South Texas Juvenile Diabetes Association (STJDA) enhances the lives of children living with diabetes through personal empowerment, family support, community awareness and public advocacy.
Located in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, STJDA was founded in 2011 by a group of parents who wanted to support each other and other families like theirs whose children were living with Type 1 diabetes. STJDA has adapted to the changing needs of the children and families they serve, including the growing number of children in the Rio Grande Valley who are living with Type 2 diabetes.
Cielo Strategy Group first met STJDA through the Knapp Community Care Foundation’s (KCCF) nonprofit capacity building program and assessment process. When the capacity building program wrapped up for the first group of nonprofits, we remained in close contact with STJDA. STJDA then reached back out to Cielo Strategy Group to partner with us on a new project – a comprehensive programs assessment.
Over the years, STJDA grew its service offerings to 14 different programs. They were responding to the ever increasing needs of their children and families. After ten years, the organization’s leadership was ready to assess their program offerings and make recommendations to their Board of Directors on streamlining their services for greater effectiveness and impact. They wanted to ensure that their staff and volunteers could adequately run their programs well, rather than spread out their efforts too thin.
The Cielo Strategy Group team began by listening, learning, and gathering data from key stakeholders. This included one-on-one interviews and online surveys involving STJDA families, staff, volunteers and community partners. We heard from each audience the importance of each program and how STJDA programs impacted them – or not. After one month of listening and learning, our team began assessing all data – quantitative and qualitative and then bringing everything together with considerations for the Board.
The three month assessment process culminated with a comprehensive 25-page report and an Executive Summary that gave their Board of Directors the information needed to make programmatic decisions. The Cielo Strategy Group team presented their findings to the Board at their annual planning meeting. The assessment with considerations included programs that should be continued, modified, combined, or phased out to other community partners.
The Board of Directors then wrestled with the information and made their final decisions – in partnership with the staff – on the program offerings and a plan for execution.
We are proud of the STJDA team for having the foresight and taking the initiative to ensure that their program offerings were relevant to their families, making an impact, and that their staff had the ability to effectively execute on these programs. We are inspired to watch STJDA’s growth and success as they celebrated their tenth anniversary during our partnership. They have since secured a 40-acre plot of land that will allow them to build their dream facility for children and families living with diabetes, along with their first-ever major gift that will begin the build out of the site.
