Many are fighting for a future when our nation enables the economic well-being, power, and dignity of all its people, especially those who have historically been excluded from prosperity.
These efforts are changing lives every day, but they are not always well-coordinated across different sectors, policy challenges, or levels of government. This fragmentation limits the economic mobility field’s collective capacity to seize opportunities and effectively respond to new threats.
A Mobility Alliance could solve this problem by
- convening organizational leaders to learn from one another and set shared goals,
- providing capital and other resources to enable organizations to pilot new strategies and drive systems change in communities, and
- sharing actionable tools and promising innovations through regional and national networks to help strengthen and spur new relationships among leaders in the field.
Developing a Strategy for Strengthening the Field
Over 18 months, a steering committee representing the diversity of the economic mobility field crafted a strategy that
- addresses persistent coordination gaps,
- centers the priorities of leaders working in communities, and
- works toward lasting systems change.
What is a field, and how is it built?
In the context of social change, a field can be defined as the people and organizations working to solve a problem or overcome a challenge. Field building offers activities and investments that enable those actors to design and pursue a shared agenda, ultimately strengthening their collective capacity to achieve impact at scale.
Steering committee members developed a shared vision, guiding principles, and theory of action for strengthening the economic mobility field. They then funded a portfolio of “build & learn” pilot projects to test and refine their strategy.
This deeply collaborative process produced the blueprint for a Mobility Alliance ready to be advanced by a dedicated group of practitioners.
Looking to the Future
With modest resources, organizational leaders committed to economic mobility could launch a Mobility Alliance—and ultimately accelerate progress toward an America that enables the economic well-being, power, and dignity of all its people.
Read the blueprint and explore the pilot projects to learn more about this new approach to field building.
Learn More
Explore the purpose and principles guiding this work.
