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"At the moment of launch, you want to clearly communicate that the train has left the station.  People think, 'I'd better get on it!'" 

- Becky Margiotta, Campaign Director

Campaign Launch

The campaign started before it was officially launched.  The team had recruited 34 communities that had already housed approximately 5,500 people.  This was ideal from McCannon's perspective:  "It was exactly what an initiative should be, a few months in strategic contemplation and then just get going and learn as you go. By having those short-term pre-launch goals, we snapped into action and became sort of this juggernaut and it just kind of snowballed."

Joe McCannon Shares His Thoughts on Strategy (2:13)

The early results gave McCannon confidence that the campaign could meet its objective: “if you did the math and extrapolated, that's 5,500, so how many communities would we need to get to 100,000?  You got a sense that it might be within reach.”

McCannon was very intentional in orchestrating the official launch, working backward from what the team imagined to be the most stupendous launch possible: having all of the national homelessness organizations on a stage together as well as representatives from the communities that were already succeeding.  

Standing on Stage Together

An impressive list of organizations participated in the launch event. Haggerty recalled, "This is a group of people representing different constituencies who probably have never been on a stage before but all have some core to their work around the issue of homelessness."  Participants included:

• National Alliance for Mentally Ill (NAMI)
  
• International Downtown Association
  
• United Way Worldwide
  
• The Corporation for Supportive Housing
  

Although many of the organizations present at the launch were not actively involved in the campaign, simply having their endorsements provided validation and helped attract partner communities.  Part of the transformation was that such a wide coalition was supporting this effort which, according to Haggerty, "also became a chance to really look at the variety of ways homelessness affects the community."

Photos of the Campaign Launch

Campaign Launch Flier:  Partners and Enrolled Communities (click for full view)

Having early adopters as well as a broad coalition of advocates proved to be essential. Once the campaign was launched, some target communities were hesitant to join.  According to Sandor, it was the group of early adopters that often helped convince them: "'We’re doing this and this is what we are learning. It works. Come do this!'  There was a lot of buying in that happened through leveraging those early adopters to join the campaign and get on board."  

Margiotta and Sandor began actively recruiting communities with 1000 or more chronically homeless and vulnerable people.  However, any community that completed an online application and was willing to mobilize volunteers to conduct a Registry Week was eligible to join.  For some communities, the Registry Week was a sufficient catalyst to increase the number of people receiving permanent housing. Other communities struggled and needed additional help.   

In 2011, Community Solutions and IHI developed the first Boot Camps.  Beginning with Los Angeles and New York, they were offered to the communities with the highest number of chronically homeless and vulnerable people.  

Santa Monica: Street to Home Process Map

Campaign members partnered with local leaders and organizations to map out processes for placing eligible individuals into permanent housing. They drew out what their ideal process would be as well as a middle ground for how they could create streamlined processes within existing rules and regulations.

For other communities, the campaign was an open-source resource that offered toolkits and successful practices that they could implement themselves. Sandor summarized, “that segmentation is really how we strategized around the types of support we gave…we put our biggest bet on the largest communities.”

DIY Boot Camp

Although many communities wanted Boot Camps, the Campaign did not have the resources to run it for everyone.   Sandor helped create a "Do-It-Yourself" version in which the Campaign provided pieces of the curriculum and agenda so that communities "could take it and run with it."  One of the leaders in Philadelphia said, "Hey, can I take what we did here and can I go do it for one of the communities in Pennsylvania that you guys will never get to?" And we said "Sure, go ahead. Go do that!”

Becky Margiotta, Campaign Director

Unleashing Innovation and Adaptation

The adoption of Boot Camps went further than Margiotta and Sandor had ever expected. Margiotta recounted her reaction when a community in Hawaii took initiative around Boot Camp:  "So when I first found out that Hawaii had adapted [Boot Camp] without our approval, I felt scared.  It's almost like I had done something wrong because I had lost control." 

Margiotta described the adaptation of Boot Camp as an unleashing. "This  unleashing, it's a paradox, because most of what we're taught in the management literature is leftover stuff from factories, it's how to control people, right? And the truth is, [when you lose control], that's when you are actually beginning to do something right."

Lean into the Data

An important part of Boot Camp was helping people use their data effectively. Sandor explained, "The focus was on helping people lean into the data that they had and their current performance to set very ambitious goals.  We then mapped out some key changes they could make in 100 days that would get them to those goals."