Meaningful, sustained change starts with strategy shaped alongside the people and communities most affected by it.
As the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund continues its strategic evolution, our Dream & Build sessions offered an opportunity to listen, reflect, and imagine what our shared future could look like. We are deeply grateful to the partners, community leaders, young people, and collaborators who shared their experiences, challenged our thinking, and helped us explore new possibilities together.
Through four in-person sessions in Hartford, Bridgeport, Hamden, and Waterbury, and a virtual session with youth, we heard perspectives that are helping shape the Fund’s next chapter. Combined with insights from interviews, focus groups, and surveys, these conversations reinforced several important themes:
- Grounding strategy in lived experience. The perspectives of those closest to the issues must inform our understanding of the challenges and opportunities ahead.
- Resourcing community power and movement building. Lasting systems change requires sustained investment in the people and movements working to advance it.
- Strengthening organizing and leadership. Community organizing, leadership development, and long-term support are essential to building collective power.
- Expanding beyond grantmaking. The Fund can draw on its full range of resources and influence to co-create solutions alongside communities and partners.
- Building community-controlled infrastructure. Communities need the resources, relationships, and infrastructure to determine their own priorities and shape their futures.
Watch: Dream & Build in Action
Our new video captures the spirit of this inclusive approach to strategy evolution, offering a glimpse into the reflection, storytelling, connection, and creativity that participants brought to the sessions.
Watch the Dream & Build video on YouTube
Looking Ahead
These insights are informing the Fund’s ongoing work to refine its Theory of Change and identify the pathways and activities where we can be most effective in advancing equity in education. They also reaffirm our commitment to moving forward in ways that are community-informed and community-powered.
Just as important, the sessions reinforced that how we do this work matters. We aim to move with courage, curiosity, accountability, and care, working in partnership with communities and others toward meaningful, lasting change.
Our staff and trustees are continuing this work, and we look forward to sharing more about the Fund’s evolving strategy soon.