Strategic Plan 2022– July 2022-December 2025

Approved June 7, 2022

INTRODUCTION

Reconnecting to Our Waterways (ROW) is a collective impact initiative that has worked purposefully since 2012 to change the quality of life and ecology along Indianapolis waterways and surrounding neighborhoods. ROW has convened community partners to enhance quality of life through innovation, analysis, cultural advancement and investment along Indy waterways and neighborhoods. Its collective members have walked alongside communities to discover and celebrate Indy’s waterways as a community asset.

ROW’s History and Background

In October 2010, the City of Indianapolis and the Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF) hosted a CEO’s for Cities’ Livability Challenge, where national experts and local Indianapolis leaders convened with the goal to generate ten big ideas for how cities can provide ever-present access to art, good design, and nature. One of the big ideas for every city to consider was to “reconnect to your waterways.”

Indianapolis leaders promoted the Livability Challenge ideas to Indianapolis stakeholders throughout 2011. In late December 2011, Eli Lilly Company was looking for a focus and long-term impact for their Lilly Day of Service so they brought community leaders together and the idea of Reconnecting to Our Waterways (ROW) was born. Early stakeholders included local arts and cultural organizations, local government, social and environmental agencies, corporate leaders, universities, museums and others. 

Prior to the Livability Challenge, six Indianapolis urban neighborhoods created Quality of Life Plans via the Great Indy Neighborhoods Initiative (GINI), launched in 2006 and expanded over the coming years and later renamed Great Places 2020. Those initiatives were established and continue to support neighbors working across traditional boundaries to collaborate on issues affecting their neighborhoods. These Quality of Life Plans became the original geographic focus areas for ROW, along six Indianapolis waterways.

Consistent with the tenets of collective impact, ROW has focused on creating a strong foundation of metrics and backbone guidelines to frame the collective initiative. By its second year, the Steering Committee laid the groundwork for grassroots initiatives through waterway committees. Neighbors and community leaders embraced ROW as an organization that could help them accomplish their Quality of Life goals. ROW also provided avenues for professionals who could support those goals and work on collective goals of their own, through the Element Committees. The six original Elements have since consolidated into four, including: Arts & Culture, Economics, Ecology & Education and Healthy Connections. 

ROW’s Evolution

ROW began as and continues to be a collective, non-legal entity, working with its primary fiscal agent, CICF, and numerous other partners, with the intent that funding and resources are primarily focused on the communities, organizations and project partners, and not the ROW backbone or overhead. When ROW was imagined as a collective impact initiative, there was an idea that ROW over time might either sunset its work after 10 years of success; or might become an independent nonprofit. In an intensive effort to update its 2018-20 strategic plan, ROW created many opportunities for evaluation and broad stakeholder input. 

In summary, this has led to the new strategic plan (below), which has ROW remaining as a non-formal, but effective collective. ROW will continue to bring unique partners together for learning, discussion and collective impact. Recent changes, such as – bringing waterway committee representatives to the Steering Committee as equal and voting members; ROW’s continued focus on equity, inclusion and social justice in its work; and its efforts to reduce overhead and further align with its collective partners – bring a bold  vision to the new plan for the future of ROW. 

ROW’s Geographic Focus

Part of the evolution has included an extensive evaluation of ROW’s traditional six geographic focus areas along Central Canal, Fall Creek, Little Eagle Creek, Pleasant Run, Pogue’s Run and White River. Demographics have changed within our waterway neighborhoods, as has the investments being made in White River (through the White River Vision Plan, DigIndy and Partners for the White River, especially). This has led to a growing  awareness, need and demand for ROW’s unique, community-led education and project work within neighborhoods outside the traditional boundaries. The future of ROW envisions access and opportunities for all neighborhoods and confirm named waterways within the White River Watershed inside of Marion County, because all actions, positive or negative, no matter how direct or far they are from the waterway, can impact the water quality, stormwater-related issues, beautification, recreation and enjoyment. 

ROW Leadership and Committees

With its new strategic plan, ROW has evaluated and left in-tact a diverse group of community leaders and influential partners to ensure direct access and dialog among representative people and groups that can have an impact in the future engagement and care of our waterways. Those include the following categories of representation:

  • At-Large
  • At-Large
  • At-Large
  • Bike and Pedestrian Advocate Organization
  • City of Indianapolis
  • Community Foundation
  • Corporate Partner
  • Corporate Partner
  • Faith Based Organization
  • Health and Human Services Organization
  • Higher Education Institution
  • Neighborhood Development Organization
  • Neighborhood Investment Organization
  • Neighborhood Artist Organization
  • Sustainable Environment Organization
  • Tourism industry Representative
  • Water Utility
  • Water and Environmental Policy Advisor
  • Central Canal Waterway Representative
  • Fall Creek Waterway Representative 
  • Little Eagle Creek Waterway Representative
  • Pleasant Run Waterway Representative
  • Pogue’s Run Waterway Representative
  • White River Waterway Representative

ROW STRATEGIC PLAN 

Background and Purpose of the 2022-2025 ROW Strategic Plan:

Between April 2020 and June 2022, ROW’s Strategic Plan Subcommittee members spent enormous time and commitment determining the future of this collective impact movement. As a collective, ROW is faced with understanding its identity as a collection of organizations that come together as individuals or as an official, independent not-for-profit organization. While it does not have its own 501c3 status, it does operate day-to-day with its own staff consultants, funded by grants that are supported by the organizations that come together as the collective. Yet, long-term sustainability of its staff has been central to this question of how ROW operates. 

