By providing more flexible and responsive support for families. 

Most of the financial support we receive is required to be used in very specific ways, relating to how we execute our programs. This makes it harder to support some of the more tangible needs of our families, like clothing, toys, books, etc. This year, we will focus on piloting a program for promptly addressing these needs, with the help of people like you. Part of our strategy will be to increase flexible funding streams, allowing us to provide more robust support. We look forward to working with our supporters on this initiative.  

By investing in community partner relationships to expand awareness of the breadth and depth of our services. 

As you can see, Nurture the Next offers a wide range of programs and services. While there are benefits to covering such a large territory, it does make it a challenge to ensure all community partners, and other referral partners, remain up to date on our full scope of services. That’s why we are focusing on building stronger relationships in the communities we serve and supplying these partners with improved materials for parents to learn about us. We have dozens of vital partnerships across the state, but we want every Tennessee family that needs help to know we’re here for them.  

By partnering with AmeriCorps to streamline our intake process for families, ultimately improving our programmatic outcomes. 

Even when families know about us and are interested in working with us, it can be a daunting task to start the process. This is especially true for families interested in our in-home support services. After all, they must agree to open up their home to a home visitor, who is at first a stranger.  

To overcome some of these barriers, we are thrilled to have an AmeriCorps partner this year to help us implement a new intake process that will help families feel more confident and secure in the programs and services they choose to participate in. We are beyond excited to work together and look forward to increasing the number of families we serve.