Invest in Promise Leaders for Gun Violence Prevention

Summary

In 2024, Sandy Hook Promise committed to expand and diversify its Promise Leader volunteer leadership program with a focus on Southern states with the highest rates of gun violence and greatest need to help prevent gun violence and keep more children safe. In these target states, including Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, Sandy Hook Promise will recruit adult mentors and leaders from local communities for the Promise Leader program. By 2025, Sandy Hook will engage 450 new Promise Leaders and provide training for adult mentors and leaders to build skills in violence prevention education and communication and conduct community needs assessments. These leaders will advocate for and deploy best practices to engage school officials and decision-makers and enable safer schools, homes, and communities for the 7.6 million K-12 students across these states.

Approach

Sandy Hook Promise commits to expand and diversify its ‘Promise Leader’ volunteer leadership program with a focus on Southern states with the highest rates of gun violence and greatest need to help prevent gun violence and keep more children safe. These states of focus will include Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. In these target states, Sandy Hook Promise will engage 450 new Promise Leader volunteers, targeting recruitment to all counties in each State to maximize potential reach, impact, and representation of student needs across communities. These States are home to a total of 7.6 million K-12 students, all of whom stand to benefit from the work performed by the Promise Leader program to prevent gun violence.
Sandy Hook Promise’s innovative leadership development program, currently operating in 50 states with a pool of more than 21,000 volunteers, prepares volunteers to work collaboratively and inclusively to mobilize support for meaningful and achievable action in their schools, homes, and communities to prevent gun violence. Sandy Hook Promise will use distributed organizing strategies to train volunteers to work in their own communities through a step-by-step leadership ladder, expanding their skills and capacity to bring change resulting in safer schools, homes and communities.
Leadership development includes building skills in violence prevention education and communication, conducting community needs assessments, and deploying best practices for engaging school officials and decision makers. Sandy Hook Promise is committed to making these trainings accessible by meeting with volunteers on the ground and virtually to extend their reach and ensure the program is inclusive of rural, urban, and suburban communities and those with limitations for travel and in person engagement.

Action Plan

Quarter 1 (July-September 2024) During this quarter, Sandy Hook Promise will focus their work plan on building models and infrastructure to serve each of the focus states of Texas, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, and Tennessee to effectively engage and reach new target audiences in the southern region of the US. This includes the development of training maps, evaluation metrics, outreach calendars and collateral, and local partnership identification and outreach.

Quarter 2 (October-December 2024) During the second quarter, Sandy Hook Promise’s work will pivot to piloting implementation of its model in priority states. Key deliverables include 1 quarterly campaign launch, individual meetings with volunteers, regional connect meetings, leadership skill training, partnership agreements, and number of volunteers engaging in action.

Quarter 3 (January-March 2025) In the third quarter, Sandy Hook Promise will expand implementation of their organizing model and delivery into their priority states. Key deliverables include 1 quarterly campaign launch, individual meetings with volunteers, regional connect meetings, leadership skill training, partnership grantmaking, and number of volunteers engaging in action.

Quarter 4 (April-June 2025) In the fourth quarter, Sandy Hook Promise will further expand implementation of their organizing model and delivery into their priority states. Key deliverables include 1 quarterly campaign launch, individual meetings with volunteers, regional connect meetings, leadership skill trainings, and number of volunteers engaging in action.

Evaluation (July 2025-August 2025) Sandy Hook Promise will use the final phase of the commitment to conduct robust evaluations on impact and efficacy of their efforts. Key deliverables include qualitative and quantitative data collection, growth comparisons and analysis, and model projections/adjustments for the subsequent year.

Background

Gun violence is the leading cause of death in children in America, higher than car crashes, cancer, and drug overdoses. Simultaneously, the United States is confronting a long-running youth mental health crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The combination of increased mental health struggles with more firearms in homes than ever before has led to a predicted uptick in gun violence, suicide, and school shootings.

The vast majority of Americans want to see more action to help protect kids from this epidemic of violence, yet, outside of the political process, the public is left without a sense of available and achievable solutions in their states and communities. Solving this public health crisis will require a significant growth in public engagement across the U.S., particularly from places at greatest risk of gun violence due to social factors like poverty, high gun ownership rates, social isolation, and firearm availability and accessibility.

Sandy Hook Promise is committed to outreach, leadership development, and empowerment of more Americans in the work to protect kids from gun violence. Leveraging its direct service work in schools and communities across the country and its nonpartisan and household brand, Sandy Hook Promise has built a diverse network of adult volunteers who are helping to make change. And they are uniquely positioned to grow the number of adult leaders in gun violence prevention with a focus on K-12 parents, gun-owning parents, and adults from places most impacted from gun violence where there is also a strong culture of gun ownership including Texas, Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

Progress Update

Partnership Opportunities

To be fully successful in their commitment to grow and diversify the Promise Leader program in the southern region of the United States, Sandy Hook Promise seeks additional partners who can provide key insights, share best practices, and identify opportunities/open doors, as well as additional resources (both financial and in-kind, i.e. donated media) to build capacity and systems, spread awareness, and sustain the depth of volunteer engagement while expanding the breadth of volunteer participation., Through support for this commitment, Sandy Hook Promise will partner with local violence prevention organizations in Texas, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, and Tennessee. Sandy Hook Promise will provide these local partners with best practices, tools, and collateral to support the development and training of volunteer supporters. Sandy Hook Promise will extend unrestricted grants for capacity building and sustainability of mission related work to local partners in each state, ranging from $5,000-$15,000 each. And Sandy Hook Promise will leverage its local, regional, and national media assets to amplify the voice and impact of these local partners.