Further, the subcommittee struggled with the question of the purpose and commitment of each organization and resident participation. What is expected of each programmatically and financially? Should projects and funds be applied for directly from ROW, or by organizations that partner together under the common name and mission of ROW?

During this time both nationally and locally, communities began to seriously look at issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Centuries of racism and broad discrimination have led to inequal power dynamics and operations based on privilege. As a result, ROW and its subcommittee incorporated this into the Strategic Planning process to begin the process of rectifying this collective’s own faults, shortcomings and bias. 

In order to ensure the next 10 years start with a strong strategic plan that begins to answer these questions, the process to develop this plan was uncharacteristically longer than most planning processes. The subcommittee surveyed participants in the steering committee to better assess their commitment to ROW, and the level of commitment they would be willing to make to the collective, both programmatically and financially.  At ROWPort in 2021, participants were surveyed to gauge what is important to them and their communities, and how ROW might fit into that. Through community engagement, events such as In the Know with ROW and multiple Steering Committee meetings, ROW’s partners, the public, and past volunteers were given many opportunities to share their input that would shape the outline of this strategic plan. 

The result of all of this work is the plan that follows. This is not a typical strategic plan with clear objectives and key results, but it represents a new approach toward achieving goals that hopefully gives the collective its mission and guidance to answer specific questions about the development going forward. This plan sets certain specific parameters: 

  • ROW is first and foremost, a collective, an idea, to which partnering organizations and local residents come together to achieve a common mission.
  • ROW is not in itself a formal organization. 
  • ROW operates as a table for shared ideas, coordination and implementation. 
  • ROW provides the platform for organizations to support grassroots aims to improve Marion County waterways, both environmentally and recreationally.
  • ROW takes its lead from residents first, and organizations respond to those needs by providing the resources and connections they have to those ends. 

At the end of this three-year strategic plan, efforts of those involved in ROW should result in:

  • Increased awareness of how individuals can care for Marion County waterways.
  • Increased individual access and enjoyment of Marion County waterways.
  • More coordination between organizations and residents to complete projects that benefit the health and enjoyments along Marion County waterways. 
  • Clear financial stability and plan for staffing and programming for ROW initiatives.

Members of the Strategic Plan Subcommittee were:

  • Joseph Jarzen, Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, Subcommittee Chair
  • Rhonda Harper, Citizens Energy Group/ROW Steering Committee Co-Chair
  • Alphons Van Adrichem, former Central Indiana Community Foundation/former ROW Steering Committee Co-Chair
  • Mo McReynolds, City of Indianapolis/ROW Steering Committee Co-Chair
  • Brad Beaubien, Visit Indy
  • Matt Carter, Visit Indy
  • Megan McKinney Cooper, Jump IN for Healthy Kids
  • Pamela Hinkle, Spirit and Place
  • Scott Minor, White River Alliance
  • Julie L Rhodes, ROW Collective Impact Director
  • Kelly Brown, ROW Metrics Manager
  • Andrea Drygass, ROW Waterway Coordinator

Mission: We cultivate and support a network of resident-led, action-oriented change by providing a platform from which organizations with waterway interests gather and support neighborhoods along the waterways in Marion County.

Vision: Our place-based model of authentic community engagement builds capacity to support our partners’ work and for waterway communities to build the hyper-local, democratic processes needed to address the challenges and opportunities with which they are presented.  

Waterway Geography Defined:

  1.     Named waterways in Marion County
  2.     Primary waterways with current focus – White River, Little Eagle Creek, Fall Creek,  Pogue’s Run, Pleasant Run, Central Canal
  3.     Racial/Ethnicity/Socially-Vulnerable Neighborhoods emphasis

Primary Aims of the Platform

  1.   Common Agenda – waterway awareness and resident-led action along them
  2. Shared Measurements – organizational and neighborhood-informed progress along waterways
  3. Mutually Reinforcing Activities – top survey results focused around habitat restoration, creating public spaces and supporting recreational access
  4. Continuous Communication – Steering Committee and neighborhood interactions, organizational commitments to neighborhood work
  5.   Backbone Infrastructure – note staffing below

STRATEGIC TASKS*

*Dates noted are when tasks will be completed.

