Strategic Advantage

Strategic Advantage - Recent Work

VisionLink’s Strategic Advantage Department is driven by two guiding principles:

Maximize impact with well designed and highly structured strategic planning Academies built around carefully articulated objectives, specifically trained facilitators, field leading content experts, and high value leadership teams from participating organizations.

Leverage and maximize resources (both human and financial) within multi-agency, multi-sector, collaborations turning high-stakes conversations into strategic consensus, on-going capacity building, communities of practice and measurable results.

This model, created and refined through more than 100 Institutes, Academies and Summits under the leadership of Lois Ann Porter, has proven highly effective in the education, workforce development, social and human services and disaster relief sectors. A small team at VisionLink convenes the proper expertise for each specific effort, and scales support and staffing as appropriate.

Examples of Recent Work

Complete College America
HCM Strategists
Global Health Gifts-in-Kind Network
United Way Bay Area - SparkPoint Framework and Toolkit
Greater Halifax Partnership
United Way Bay Area - Community Impact Strategic Implementation

Complete College America

In an effort to increase college completion rates across the US, Complete College America (CCA) engaged VisionLink to design, coordinate and implement a series of national planning events called Completion Academies. Completion Academies are intensive, professionally facilitated two-day strategic planning sessions providing powerful support to states (24 states) as they seek to improve college completion at a statewide level. Beyond the national Academies for state teams, VisionLink has created a State Academy Tool Kit, and is providing overall coordination and assistance to five states hosting their own state-specific Completion Academies. The Tennessee College Completion Academy was so successful that it has now expanded to at least four colleges (community college and 4-year) which are planning to replicate the Completion Academy at the campus level.

HCM Strategists

HCM Strategists engaged VisionLink to assist in the design, planning, tools and implementation of the 2010 Lumina Foundation National Productivity Conference (NPC). We were engaged to bring depth to an established conference by applying team-centered planning, tools, trained facilitators and content experts to the NPC. The process and tools (framework and self-assessment) used for the NPC were created by VisionLink, and are the foundation for deeper work within eight grantee states.

Global Health Gifts-in-Kind Network

(for the Partnership for Quality Medical Donations and the World Economic Forum 2010)

In response to the increasing demand for better coordination of global health gifts-in-kind response to international disasters, the World Economic Forum, the Partnership for Quality Medical Donations, and Virginia Tech’s Institute for Policy and Governance convened a meeting to identify opportunities and define solutions. Participants in the meeting included representatives from the private sector (Johnson & Johnson, BD, and Henry Schein), the NGO sector (United Nations’ OCHA, HPIC, MTI, and WEF), non- profit associations (PQMD and ACCP), and the academic sector (Virginia Tech Institute for Policy & Governance). With VisionLink’s design and facilitation, the meeting resulted in concrete direction for the future of the Network, consensus on a mandate, and next steps in three areas of focus, including a summit to create a Community of Practice of field representatives in Haiti marking the 6-month anniversary of the 2010 earthquake. VisionLink designed and facilitated the Haiti summit which resulted in a community of practice for field representatives and NGO partners working on the ground in Haiti. There were both short- and long-term outcomes to the summit that have maximized the NGO and private sector resources in Haiti.

United Way Bay Area - SparkPoint Framework and Toolkit

As a cornerstone to their commitment to financial stability for Bay Area residents, the UWBA launched a SparkPoint Center in each of seven surrounding counties. The UWBA selected VisionLink to develop the SparkPoint Framework and Tool Kit and used these to guide and support the implementation and replication of SparkPoint Centers across the region. VisionLink also provided strategic facilitation to the Community Investment Team regarding the roll---out of SparkPoint.

Greater Halifax Partnership

Halifax, Nova Scotia, working to build an integrated social services and workforce system, engaged VisionLink to help plan and facilitate three regional convenings among non-profit service providers, local government, private sector and community college leaders to better prepare the Halifax region’s young adults ages 18 - 25 for success.

United Way Bay Area - Community Impact Strategic Implementation

The United Way Bay Area selected VisionLink to help communicate and solicit feedback across the seven counties surrounding the San Francisco Bay. By planning county---wide events, establishing protocols for focus groups, developing messaging for events, training facilitators and determining the follow---up, VisionLink played a key role in providing the vehicle for the UWBA Board of Directors to communicate a strategic vision and solicit feedback from multiple constituencies across the Bay Area Region.