Mayerson Academy
700 Pete Rose Way, Suite 435
Cincinnati, OH 45203
Strong Cincinnati: Expanding Non-Profit Capacity to Transform Our City
Grant Application:
Strong Cincinnati Institute is an engaging, cohort-based learning experience that helps non-profit professionals and their teams uncover their strengths and create systems that promote a positive culture shift within their organization - at no cost to the non-profit. Through the Institute, participants build deeper relationships with their colleagues and connect with like-minded leaders from across the city as they build capacity to create positive change through strengths. After the Institute, training and support continue through the Strong Cincinnati Network for the entire non-profit organization, not only participants of the Institute. The Network gives all employees of participating organizations - not just those who've directly completed the Institute - access to workshops, consults, and interactions with other Institute alumni to continue transforming their organization’s culture to create positive change.
Goals/Objectives:
Mayerson Academy’s ultimate goal is to create a ripple of positive change across our city that will improve the lives of all Cincinnatians. We believe deeply that a stronger nonprofit community means a stronger Cincinnati for all and this belief drives our efforts each day.
Our outcomes are broken down into three categories – short-term, intermediate, and long-term.
Short-term Outcomes – These outcomes are focused on the experience of our partners through the Strong Cincinnati Institute and follow-up consultation. We are committed to providing best-in-class professional learning experiences and take the feedback of our partners very seriously. Specifically, these outcomes include:
1. At least 90% of SC Institute participants describe the Institute as a valuable professional learning experience and are willing to recommend the Institute to a trusted peer in another organization.
2. At least 90% of SC Institute participants can directly apply their learnings into their day-to-day work.
Intermediate Outcomes – These outcomes focus on both the sustained engagement of our Strong Cincinnati Network partners beyond the initial Institute experience as well as the progress of our partners towards achieving strengths-based culture change.
Specifically, these outcomes include:
1. Maintain at least 60% SC Network engagement among all partners.
2. Partners in Year 1 or Year 2 of implementation are rated as “on track” towards key organizational culture change benchmarks.
Long-term Outcomes – These outcomes are focused on long-term growth goals and both measure sustainable culture change within partner organizations over time. Specifically, these outcomes include:
1. Partners in Year 3 and Year 4 of implementation are rated as “on track” towards key organizational culture change benchmarks.
2. Partners are consistently reporting better work relationships, increased work engagement, improved performance, and workplace wellbeing because of their experience with Strong Cincinnati.
Grant Evaluation Report:
Successes
Network Development – The development of our Network partners and their success has been proof that creating a strengths-based culture works - there are many qualitative stories of partners changing the way that they work because of the work that MA and Strong Cincinnati has done with them. About 30-40% of new cohort participants have been a result of recommendations by existing partners.
Digital Transformation- COVID shifted work forever; it also changed the way that MA works to develop and deliver our services. Initially, this was a significant barrier as we had previously delivered all sessions in-person only, but this shift led MA to make a fundamental shift in how we designed our work, delivered sessions, and recruited organizations. We went completely virtual for two years and, during that time, engaged 22 organizations. We also invested in a digital learning platform, Hub24, allowing for further distribution of our tools and work.
Content- In addition to transforming WHERE we engaged organizations, we had a fundamental shift in HOW we delivered engaging world-class content to participating organizations. We had to rethink what makes for an engaging session, how to leverage digital tools for learning and activities that encouraged participation, while still delivering on our promise of helping teams build strengths-based cultures
Challenges
Shifting work landscape - One of the biggest challenges seen over the last year has been the “great resignation” and the pandemic’s impact on the workforce of the nonprofits MA serves. While teams have experienced unprecedented circumstances, it has shifted the way people think about work, engage in the workplace, and how leaders lead. There was no blueprint for best practices in managing a change of this sort. The outcome of this has been a workforce in disarray with employees leaving jobs, leaders leaving organizations, and those who remain are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work. In some instances, organizations have single employees doing the jobs of 3-4 staff and they are exhausted ? this has had a significant impact on the wellbeing and engagement of people within the organizations MA serves. Leaders are leading teams that are simply overworked and burnt out, or leaders now find themselves in roles that they were ill-prepared to take on, creating an opportunity and need to provide coaching and resources for teams and leaders. This has negatively impacted many nonprofits because they lack the capacity to commit to this work because the teams are so overwhelmed by the demands of their day-to-day work.
Additional Notes
During the grant period, MA learned that the “Strong Cincinnati” naming was not as inclusive of our Greater Cincinnati region as originally intended and the name of the program has changed to capture that. In addition, based on nonprofit participant feedback, the SWS program has evolved beyond the Institute offering to provide participants flexible options that include the opportunity to deepen implementation. SWS now offers the following programs:
Strong Institute - provides participants with an introduction to strengths as well as tools and resources to activate their character strengths to build strong relationships and teams
Strong Leaders – provides emerging leaders through senior executives with the support to activate their strengths-based leadership styles
Strong Intensives – provides support to deepen strengths integration into past participants’ workplace culture through intensive sessions that build internal advocates and embed implementation strategies
Strong Consulting – provides customized long and short-term engagements that are tailored to an organization’s specific needs
Website:
http://www.mayersonacademy.org Amount: $25,000
Date: February 2022