Strategic Task 1.  Identify Equitable Approach – commitment from involved organizations to structure a portion of their work that is involved with ROW to invest in areas of greatest social and environmental need which would include items below, but also research that needs completed by a future subcommittee that considers social vulnerability data within current Census tracts. This process would identify micro-communities that may not be connected to mainstream institutions. For example, through faith-based groups and institutions, organizations that service vulnerable populations (homeless, abuse survivors, etc.). In addition, multi-service centers are regional and nature and connected to a variety of populations and communities in their territory.

a. Expanded geographies [Autumn 2022] – confirm named waterways within watershed and understand the social vulnerability index of neighborhoods along those waterways      

     i.  Identified potential ROW Partners for implementation – i.e. City / Thrive or Justice 40 Initiative, Spirit and Place, Jump IN, KIB, Visit Indy, LISC, Develop Indy, INHP

b. Access existing neighborhood engagement Winter 2022 – where are neighborhoods organized, interested in ROW aims

          ii. Identified potential ROW Partners for implementation – i.e. City, KIB, Health by Design, White River Alliance, Groundwork Indy, Gang-Gang, KI, INRC, CDCs, Community Centers, LISC

c. Research component to formally evaluate the community building aspects of what ROW  has done, intentionally or not, over the past 10 years to inform that engagement playbook [Winter 2022]

Strategic Task 2. Resources Support

a. Develop Playbook for Engagement [Summer 2023]– creating a way for more neighborhood involvement in the ROW platform through expansive organization and neighborhood coordination. The Playbook will include a flowchart to the pathway to engage stakeholder / community interests.

     i. Past neighborhood involvement and future path – assessment of past successes and future goals of neighborhoods [Winter 2022]

          1. Tools (i.e. playbook, trainings, documents, websites)

          2. New Affiliates – how they become involved in ROW

          3. Identified potential ROW Partners for implementation – i.e. Waterway committees, Spirit and Place, White River Alliance, KIB

     ii.  Tier Development [Spring 2023]

     iii.  Becoming involved in ROW [Spring 2023] – new affiliate opt-ins, roadmap for engagement with the Platform and organizational resources

          1. Steering Committee/Subcommittee

          2. Elements / Technical Expertise / Talent Contribution

     iv. Coordinated use among Platform organizations and neighborhoods in their outreach and response to residents that reach out or are approached to share the ROW philosophy (a platform that intakes system needs and everyone can see it and respond if they can provide a contribution, resource, talent, skill, etc. [Summer 2023]

          1. Needs a coordinated communication platform to inform all the partners

          2. Identified potential ROW Partners for implementation -i.e.  Visit Indy, Spirit & Place

b. ROWPort [Annually] – Conduct annual ROWPort celebration of waterways as a more direct opportunity to connect the various groups at all levels with resources, networking opportunities, collaboration, etc.

     i. Provide talk-to-the-expert venues at ROWPort: roundtable or one-on-one; funding/grant writing, organizational capacity, existing committee insights and guidance, ecology/invasives, etc.

c.  Financial Support [Ongoing/Autumn 2023]- Provide micro-funding to seed efforts and directs to other funding sources

          1. This aim requires additional exploration and is dependent upon interest from collective partners to either coordinate and commit dollars in their own budget for this, or to apply under the auspices of ROW together for funding to support this.

Strategic Task 3.   Platform Coordination

a.  Organizational commitment [Summer 2023] to include ROW approach/materials into its operations – organizations individually identify how their work fits into ROW Platform and provides specific outline for inclusion into day-to-day work.

     i. This includes identifying specific staff that is incorporating waterway administration/outreach/project management into their work plan.

          1. Collective Impact Agreement strengthens these relationships and defines contributions

     ii.  Identified potential ROW Partners for implementation – i.e. KIB, Groundwork Indy

b.  Waterway Committees and Neighborhood Participation [Winter 2022] to communicate their goals, interests, needs clearly and consistently to the Platform through the Steering Committee gatherings for assessment and response for support and networking

     i. Who / What Tiers

     ii. Identified potential ROW Partners for implementation – i.e  INRC, Visit Indy, Groundwork Indy, Spirit & Place, City of Indianapolis, Multiservice Centers

c. Platform Staff [Summer 2023] includes one coordinating manager responsible for Steering Committee coordination, host and participatory organization agreements

     i. Positions currently covered, to be assessed and determined need going forward, or covered through partnerships on collective

          a. Existing Platform Manager 

          b. Existing Waterway Coordinator (through existing grants eventual long-term support through KIB and/or combination of shared resources from other orgs)

          c. Metrics tasks will continue but via a self-contained on-line program that will not require dedicated staff time, but will be maintained with staff noted in a & b.

          d. Commitments from other ROW SC member orgs to be responsible for certain above activities.