What happens when a collaboration of 30 organizations, representing 55 people work together to create a digital platform for parents of children, pre-birth to 6 years of age? 

Successful outcomes for children.

The Early Years Coalition in Marathon County, Wisconsin, recently launched a new website, called Raise Great Kids.  Raise Great Kids is a result of a community working together to develop a digital platform that will become the go-to resource for parents, caregivers, and providers of children, pre-birth to 6 years of age. 

“There is a wealth of information out there about raising kids, but there isn’t one place that parents and others can go to receive that information,” explains Christine Ellis, Collaborative Associate for Marathon County United Way and Project Manager for Raise Great Kids. We needed a way to connect early age service providers, such as those in the medical, childcare, education, and home visitor professions, to parents that are raising kids here in Marathon County.

In the true spirit of collaboration, the Early Years Coalition hired a team of marketing, website design and development, writing and video professionals to work together to bring their vision to fruition. I led the website design and development on behalf of TMA+Peritus. Mary Ellen Marnholtz, with Words to Wake the World and Susan Reetz, from Rucinski and Reetz, led the writing, video scripting and video direction, and Colleen Parquette, from Shadow Collaborative, produced and edited the videos.

The secret to a team of communications firms working well together is to keep the best interests of the client and their audiences in mind throughout the process. Start by having all stakeholders agree on goals and objectives, target audiences, what successful outcomes look like, and how success will be measured. Be sure that roles are clear and ask each organization to contribute ideas, to problem solve together and to go above and beyond their assigned tasks, which creates a culture of shared responsibility and shared success .  Use collaborative tools such as Google Drive, Dropbox and Skype to facilitate sharing and remote communication.  Schedule regular team meetings and use the meetings to generate ideas and solve problems while keeping everyone on the same page.

Creating the website was only the beginning.  With a digital platform such as this, the collaboration doesn’t stop once the website is built. With 30 local organizations involved with Raise Great Kids, the people within these organizations must work together on writing and actively developing new content for the website. And that requires coordination and commitment as well.

Ellis adds, “Our first step was to create the digital platform. Our vision and long-term goal is to improve outcomes for children by providing educational information about raising great kids to parents, care providers and the community.  Together, we can help our children to be healthy, nurtured, safe and successful.”    

To learn more about Raise Great Kids, visit their website.