It’s been a while since our last update, and we owe you a real one. There’s a lot to share, so starting now, we’ll be back every quarter with a full look at Forsyth Futures.
Forsyth Futures has spent years serving as a local research and data analysis resource for Forsyth County, and one of the biggest shifts in our work is the capacity we’re investing in Thriving Together. No organization can alone shift the conditions that shape people’s lives, and Thriving Together exists because Forsyth County needs a shared way to align that work across sectors.
Thriving Together organizes its efforts around the Seven Vital Conditions—the building blocks of a community where everyone can thrive—and the long-term vision is for each vital condition to have its own network of residents, organizations, and systems leaders, supported by robust engagement and community feedback loops that help identify shared priorities and new opportunities to work together, and a dashboard tracking the data that matters most to transforming systems to deliver the conditions for thriving.
We’re one of three backbone organizations supporting Thriving Together, alongside Action4Equity and Love Out Loud. Forsyth Futures supports the shared data, research, and communications work across Thriving Together while also serving as a backbone organization for two of its vital condition networks: Forsyth Family Power, which works to improve quality of life outcomes for children and youth and their families, and the Forsyth County Humane Housing Network, which focuses on fostering humane housing for all across the county. Our role spans facilitation and technical assistance for network partners, operational support grounded in systems change frameworks from national partners, and communications that translate data into accessible, actionable information; build shared narrative and storytelling; and share knowledge and public-facing content that connects the work happening across the ecosystem, including Our Common Thread, to the people it’s meant to serve.
For the Forsyth County Humane Housing Network, we’ve been helping build the network itself, bringing residents, organizations, and leaders together around Forsyth County’s housing crisis. We’re in the process of planning a data dashboard, with a goal of having pilot dashboard data in Novemeber, that will serve as the measurement layer for the network’s Community Snapshot + Action Guide, a framework shaped through open sessions, network meetings, working groups, and feedback gathered from across the county to reflect both lived experience and on-the-ground realities. That work is helping the network move from shared understanding toward coordinated, county-wide action. Forsyth Futures also holds communications support for the network, and we’re in the early stages of standing up a communications working group to help carry that work forward collaboratively across network partners.
Forsyth Family Power’s work is also grounded in learning from national partners, such as StriveTogether and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, about the foundational approaches that have helped build effective systems-change infrastructure in other communities. That learning is guiding us through past collective impact and systems change efforts, helping us understand the major themes in what communities have said they need from their systems and what they dream for the future. Those learnings are informing an effort to collaboratively establish a common agenda and shared vision to guide FFP’s long-term systems change work, building a foundation that everyone can see themselves in and that makes systems work visible, so we can identify shared priorities and new opportunities to deliver better outcomes for children and youth. Our North Star is working across the Whole Child Continuum, from Kindergarten Readiness and Early Grade Reading through Postsecondary Enrollment and Engagement to Employment, to put more Forsyth County children and youth than ever on a path toward economic mobility.
Alongside that, the Data Sharing Project (DSP) has formally joined Forsyth Futures. DSP is a long-standing partnership with Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools and United Way. It provides secure access to academic, attendance, and demographic data for 14 community partner organizations, helping them deliver more targeted support to the students they serve. DSP staff also help those programs build continuous quality improvement plans and understand what’s actually working. Those lessons can then be shared across programs, helping multiple organizations align around common strategies rather than each figuring it out alone. Bringing the DSP team fully into Forsyth Futures lets us lean further into that shared learning model.
Together, these efforts are helping to build a stronger foundation for shared learning, coordinated action, and better decision-making across Forsyth County, one that depends on real community feedback loops to guide strategic direction, ensure transparency, and keep us accountable to the people we serve. What gets measured, how it’s interpreted, and who gets to define the questions all reflect power, and data has too often been extracted from communities rather than built in relationship with them. The stronger Thriving Together’s work becomes through our support, and now through DSP, the more capacity we have to advance that mission. Data and research as a community resource can only truly drive change when they’re democratized, accessible, responsive, and accountable to the communities they’re meant to serve.
If your organization has data, research, or evaluation needs, whether it’s a single request or an ongoing partnership, we’d love to hear from you. And if you want more frequent updates on the work happening across Thriving Together in your inbox, subscribe to Our Common Thread for regular content.