Background

In 2022, the Kent County Board of Commissioners approved the allocation of $4M to the Kent County Domestic Violence Community Coordinated Response Team (DVCCRT) to support the creation of the Domestic Violence Action Network (DVAN) as part of an effort to transform the way Kent County responds to domestic violence and creates greater safety for survivors and the community.  With a robust, data-driven, trauma-informed, and collective-impact infrastructure, DVAN will address domestic violence as a public health crisis and drive inclusive and integrated solutions. DVAN, particularly a hired staff member, will serve as a backbone entity using a collective impact model, continuous communication for shared learning, a measurement system to track progress for equitable and sustainable change, and mutually reinforcing activities. While, the consultant will help create a shared agenda, current DVAN activities/priorities will include: creating a specialty Domestic Violence Court; enhancing comprehensive supports for victims; developing more robust supports for perpetrator accountability, including batterer intervention services; developing data systems that support collection, analysis, and reporting of data to increase systems accountability and to measure collective impact; facilitate culturally based and trauma informed training; and utilize survivor-centered engagement that promote equity and center community voices in systems designed to support and protect them.

Key stakeholders

DVAN will be a new, more robust, and structured entity that will be developed from the long-standing collaboration of the DVCCRT. The DVCCRT represents a collaboration between systems and organizations throughout Kent County. Currently, the DVCCRT does not employ any staff and receives financial sponsorship from a member organization. A steering committee of DVCCRT members, primarily representing service providers and those with direct involvement in reported domestic violence cases have already been identified and will work most closely with the consultant in the early phase of this project. Stakeholders in this planning group include 62B Court, Kent County Prosecutor, Grand Rapids Police Department, Puertas Abiertas, Safe Haven Ministries, Victim Witness, and YWCA West Central Michigan. The steering committee is also committed to hiring a full-time staff member to coordinate the collective impact efforts of the DVAN.

Deliverables

The consultant will work closely with the steering committee and the larger DVCCRT to help create a shared agenda for DVAN using a collective impact model. Key deliverables for the consultant include:

• Engage the group in a asset mapping process to understand existing stakeholders as well as potential community partners that should be a part of the process

• Help in the creation of a staff role to coordinate the collective impact activities 

• Facilitate a process to develop a shared agenda for the DVAN

• Lead the group through the development of the activities and outcomes of each work group that is supporting the larger shared agenda

• Develop the principles that drive the infrastructure and operating methods for each work group

• Develop the infrastructure and deliverables for each work group that will carry out the activities of the shared agenda

Timeframe

The DVCCRT has received its first disbursement of funding and is ready to begin the deliverables outlined in this RFP. Ideally, the consultant would be available to begin on the deliverables within the next 4-6 weeks. Our goal is to have the proposed scope of work with the selected consultant completed within 3 months of the contract start date.

Submission Deadline

Please submit your proposal by 11:59 p.m. on May 5, 2023 to taday@shmgr.org. Your proposal should outline the scope of work and methods utilized to achieve the above outlined deliverables. Included in your proposal, please include a copy of your resume and proposed contract fee. 

The DVCCRT will begin interviewing potential candidates the week of May 8 2023.

If you have any questions, please contact DVCCRT Co-Chair Tara Aday at taday@shmgr.org.