The Promise Neighborhoods Institute at PolicyLink (PNI) combines the leadership of PolicyLink, the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ), and the Center for the Study of Social Policy in order to provide resources and guidance to build and sustain burgeoning Promise Neighborhoods.

Inspired by the Harlem Children’s Zone, the U.S. Department of Education’s federal Promise Neighborhoods program is a bold initiative to break the cycle of generational poverty by wrapping children in a seamless pipeline of health, social, and educational supports from birth through college and career.

In November, 2009, HCZ, PolicyLink, and The Center for the Study of Social Policy, with contributions by Child Trends, created a framing document, “Focusing on Results in Promise Neighborhoods: Recommendations for the Federal Initiative” as a discussion paper with a singular message: that the central focus of Promise Neighborhoods should be on achieving a core set of results for poor children and families; and that success for individual sites, as well as for the overall initiative, will require that these results drive planning and design, start‐up activities, program implementation, and evaluation. This document helped to spark discussion of the importance of a strong results focus in Promise Neighborhoods and proved to be helpful to the development of the federal initiative.

See the library for additional resources, ranging from materials to assist in getting results to those geared to build organizational capacity. 

Results matter. A central focus of Promise Neighborhoods — and championed by the Institute, partners, and stakeholders — has been on achieving a core set of results to improve the lives of poor children and families. Success for individual sites, as well as for the overall initiative, requires that these results drive planning and design, start‐up activities, program implementation, and evaluation.

• Multiple stakeholders can focus on common goals and aspirations that bridge diverse constituencies and points of view; collaborate across professional and political boundaries; mobilize joint action; and sustain their efforts over time.
• Data and information (1) let local stakeholders know how and whether the initiatives are making a difference for children, families, and communities; and (2) make policymakers — and public and private funders — more willing to invest.
• A comparison of progress among interventions, over time, and among sites, make it possible to select the programs and strategies that are most likely to produce positive outcomes in a specific context.
• Local initiatives can identify and characterize the populations that need to be reached and served in order to achieve, ultimately, community‐wide and population‐level changes for children.

See Collective Impact in Action: Improving Results for Children from Cradle to career, How the Promise Neighborhoods Movement Achieves Collective Impact.

The Promise Neighborhoods Institute at PolicyLink (PNI) assists Promise Neighborhoods in connecting local resources to wrap children in education, health, and social supports from the cradle-to-college-to-career; and serves as a link to federal, public, and private investors. PNI also provides Promise Neighborhoods' communities with leadership and management coaching, communications strategy, and other resources that support their efforts to ensure that children and their families can live in communities of opportunity.

Inspired by the Harlem Children’s Zone, the U.S. Department of Education’s federal Promise Neighborhoods program is a bold initiative to break the cycle of generational poverty by wrapping children in a pipeline of health, social, and educational supports from birth through college.

PNI provides resources to all communities, whether or not they have been awarded a federal grant, including technical support for planning, identifying quality approaches, building partnerships, assessing needs, and many more essentials for successfully building a cradle-to-career pipeline.

Activities include:

• managing a hub of high-quality technical assistance providers to help communities become Promise Neighborhoods;
• advocating on behalf of children and families for increased support from federal legislators;
• developing, supporting, and advancing equitable policy strategies; and
• communicating the Promise Neighborhoods vision, mission, and strategies to a wide array of participants, nationally and internationally.

• Michael McAfee,  President at PolicyLink, began his service at PolicyLink in 2011. Under his leadership, PolicyLink has emerged as a national leader in building cradle-to-career systems that are ensuring that all children and youth in America have a pathway into the middle class. Central to this equitable systems-change are communities of opportunity, where all children can grow up with access to great schools and strong systems of family and community supports that prepare them to attain an excellent education and successfully transition to college and/or a career. As Vice President for Programs, Michael joins the Executive Team and Program Teams in strategic planning, policy development, policy campaign strategy, and programmatic design and implementation at the local, state, and national levels.
   

• Lisa Cylar Barrett, Managing Director of Federal Policy at PolicyLink, collaborates with other PolicyLink staff to develop and execute federal policy and advocacy strategies to advance economic and social equity. Her work focuses on improving access and opportunity for everyone, especially people in low-income communities and communities of color. Additionally, as Co-Director of Promise Neighborhoods Institute (PNI), Lisa leads and manages PNI’s policy efforts to sustain and advance Promise Neighborhoods, manages its relationships with other stakeholder organizations, and manages the day-to-day operations of PNI. Having worked in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, Lisa has significant experience developing and implementing policy agendas and strategies to influence policymakers, funders, civic leaders, and government officials to align their work in an effort to improve outcomes for children and families. A lawyer by training, Lisa practiced law prior to beginning her career in the philanthropic sector. She holds a BA in English from Spelman College and a JD from Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
   

