The Charleston Promise Neighborhood has released its Annual Commitments for 2011. This document outlines the organization’s goals and objectives for the upcoming calendar year, and we are sharing these with our donors, supporters and the public so that we can be held accountable to what we say we are going to do. We’ve set the bar very high for ourselves! Please view or download a PDF of our commitments here.
Among our first objectives is creating and implementing our school “resource infusion” plans, which we wrote about in detail last week. The baseline reports on James Simons, Sanders-Clyde, Mary Ford and Chicora are due to be completed on March 31 (detailing the programs and services currently available at these schools) and the resource infusion plans will be completed by April 30, 2011. We will post these plans for the community’s benefit, and we will be detailing the additional services and supports we hope to bring to each school starting in August, 2011.
Of equal import is our plan for Community Engagement, which will be developed in parallel to our School-Infusion Plan. As we posted two blog entries ago, our ten-member Community Engagement Council has begun to meet and is scheduling interviews with Neighborhood business owners, faith-based leaders and association presidents. The goal is to bring back input from these leaders to be incorporated into a workplan to be finalized by April 30, 2011. We plan to prioritize 3-5 key issues that we will address as a council, and begin implementing these by September, 2011. We have already met with representatives of the Trident United Way about incorporating some of these projects into their day of Caring, and plan to submit projects to them by July 1, 2011.
During this year we will also be implementing the first phase of design and implementation for our information and case management system. Blackbaud has helped us with outlining the initial requirements for such a system, which we hope to have completely designed by December 31, 2011. The set of metrics we will use to measure academic and other outcomes for children living within the Promise Neighborhood will be set by June 30, 2011. Importantly, we will be working with partners such as the Trident United Way to ensure that all of these metrics are shared. We also will be sharing our researched repository of best practices and online resources.
Our fundraising goal is to raise an additional $150,000 for program by June 30, 2011, and another $200,000 by December 31, 2011. These are ambitious goals, but it is important that we secure program funding in advance of the fiscal year for which they will be used so that we can guarantee the support that we pledge to our partner non-profits and Neighborhood programs. With your support and positive word of mouth, we will get there!
Dwayne Green, CEO