Promise Neighborhood; Backbone Agency

The contract is for a Backbone Agency to support the Promise Neighborhoods Initiative, a collaborative effort to improve educational outcomes for children of color in Multnomah County. The agency will provide convening, facilitating, communication, evaluation, and administrative support services to the collaborative. The contract has a total value of $80,440 for fiscal year 2020, and the vendor will be responsible for leveraging additional funding to support the initiative. The key services to be provided include: • Convening: serving as a neutral convener for the collaborative, facilitating effective dialogues, and mediating conflicts among stakeholders. • Facilitation: providing expert facilitation in leading the collaborative, achieving alignment and system-level indicators, and guiding the work in the community. • Communications: establishing structures for regular communication within the initiative and with community leaders, and designing and producing marketing and PR materials to share the collaborative learnings and best practices. • Resource Development and Leveraging: developing a plan to generate ongoing funding support for the systems change effort and delivery of services, and leveraging additional funding to support the work. • Contract Development and Management: negotiating, developing, and managing contracts with direct service provider organizations, including monitoring contract performance. The contract also requires the vendor to provide data collection and evaluation services, including developing a shared measurement system to track common outcomes and indicators across the initiative, and using results to inform learning and continuous improvement.