• Jessica Pizarek, Senior Associate provides technical assistance to communities across the country seeking to plan, operationalize, and sustain cradle-to-career systems of supports for all children and families. In addition, she specifically supports the development and management of sustainability efforts for the national Promise Neighborhoods network.  Prior to joining PolicyLink, Jessica worked with Step Up Savannah, a 100-partner collaborative focused on improving economic mobility and financial stability for all families in Savannah, Georgia where she facilitated interagency collaboration and supported the development of equitable local and state policy agendas. Jessica has also supported the City of New York’s Housing and Neighborhood Study of the educational outcomes of children living in mixed-income public housing, the Forgotten Navajo People Community Development Corporation, and UC Berkeley’s 2048 Project.  Jessica earned a bachelor’s degree in Social Welfare from the University of California, Berkeley and a master’s degree in Education Policy & Social Analysis from Teachers College, Columbia University. 

The work of the Promise Neighborhoods Institute is made possible by the generous support of:

• The Annie E. Casey Foundation
• The Appleton Foundation
• The Atlantic Philanthropies
• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• The California Endowment
• Citi Foundation
• Ford Foundation
• George Kaiser Family Foundation
• JP Morgan Chase
• Open Society Foundations
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• Walmart
• W. K. Kellogg Foundation

If you're interested in supporting our work, please see For Funders page.

• The Promise Neighborhoods Institute has been amazing to work with. They’ve provided us with not only technical assistance — brainpower, thinking through how do you actually implement the strategy, how do you think about moving community-level needles, how do you use data — from that really theoretical piece to the nitty-gritty, on-the-ground providing tools. Actual meaningful tools like ETO and the Promise Scorecard so we don’t have to start from scratch and re-invent the wheel.
  
  Agnes Chiao, Vice President, Collective Impact, United Way of Salt Lake
  Promise South Salt Lake, South Salt Lake, UT
   

• [PNI] has helped in every way — capacity-building, data, delivery of services, managing the entire program.
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  Blandina Rose, Program Director, Promise, Black Family Development
  Detroit Promise Neighborhood, Detroit, MI
   
• “[PNI has] been invaluable. Going back to when we were applying for the planning grant in 2010, I really don’t think we could have done it without the national TA support and being part of the PNI network. [PNI] has really been critical, and I wish other federal initiatives had that level of TA support because it’s been fantastic.”
  
  Dixon Slingerland, Executive Director, Youth Policy Institute
  Los Angeles Promise Neighborhood, Los Angeles, CA
   
• “Coming here has accelerated our work. Where we’re at now we probably wouldn’t have been at in five years. We talk about leadership — without the Promise Neighborhood convening, without STAR leadership, without other Promise Neighborhoods Institute pieces, having TA assistance, we would still be stuck in idea mode, and now we’re in implementation mode.”
  
  Jaimee Bohning, Education Director
  Northside Achievement Zone, Minneapolis, MN
   
• “You’re trying to change lives, change communities for the better. Sometimes you feel like you’re on an island by yourself. What the Institute does is brings us together to let us know that we’re not alone…and it gives us hope. That’s the great thing about the Institute: it imparts hope."
  
  Lisa Manning, Project Manager, Self Enhancement Inc.
  Portland, OR Promise Neighborhood
   

• “Being part of a community of practice that is really spearheading an entire movement for creating better opportunities for children across the country is an extremely important piece to how we need to do our work…It is very difficult work. Sometimes it’s easy to get discouraged and so to be able to be in a collaborative community with other people who are doing similar work, facing similar challenges, but also sharing similar success…is very meaningful.”

  Sonya Pryor-Jones, Director
  Cleveland Promise Neighborhood, Cleveland, OH

• “A lot of times when you do this type of work, you think you’re out there all by yourself, you think you’re alone, but the PNI has really brought us all together to help us understand the work that we’re doing really makes a difference not only in our own communities but across the nation.”
  Tony Leverett, Director
  Eastside Promise Neighborhood, San Antonio, TX

• “Establishing that national support system has been really helpful, especially for somebody like myself that is on the younger side and not as experienced as many of the other great people who are a part of this work. It’s an opportunity for me to learn directly from them.”
  
  Victor Corral, Project Manager
  Mission Promise Neighborhood, San Francisco, CA

• “As part of our community of practice with the Promise Neighborhoods Institute we have been offered some incredible opportunities to practice adaptive leadership, to practice results-based leadership, and it has really driven the work that we’re doing in Hayward Promise Neighborhood. We have really embraced Results-Based Accountability. It has really focused us, it has focused our work…and it’s really making us more responsive to the results and indicators that we’re working with to achieve our results.”
  
  Melinda Hall, Project Manager
  Hayward Promise Neighborhood, Hayward, CA