellence Playbook
COE would like to create a companion tool for the Communities of Excellence Framework booklet that serves as a guidebook for how to implement the Framework in various situations and settings in communities of all sizes.
