Executive Summary Report from WHITE OAK IV RETREAT

White Oak IV PARTNERS American Legion American Red Cross Armed Forces Services Corporation Be The Change Bill, Hilary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation Blue Shield of California Blue Star Families The Bob Woodruff Foundation Bristol-Meyers Squibb Foundation Call of Duty Endowment Center for a New American Security Council on Foundations Department of Labor Veterans Employment & Training Service Elizabeth Dole Foundation Give an Hour Got Your 6 Grab the Torch Hiring Our Heroes/ US Chamber of Commerce Foundation Institute for Veterans & Military Families, Syracuse University Iraq And Afghanistan Veterans of America Joining Forces, The White House JPMorgan Chase Foundation Lockheed Martin Foundation Military Child Education Coalition Military Family Research Institute, Purdue University Military Officers Assoc. of America Military Spouse JD Network Mission Continues National Guard National Military Family Assoc. Office Of The Deputy Assistant Secretary For Defense - Military Community & Family Policy PenFed Foundation Points of Light-Military Initiatives Robert McCormick Foundation Soldiers for Life Program Student Veterans of America Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors Unite Us USAA USO Vets Community Connection Walmart Foundation Warrior & Family Support Team, Office of the Chairman of the JCS Womens Mentorship Network Yellow Ribbon Fund Mission

Overview: Military-supportive thought leaders and influencers from non-profits, government and philanthropies convene annually for the America Joins Forces with Military Families (White Oak) Retreat. This fourth convening saw the fruition of deeper relationships, trust and engagement as returning and first-time participants worked confidently alongside each other to find consensus and opportunity.

Resolution: Attendees come to the table at White Oak prepared to think beyond their organizations with a shared commitment to developing collaboration, catalyzing innovation and capturing relevant data metrics. They seek to identify existing and emerging needs to deliver highly impactful services to the military and their families.

Members: From the opening plenary to the closing review, participants engage in the dialogue and session management of the retreat. Members are asked to speak candidly, but constructively, facilitate breakout conversations, contribute to panels and, most importantly, offer their best ideas and lessons learned in a collaborative environment. Results garnered in this way are a testament to the concept of ideas bigger than one person, one organization. White Oak identifies myriad ideas that attendees can use to improve their own impact, as well as watching for large, scalable solutions that seek to move forward the military support space as a whole.

Consensus Items: The following topics are collective impact areas where thoughts converged and gave rise to future action items

Shared Best Practices for Funders and Their Communities o Community stakeholders should advise foundations about the

evolving needs of the populations they serve and share proven concepts from the grassroots level to promote two-way communication, enhance transparency and establish a trust basis.

o Funder engagement at the community level should inform the development of a compilation of best practices to drive positive change, amplify the message of all stakeholders, diversify the space and perpetuate right actions. Funders are uniquely positioned to endorse and evaluate the accountability of sponsored programs to ensure high-quality services, achievable outcomes, inclusive customer feedback and foster innovation.

o All interested parties need to focus efforts on providing evidence-based outcome. They should research the needs of their target populations to provide metrics and data that support both need and impact. This is essential to gaining funding support from donors and proving relevance to transitioning administrations.

AAR Lessons Learned from OIF/OEF o To prepare for future wars, there is a need to capture the successes

and shortfalls of current efforts to assist service members, veterans and family members over the past 13 years. Using research and data to qualify the experiences and quantify lessons of value will prepare us to think through the continuum when the next conflict emerges.

Page 2 White Oak IV Executive Summary Report 2016 Government Transition Strategy

o Federal government leadership and federal appointees will change as a result of the 2016 open election. White Oak participants identified the opportunity to encourage and shape the candidates view on military support issues with a united message of support for our military and veteran families. Focus is necessary for continued government attention on strategic military concerns and is accomplished by highlighting recent successes, presenting a data-driven needs assessment and incentivizing further momentum with a bi-partisan military support pledge for candidates. Concentrating on easy wins is a way to earn candidate buy-in to key initiatives and set the stage for relationship development after the election.

o Encouraging and training veterans, retired military and military spouses to participate in campaigns and to run for office has the potential to gain continued advocacy and legislative attention for military and veteran issues. The intent of the recommendation was non-partisan--the interest of the group is to have a greater participation of military-connected individuals in all political parties and all government levels, while further educating and informing the public on issues related to military life and service.

