Use this toolkit to develop a strategic plan to tell compelling stories, engage with media, incorporate results-based accountability, write op-eds, letters to the editor, and blog posts, and create a social media plan. Click here for template.

This guide is designed to help applicant organizations and neighborhood coalitions navigate through the guidelines and application for the FY 2012 Promise Neighborhoods Implementation Grant and understand the key elements, priorities, and requirements of this funding opportunity.

This guide is designed to help applicant organizations and neighborhood coalitions navigate through the guidelines and application for the FY 2012 Promise Neighborhoods Planning Grant and understand the key elements, priorities, and requirements of this funding opportunity.

The Promise Neighborhoods Institute at PolicyLink created this document to flesh out the meaning of evidence-based practice (EBP), the idea to invest resources and energy in programs, services, and explore policies with empirical evidence demonstrating success. Increasingly, funders are encouraging grantees to use these evidence-based approaches. The Promise Neighborhoods program exemplifies this shift.

The Urban Institute’s document, Measuring Performance: A Guidance Document for Promise Neighborhoods on Collecting Data and Reporting Results, provides comprehensive guidance on data collection strategies, sources, and methods for the field, as well as important clarity around the US Department of Education’s required indicators for Promise Neighborhoods sites.

This document is key to the larger field of place-based efforts, helping to coordinate our efforts, regardless of specific initiative, and develop high-quality, consistent processes that get results for children and families in communities across the country.

The Urban Institute has developed this target setting document for the U.S. Department of Education as supplement to their data Guidance Document for Promise Neighborhoods. It identifies data sources, considerations, and methods sites may consider when setting targets for the 15 Promise Neighborhood GPRA indicators.

In the summer of 2014, The Promise Neighborhoods Institute at PolicyLink (PNI) introduced model legislation to be used at the state and local level to secure support for cradle to career efforts. The Cradle to Career Act of 201_ secures funding for innovative, results-based, and comprehensive continua of solutions that connect children and youth to a high quality education and key health and social services that prepare them to succeed in college and in their careers. The legislation was intentionally drafted in a manner that it may be used to support various strategies that advance educational outcomes from cradle through college and career.

If you have questions, or would like to discuss the legislation in greater detail, please contact Lisa Cylar Miller, Deputy Director of the Promise Neighborhoods Institute at PolicyLink. She may be reached via email at LisaCM@policylink.org or via phone at 202-906-8016.

This publication from PolicyLink, the Coalition for Community Schools, Institute for Educational Leadership, and the West Coast Collaborative, and authored by William R. Potapchuk, demonstrates that community schools offer a powerful vision and strategy for what schools should look like within broader place-based initiatives and how community schools can benefit from alignment with other efforts like Promise Neighborhoods and other cradle-to-career, place-based strategies.

This document describes some of the key issues to be considered in undertaking a comprehensive evaluation of the performance and impact of the Promise Neighborhoods grantees at large. It provides the perspective of organizations who are working at the corner of evaluation and practice—seeking to improve the outcomes for poor children and families and to understand the most effective ways of measuring results.

This paper, produced by ChildTrends and commissioned by the Promise Neighborhoods Institute at PolicyLink, explores indicators and results to help focus Promise Neighborhood efforts on the healthy development and education of children.