Entry Category
Single Entry – Social Marketing Innovation
Name of Intervention/ Program
Goals for Well-Being Framework and Community Initiative Mapping Process
Background and Situation Analysis
The Central Okanagan is one of Canada’s fastest-growing regions and is experiencing increasing pressures related to housing affordability, mental health, social connection, food security, transportation, belonging, and overall community well-being. Addressing these complex and interconnected challenges requires coordinated action from local governments, Indigenous organizations, nonprofit agencies, healthcare providers, educators, funders, and community collaboratives. Thrive Okanagan was established as a collective impact initiative to help strengthen community well-being through cross-sector collaboration. However, a multi-year evaluation of Thrive’s early work identified a significant challenge. While organizations across the region were working toward many of the same outcomes, they often described, measured, and communicated their impact differently. Strategic plans, community reports, funding applications, and evaluation frameworks used inconsistent language and metrics, making it difficult to understand how individual efforts contributed to broader community well-being outcomes. The challenge was not a lack of commitment to collaboration. Rather, organizations lacked a practical way to align efforts, identify shared priorities, communicate impact consistently, and understand their collective contribution to community change. Applying social marketing and design thinking principles, the project focused on understanding the needs, motivations, barriers, and desired benefits of the organizations responsible for improving community well-being. Through stakeholder engagement, strategic plan reviews, workshops, and collaborative discussions, participants consistently expressed a desire for stronger alignment, reduced duplication, improved collaboration, and better ways to demonstrate community impact. At the same time, they identified significant barriers, including limited organizational capacity, competing priorities, reporting burden, and the absence of common tools and frameworks. Rather than imposing a top-down measurement system, the initiative adopted an audience-centred approach that prioritized co-creation, iterative testing, and continuous feedback. The resulting Goals for Well-Being Framework was designed to create a shared language for community well-being across the Central Okanagan while providing practical value to participating organizations. Over time, the initiative evolved beyond framework development into a broader organizational behaviour change strategy. Through pilot testing, stakeholder feedback, and ongoing refinement, the project sought to encourage organizations to adopt shared language, align planning processes, contribute common information, and participate in collective learning. This work ultimately laid the foundation for a future community well-being intelligence platform capable of supporting data-informed decision-making and collective action across the region.
Priority Audiences(s)
Primary audience: Executive directors, municipal leaders, planners, program managers, evaluators, and community impact staff responsible for planning, reporting, and decision-making within nonprofit organizations, local governments, Indigenous organizations, health agencies, and educational institutions. Secondary audience: Funders, community collaboratives, backbone organizations, and policy leaders seeking greater alignment, shared measurement, and evidence of collective impact. Early adopter audiences included six pilot organizations in 2025 and twenty-one Child, Youth, and Families organizations in 2026 who helped test, refine, and validate the intervention.
Behavioral Objectives
Behavioural Objective Encourage organizations to adopt and use a shared framework for understanding, planning, measuring, and communicating community well-being outcomes. Specific Behaviour Changes Organizations will: • Map strategic priorities, programs, and services to a shared set of community well-being goals. • Use common language and definitions when discussing community outcomes. • Contribute initiative-level information through a shared data collection process. • Identify opportunities for collaboration based on overlapping goals, populations, and activities. • Participate in collective learning and shared measurement activities. • Use framework-aligned information to support planning, reporting, funding applications, and decision-making. Long-Term Behavioural Outcomes • Increased adoption of shared measurement practices. • Increased cross-sector collaboration. • Reduced duplication of effort. • Improved visibility of community assets and investments. • Increased use of collective impact data to inform community decisions.
Description of Strategy/Intervention
The intervention was developed through a three-year social marketing, design thinking, and systems change process designed to address a persistent barrier to collective impact: the absence of a shared framework and common measurement approach for community well-being. From the outset, the project adopted a social marketing orientation, focusing on understanding the target audience’s needs, motivations, barriers, and behaviours rather than starting with a predetermined solution. The primary audience included nonprofit organizations, local governments, Indigenous organizations, health and social service agencies, educators, and community collaboratives responsible for improving community well-being. Research and stakeholder engagement revealed that organizations shared many of the same desired outcomes but used different language, planning processes, reporting structures, and measures of success. While participants recognized the value of collaboration, competing priorities, limited capacity, reporting burden, and lack of common tools created barriers to collective action. Through consultations, workshops, strategic plan reviews, and co-design sessions, stakeholders consistently expressed a desire for a simpler way to understand how their work contributed to broader community outcomes. The perceived benefits included stronger partnerships, improved communication, greater visibility of impact, enhanced funding opportunities, and more informed community decision-making. Using social marketing and design thinking principles, the Goals for Well-Being Framework was developed to create a shared language for community well-being. Inspired by systems thinking and the Sustainable Development Goals, the framework organized community well-being into four environments and sixteen interconnected goals. A key social marketing principle guiding the intervention was exchange. Organizations were not asked to participate solely for the benefit of the broader community. Instead, participation was positioned as creating direct value for organizations by helping them communicate impact, identify collaborators, strengthen planning processes, and demonstrate contributions to community outcomes. The intervention was intentionally iterative. Each phase served as a prototype designed to test assumptions, identify barriers, and uncover opportunities for improvement. As organizations began applying the framework, a new insight emerged. While participants valued the common language and shared goals, they lacked a practical way to contribute information in a consistent format. This revealed a second behavioural challenge: organizations needed greater ability, confidence, and support to participate in shared measurement activities. In response, the intervention evolved beyond the framework itself. User-friendly tools, facilitated workshops, implementation supports, clear guidance documents, and an Initiative Mapping Process were developed to reduce complexity and increase participant confidence. Social norms also became an important driver of adoption. Early pilot participants shared experiences and testimonials describing the value of the framework, helping establish credibility and normalize participation across sectors. As organizations observed peers engaging in the process, interest and willingness to participate increased. In 2026, the project adopted a startup-inspired Minimum Viable Product approach. Rather than investing immediately in technology development, low-cost prototypes and manual testing processes were used to validate assumptions, understand user needs, and determine what information would be required for a future community well-being intelligence platform. The resulting intervention combined social marketing, design thinking, behavioural insights, and systems change principles to influence organizational behaviour and create the conditions for greater collaboration, shared measurement, and collective action.