Branded Message Alignment

o Collaborators must strive to present positive messaging that makes military support real for stakeholders through the use of strong visuals, personal stories and metrics that support the need for our programs. When the value and return on investment are clearly defined, organizations better prove their case.

o There is a great need to synchronize and align messaging across related sectors to amplify internal and partner strategies and reduce noise distractions that prevent successful engagement and collaboration. Crossfire can reduce effectiveness and create barriers to collaboration.

Asset Mapping o It is difficult to know the capabilities of all

partners within the group, which makes it challenging to leverage the assets for maximum effect.

o Identifying each other's key strengths and core competencies showcases what can best contribute to the effort and helps alert partners to "third rail" danger areas. In addition, better cross utilization of abilities amplifies the overall efforts.

o Synchronizing assets sets the conditions for heightened collective impact, mission alignment and better data capture to measure success.

o Utilizing existing resource lists and asset maps as a starting point makes this easier.

White Oak Consortium o Formalizing White Oak could provide benefits

to individual organizations, collaborative initiatives and the overall military support narrative.

o Technology solutions that optimize communication channels, share relevant data and allocate resources between meetings would better maintain focus on consensus topics.

o Intermediary meetings between retreats would facilitate priority development and execution of issues identified at the retreats, as well as continue to foster relationship building.

At the conclusion of the White Oak Retreat, event organizers and remaining attendees gathered for a final session to gain commitment to areas of consensus requiring future attention beyond the convening. Personal and organizational commitments were made to take action on fundamental next steps to advance the work of White Oak. These voluntary leads will be confirmed before final action.

Supporting soldiers, veterans and their families is an American conversation. Its a public conversation.

Its a government conversation. Its a private conversation. If we dont have itwe are

going to get it wrong.

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The key results of this discussion include:

Utilize the Philanthropy-Joining Forces Impact Pledge event in May 2015 to craft a playbook of best practices for funders and communities. It should incorporate grass-roots lessons learned, an opportunity for customer inclusion in the feedback loop and a method of evaluating participating groups. Share this with all White Oak entities and others willing to implement identified action items in their organizations to promote scalable programs that advance the field.

Invite White Oak member organizations to a deep dive event in the next three months that will create a continued opportunity to learn about our capabilities and find areas of consensus goals in order to align messaging. Develop a wiki-like compendium of organizational missions, asset mapping and core competencies to share with other White Oak participants. Identify the top 3-5 consensus messages that support the good of the whole and complement the good of individual organizations.

Leverage participation of White Oak members at relevant convenings such as Purdue Universitys upcoming Family Risk and Resilience Symposium to formalize the accounting of the experiences, hardships and successes of an at war military population. Harness technology, partnership and research capabilities to catalog this information and make the case for gaps in services and create a best practices road map for future conflicts.

Support initiatives to train and empower veterans and families in the political arena as both advocates and candidates. Prepare a white paper designed to educate candidates about the current and emerging needs of those in the military space. Invite candidates to sign a pledge of support for military/veteran affairs and appoint a military/veteran affairs policy advisor position within their campaign structure.

Engage with new Joining Forces Executive Director to energize a fourth-quarter wrap up of PSD-9 and Joining Forces. Find the path to making this body of work relevant for future administrations. Extract the data and lessons learned to lay the groundwork for strategic leadership opportunities across the spectrum within the confines of a similar program or initiative.

Compile existing research data from White Oak participants to create a collective analysis. Metrics like this should generate talking points for the consortium to integrate into individual and shared messaging channels. This level of analysis will quantify the gap, measure the delta and open the door for big data mining pictures to emerge.

Conclusion: Participants at White Oak IV attribute the robust nature and scale of this year's identified collective impact areas to a deeper level of trust between member organizations and a better understanding of their mutual affinity and capabilities within this space. Most agreed that we are at an inflection point with pending changes in the administration. This presents an opportunity to shape the narrative and influence the platform of all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, to ensure military family programs continue to receive support. Strategic philanthropy should drive the joint efforts of White Oak as a change agent. While many significant areas of need remain in the military and veteran support community, the framework for successful partnership and strategic collaborative initiatives is securely in place. Those who attended are motivated to move forward and cultivate both change and improvement. This compilation does not necessarily reflect the opinion of all participants, and is only a summary of the basic thoughts and attitudes of the group.