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Promise Neighborhoods

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Overview

The Promise Neighborhoods program is a place-based approach focused on addressing generational family and community poverty by ensuring quality educational opportunities and providing a range of supports for children, youth, families, and communities. 

The program provides examples of interagency collaboration at the federal level, intra-agency collaboration within the Department of Education, and local level collaborations at grantee sites across the country.  

The collaboration structure includes the following elements:

   Federal level—

  • Coordinated efforts across Department of Education programs
  • Coordinated efforts across federal agencies and involvement in the White House Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative (NRI)
  • Coordinated technical assistance support for grantees

    Local level—

  • Established partnerships with a range of entities
  • Multiple levels of management, including a project director and advisory board
  • Funding from public, private, and federal sources
  • Tracking progress through longitudinal databases and other mechanisms

Promising practices include the following:

   Federal level—

  • Modeling other federal level collaborations
  • Building on past experience with federal level collaboration
  • Integrating Promise Neighborhoods work with other federal initiatives
  • Having multiple mechanisms for ongoing and regular communication
  • Reliance on data to assess the success of the work

    Local level—

  • Involving the communities in planning and implementation
  • Conducting a needs assessment to understand the context of communities
  • Putting a plan in place before implementation

Promise Neighborhoods programs have faced challenges at the federal and local level and learned the following lessons:

  • Recognition of complex and varied work is essential for managing multiple unique grantees.
  • Development of a longitudinal data system and sharing data can pose a challenge.
  • Communities need support to create sustained financial resources, community engagement, and partnerships.

Learn about the collaboration's accomplishments and see additional resources for more information about the Promise Neighborhoods program.