Community Catalyst Partners

is Community Driven

About CCP

With deep roots in establishing programs that address equity and ignite sustainable outcomes for all students in communities across the nation, Community Catalyst Partners (CCP) exists to develop the talents of young people from pre-kindergarten through the completion of a postsecondary credential of market value. The organization works with the cities, counties, and school districts in a community to galvanize and organize an array of local partners around an overarching goal that leads to increasing postsecondary completion rates for its young people and enhanced economic growth for its region. In the process, local partners create a movement intent on fundamentally changing expectations about student success at the postsecondary level.

CCP’s Theory of Action

Embedded in its approach, CCP implements fundamental strategies to enable whole communities to develop and subscribe to an overarching goal designed to impact the economic health of its region. Along the way, plans are implemented to help those communities be able to establish efforts to ensure every public school student who wishes to attend a two or four-year college, or a postsecondary vocational program, will have the support and wherewithal to achieve that dream.

CCP’s approach includes the following phases that are customized and uniquely developed to meet the needs of the communities in which it serves:

Understanding Community Context

CCP works with entire communities to understand the current economic and school-based (preK-12 and higher ed) conditions that exist and develop strategies designed to galvanize the community around its goal.

Systems and Structures

CCP works to identify and develop key leadership, facilitate planning and support, utilize data and analytics to understand funding streams and resource allocation,  and to build the systems and structures needed for the sustainable implementation of goal-focused plans.

Programming and Support

CCP facilitates the development of plans, services and supports designed to be implemented over a 3-5 year period to help the community launch and ultimately attain its goal.

The results of those efforts are stronger community and organizational coherence, braided funding and effective resource utilization that leads to improved economic conditions and outcomes for young people, students and families.

Creating Improved Outcomes for Young People & Families

CCP partners also provide services more commonly described as integrated supports, beginning before kindergarten and continuing through college. These include expanded-learning programming, enhanced medical care, counseling and legal assistance, all of which are made available at or close to school sites.

In many communities, the supports students receive from CCP partners include scholarships to any public universities, which are financed largely through local fundraising (after Pell Grants and other outside aid have been taken into account). That tuition assistance is available to public high school graduates in CCP communities regardless of family income.

For those communities and districts seeking to make a college-bound culture a community-wide priority, we offer facilitation support in four areas that we consider critical. They are:

The Convening of a Common Table

around which every municipal and community partner can come together on a regular basis to strategize various facets of a comprehensive, coordinated system of supports, and to chart its progress, in a spirit of consensus.

The installation of New Data Systems

that crisscross community-based agencies, enabling schools and partners alike to track student performance across an array of benchmarks for college readiness.

The Adoption of Creative Funding Strategies

that leverage financial resources from a variety of sources – such as from city and county budgets, as well as those from the district and community organizations –to make possible the delivery of comprehensive scholarships and a broader set of academic, social, and health supports than might otherwise be possible.

The fostering of a new approach, at the school level, to engaging teachers, counselors and others

on questions of what a community might do to best prepare its students to get to post-secondary institutions, and succeed once there. This work utilizes leadership development programming focusing on students, educators, and administrators.