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WATCH: Learn more about our alliance programming from our practioners and leaders.

Alliance Programming

Our programming is intentionally designed to meet three distinct needs: (1) to address the individual needs of your organization, (2) to address the most common challenges across our member organizations, and (3) to facilitate our multi-organizational collaboration and collective action initiatives.

A focus on organizational improvement allows our community to add annual value to our member organizations, by beginning with their most important priorities. It keeps leaders and organizations engaged in our community and with each other, creating a strong foundation for our collective action initiatives.

Program Offerings

Members of our Alliance Community have access to six distinct program offerings designed to support executive leaders and help organizations improve. All of our programming is opt-in and APA develops new programming each year, responsive to new needs that arise in the field.

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Leadership Cohorts

Each participating leader has the option to join a Leadership Cohort. These cohorts consist of 10 executive leaders with the same functional role, from organizations of similar size and stage across different cities. Cohorts run for two years, meet monthly, and are facilitated by APA. Alliance Leadership Cohorts are a confidential space to bring the hardest challenges leaders are facing in their roles and get great advice and support from some of the top leaders in the sector.

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Knowledge Sharing

Twice a month, APA hosts 60-90 minute Knowledge Sharing sessions focused on the most common challenges facing our member organizations and new issues that arise in the field. These sessions are grounded in our value of radical candor and include more honest dialogue than what is typically found “on the conference stage.”

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Capacity Building

Each organization has access to 4-6 capacity building program offerings each year. Each Program Track runs for 4-9 months and culminates in a concrete deliverable participants can bring back to their organizations for implementation. In our Alliance, capacity building work is facilitated by field-leading experts and is done in cohorts of 10-20 organizations, to conduct peer learning and accountability.

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Strategic Support

Each year, member organizations have the chance to receive individualized Strategic Support from our Alliance. In this offering, members identify a top strategic challenge, APA finds the 4-6 fellow Alliance organizations with the most relevant experience, facilitates a half-day strategy session to provide insights and advice grounded in real-world experience, and codifies the findings.

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Multi-Organization Collaborations

Each year, we run a process to engage Alliance members in the identification of the opportunities in our issue areas that are too large or too complex for any on organization to address on its own, but where a strategic coalition of 20-30 organizations may unlock new possibilities. For the most promising that emerge from that process, APA then designs, funds, and launches those intiatives.

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Annual Research

Each year as part of our annual State of Young People research initiative, our Alliance Community creates a research agenda designed to identify the gaps in our existing evidence, with a specific focus on the insights that would lead to significant practice change.

In 2024, the average Alliance member spent over 75 hours in our programming.

75+

  • "The Alliance is a space for peer learning, mutual support and opportunity for collective action. It has allowed us to cut some of the consulting costs we would have needed at this time since we have a crowdsourced way to understand best practices and solve potential issues.​"

    Ben Houltberg, CEO, Search Institute ​

  • “The opportunity to be part of a powerful network of leaders and resources is simply invaluable. Though I am fairly new to the APA community, I have deeply appreciated the chance to learn from other leaders. My leadership cohort has already provided access to a tremendous group of peers, and knowing that I have a safe, supportive, and confidential space is highly reassuring.”

    Kim Gustafson, Senior Director of Scholarship Operations, APIA Scholars​