Horizons National provides low-income families with a rich educational summer program to mitigate learning loss that occurs over summer months. Horizons has a national network with affiliate sites in multiple states, with the addition of affiliate sites each year. Horizons had developed a 2014-2016 business plan to expand the program to serve more children and families while also improving the effectiveness of the central office in supporting affiliates and their capacity to provide quality programming. The plan outlines a high-level strategy for community-centered expansion by consolidating operations in regions with several affiliate sites. With this model, Horizons has a goal to expand student capacity from 4,000 students in 2013 to 10,000 in 2016.

Impact Catalysts (through its predecessor firm, Root Cause) helped Horizons develop a new affiliate support strategy to guide implementation and management of the expansion of sites over the three-year plan period. With a scalable strategy, Horizons was able to more effectively manage the expansion of sites to meet its growth targets while also ensuring the quality and sustainability of its programming.

In 2017, Horizons engaged Impact Catalysts to restructure their Affiliate Support Team to more closely align to the strategy developed in the earlier engagement. Working in close collaboration with the Horizons management team, we developed a framework for assessing affiliate performance that will allow the Affiliate Support Team to prioritize interventions where they will be most effective.