Professional Development

ImpactTulsa Revamps Training & Development Plan for Partners

Through a strategic planning process, ImpactTulsa had the opportunity to reassess the value and purpose of programming offered in alignment to our mission to “use data to drive systemic change through convening community sectors with the shared vision that all children in Tulsa deserve every opportunity to succeed.” Ultimately this provided us with space to re-align our training offerings to our theory of action and allowed us to more strategically assess which training made the most sense to offer to partners.

Ultimately, we offer training with the intention of bolstering partner capacity to engage in systems change work. In other words, we want to help support more people in our community to have the awareness, skills and connections to make changes that disrupt the disparities that Tulsa area families and students face related to cradle to career outcomes. 

We believe this takes building technical and adaptive skills in 4 distinct but related areas: equity, results count, continuous improvement and human-centered design.  These areas align to the Strive Together collaborative action framework. Thus over the next 12 months, we will be supporting training that falls into each of these categories. 

One thing that stayed constant throughout the process was the desire to not make assumptions about what our community needs and wants related to training that builds capacity for systems change. Thus, in January 2023, we opened our annual partner survey to guide our program selection. Individuals from over 50 partner organizations participated in the survey. We appreciate everyone who took time to participate as it helped not only prioritize training topics for this year, but also enlightened us on logistical needs as well.

ImpactTulsa believes heavily in collaboration thus we wanted to share key highlights from the survey feedback that may be beneficial to other local partners who offer training. Of the respondents who represented 51 unique organizations, participants indicated the following preferences.

We recognize that creating programming that is driven by community needs requires ongoing communication that centers on evolving needs and desires. Thus, if you did not get a chance to participate in the survey, but would like your organization’s needs to be factored into future training offerings, please feel free to complete this survey.

In addition to ongoing survey feedback, we also intend to meet with current and future partners to continue to stay in tune with evolving needs. We will also be intentional about including youth and parents training and development needs in the future as well. If you have any questions or ideas related to professional development that would help you and/or your team engage in disrupting systemic inequities, please feel free to contact us at info@impacttulsa.com.