The Challenge
As substance abuse threatened cities and towns around the country, thousands of community coalitions sprang up to fight alcohol, tobacco, and drug abuse. They were committed and persistent, but their efforts were too often blunted by the sheer size of the problem.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation had long been interested in substance abuse and overall health issues and was looking for a way to have some big impact. Rather than create yet another service delivery program, the Foundation instead targeted its investment and support to create the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of American (CADCA). Its mission would be to supercharge local coalitions’ efforts with best practice technical assistance, training on effective prevention and reduction strategies, and advocacy know-how. Equally important, RWJ committed to helping these far-flung entities knit themselves into a more singular, powerful network under the CADCA banner.
The work began well, but within a few years CADCA ran into the classic resource Achilles heel: overdependence on its founding funder. While RWJ was willing to invest in training and building field support, the majority of the foundation world at the time was more comfortable investing in programs and services. The CADCA model didn’t fit their funding guidelines. So, with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s encouragement, CADCA hired Shared Cause to find a solution.
Finding the Solution
Shared Cause ultimately assisted CADCA through two strategic plans. The first five-year plan focused on refining CADCA’s expertise and positioning the organization as the premiere professional training resource and research-informed advocate for substance abuse community coalitions. Struggling or new coalitions could call on CADCA for guidance and organizational strength, which led to a significant expansion in well-functioning substance abuse prevention and reduction coalitions nationwide. Also, in the process, a broad new market of fee-paying coalitions was created which not only helped support CADCA generally, but also validated its approach for the philanthropic community beyond RWJ.
The second phase plan called for promoting use of two key CADCA innovations – the National Community Coalitions Institute and the National Registry of Coalitions – that enhanced CADCA’s strategic value to the substance abuse prevention and reduction field, to researchers, to policy makers and to funders. It also focused on marketing CADCA’s training and technical assistance at federal and state levels, educating Congress on the importance of community anti-drug coalitions, and providing training and technical assistance to US government agencies and non-government organizations (NGOs) seeking to learn and apply core competencies of community coalitions to reduce demand for illegal drugs and substance abuse. This opened up new public sector funding streams while contributing to a more supportive policy environment for local coalitions.
“I’ve been heading CADCA for over two decades. When I was a new leader, I significantly benefitted from Shared Cause providing a strategic focus, road map and action plan that might have taken years to develop on our own. It saved us from trial and error, and gave us a head start in serving the field, building our board and carrying out our strategic plan.
General Arthur T. Dean
They were there for us in the beginning and we’ll never forget what they did. My advice to fellow leaders is that Shared Cause expertise will quickly give them the right things to consider in order to be successful. When you’re trying to create significant progress in a complex environment, that has great value.”
Chairman and CEO, CADCA
The Result
CADCA evolved its original funding into a blend of fee-for-service, private philanthropy, and federal and state grants. Annual revenue grew from $1.5 million to more than $12 million over the course of seven years.
After 25 years, the organization continues as a hub of expertise for the now 5,000 local substance abuse and prevention coalitions around the country, as well as guiding coalitions in nearly 30 countries abroad. In 2018, its two major training events drew more than 5,000 adult and more than 900 youth participants. CADCA partners with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on a national smoking and cancer health inequities program. It is also part of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s community outreach effort organized to combat the opioid addiction crisis.