Policy & Practice | February 2022

from the field By Justin B. Brown

Serving Our State Together: Investing in Community Collaboration

T wo years ago, the Oklahoma Human Services (OKDHS) embarked upon a process called

“Finding our True North” in an effort to define the foundational philoso phies that will drive our work over the coming decade. Each program division built their True North philosophies and the executive leadership team devel oped nine agency-wide True North priorities that allowed the team to focus attention and limited resources on the work of the entire agency. Executive Leadership True North Priority 2 plants a stake in the ground driving the team to “remove systemic barriers that keep our families from being successful by meeting our cus tomers where they are to provide needed resources in a more effec tive manner.” Executive Leadership True North Priority 8 is to “move the agency to a space of prevention, going ‘upstream’ to build a system that supports families with services and resources before they are in crisis.” With those in mind, Oklahoma began to think about the best way to meaningfully deploy the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) carryover dollars that, like many states, had begun to accumulate over the last few years. I immediately saw this as an incredible opportunity for innovation and collaboration and asked our team how we could design a process that would provide transfor mational pathways of hope for families in our state while we partnered with community foundations and nonprofits with aligning interests. Simply put, the answer was to invest in nonprofit organizations that had

collaboration. We have been deliberate in our approach to come alongside the community, ask for feedback, and then listen to their needs. We under stand solving a problem as complex as poverty will take all state agencies, nonprofits, and faith-based organiza tions working together, and the agency was eager to leverage the relationships we had been building to create a sup portive strategy. The agency defined six priority areas that tied back to the four federally

a track record of results, community trust, and aligned missions. That statement by itself does not seem earth shattering. TANF dollars are among the most flexible funds avail able to states and many states have used those dollars to support nonprofit programs with shared populations. However, building a coordinated, strategic approach that was designed to leverage public–private partner ships to help the nonprofit sector build capacity to expand and innovate was new territory. The OKDHS has spent the last several years building a culture of

See Collaboration on page 22

Photo Illustration by Chris Campbell/Shutterstock

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Policy&Practice February 2022