Implementation
Implementation occurred through three iterative phases between 2024 and 2026, with each phase designed to increase awareness, build confidence, reduce barriers, and encourage adoption among participating organizations. Year One (2024): Framework Development The first phase focused on audience discovery and co-design. Stakeholders from multiple sectors participated in consultations, environmental scans, strategic planning reviews, and collaborative workshops. Design thinking methods were used to understand user needs, motivations, frustrations, and desired outcomes. Findings consistently highlighted the need for a common language and shared vision for community well-being. These insights informed the development of the Goals for Well-Being Framework, which organized community well-being into four environments and sixteen goals. The framework was intentionally designed to be simple, flexible, and relevant across sectors to minimize barriers to adoption. Year Two (2025): Strategic Alignment Pilot The second phase tested whether organizations could successfully apply the framework within existing planning processes. Six pilot organizations participated, including two municipalities, one regional district, two nonprofit organizations, and one Indigenous-led organization. Participants mapped strategic plans, priorities, and initiatives to the framework through facilitated workshops and collaborative review sessions. Practical resources, examples, and guidance materials were developed to increase participant ability and confidence throughout the process. The pilot demonstrated strong alignment across organizations and validated the usefulness of the framework. Participants reported that the framework helped them better understand their contribution to broader community outcomes. The pilot also generated an important social norming effect. As organizations shared their experiences and demonstrated the successful application of the framework, interest among other community partners increased. At the same time, the pilot revealed a significant barrier: while organizations could align priorities, they lacked common data structures needed to support collective measurement and learning. Year Three (2026): Shared Measurement MVP Pilot The third phase shifted from strategic alignment to testing a shared measurement approach. Twenty-one organizations from the Child, Youth, and Families sector participated, representing municipalities, nonprofit organizations, Indigenous organizations, the regional health authority, the school district, and community collaboratives. Using an MVP methodology, participants tested a prototype initiative mapping process designed to collect information about programs, services, and community offerings using a common structure. The process emphasized simplicity, usability, and accessibility. Facilitated workshops, clear communications, examples, templates, and ongoing support reduced barriers and increased confidence among participants. Rather than developing technology first, the project focused on validating behaviours, information needs, and data requirements. This allowed stakeholders to test the concept, provide feedback, and shape future platform development before significant investments were made.
Evaluation Methods and Results
A developmental evaluation approach was used throughout all three years to assess participant experience, behavioural adoption, implementation feasibility, and opportunities for continuous improvement. Evaluation methods included stakeholder interviews, surveys, workshop feedback, strategic plan mapping exercises, initiative mapping submissions, facilitated reflection sessions, and participant testimonials. Year One findings identified strong demand for a shared framework and highlighted key barriers to collaboration, including inconsistent language, fragmented reporting approaches, and lack of common measurement tools. Year Two results demonstrated that six pilot organizations from diverse sectors could successfully adopt and apply the framework within existing planning processes. Participants reported increased understanding of community well-being outcomes, stronger alignment across organizations, and greater confidence in communicating impact. Feedback also revealed that peer participation and pilot partner experiences helped establish credibility and encourage broader adoption, demonstrating the influence of social norms on organizational behaviour. Year Three results demonstrated strong engagement from twenty-one organizations representing multiple sectors. Participants successfully completed initiative mapping activities and provided detailed feedback that improved clarity, usability, and implementation feasibility. Across all phases, participants reported increased ability to connect their work to broader community outcomes, stronger understanding of collective impact, and greater awareness of collaboration opportunities. The project also successfully validated key assumptions needed for future technology development. By testing behaviours, tools, and information requirements before building a platform, the initiative reduced risk and ensured future investments would be grounded in demonstrated user needs. The intervention demonstrates how social marketing principles, including audience orientation, exchange, barrier reduction, social norming, ability building, co-creation, and continuous feedback, can be applied to influence organizational behaviour and support systems-level change.
Entry Number: 01