Introduction

The purpose of this page is to give you a sense of what kind of interactions we had with the Network, and how we evaluated and incorporated sentiments into the report

Process Overview

This information is pulled from our participatory platform pilot of Decidim

Opening Phase

2019-2020

This work began formally in the fall of 2019, when the National Advisory Council (NAC) and Code for America Network team staff came together to name key questions at the core of present challenges and future possibilities in our work together. This spurred dedicated work on identifying our national Network’s “Theory of Change”. In summer of 2020, we launched several open discussions, forums, workshops, polls, surveys, and more to get input from Brigade Network participants on how their Brigade achieves change, what we’re good at, what we’re not good at, and where we want to go. We received hundreds of responses from volunteers and Network members across the country.

Inputs to the opening phase were:

• Presentation to NAC in August 2020, forming subcommittee to drive the work forward

• Workshop in September formally kicking off Theory of Change work with our Network (brigade leaders & members invited)

• Pol.is distributed to gather ideas related to brigade change-making and test for energy/alignment on those ideas.

• Theory of Change Session at Brigade Congress

• Leadership team engagement

• Hattaway narrative survey feedback from network members

• 2019 Network deep dive (Meredith’s listening tour)

• NAC July FunRetro (what’s working, what’s not)

• Network mission statement & core activities (drafted by NAC in 2019)

• Memo pulling out key theories of change from Open & the Network Senior Program Director (SPD)’s current understanding of and experience with the Network

• Organizing team review & discussion of the memo

• Office hours with CxO on LT to review memo

Narrowing Phase

Early 2021-July 2021

The Theory of Change committee (led by NAC members and the Network Senior Program Director), organized and synthesized inputs from the opening phase to develop several paths forward. What emerged were a handful of distinct potential pathways for the Network’s future. The committee shared these potential pathways with Code for America leadership for initial feedback.

In this phase, the working groups create a structure and plan for reaching out to Brigades who have not yet engaged in ReVisioning, creating opportunities for peer to peer feedback, forums, and other methods of engagement. The working group also analyzes existing feedback and data from the opening phase of the work to distill key themes and identify missing stakeholder input.

Key inputs to this phase are:

• Peer interviews with over 40 participants in the Network representing 32 Brigades

• Five open forums with over 50 different participants

• Analyzation of over 700 records from surveys and forums

Closing Phase

August 2021

In this phase, the Network ReVisioning Spokes Council (External link) and Network Team (External link) finalize the recommendation report. That recommendation report is presented to the Code for America CxO (executive team) and Senior Program Director Meredith Horowski. CxO and the Senior Program Director make a final decision based on these recommendations.

This is an iterative process; we see the report as a living and breathing work in progress, even as it's been presented to key stakeholders.

Implementation Phase

September 2021-December 2021

This is the phase where the organizational changes decided in the Closing phase of the work are then incorporated into the organization and its work. This might look like making changes to hiring, internal processes, finance and fundraising, and many other shifts. We expect that this implementation phase will involve key stakeholders, including Brigade leaders and members, in open sessions along the way.

How to view and understand our data process

This serves as a guide to connect you with the rest of the supplemental data materials:

• Outreach methods and limitations describe the key inputs to our Narrowing phase of the work - as well as limitations to our data analysis.
• Our peer to peer team created an extensive report detailing key findings from direct conversations throughout the Narrowing phase of this process.
• Data methodology is a description of how data was analyzed and synthesized.
• The data process guide was used by data volunteers to help tag the data. This may not be as useful for understanding the data as a whole, but provides valuable documentation of lessons and learnings from our Network.
• To accompany our data process guide, you can view the qualitative codebook our data team used.
• To look at what kind of responses we analyzed, you can view the anonymized data set.