Active Minds, Inc.

To reverse these trends, our societal norms around mental health must improve. Until mental health is valued and prioritized, we will not create sustained change. This includes ensuring:
● our youth & young adults have access to mental health information--including preventative education,
● that they know what supports would be appropriate for their needs at any level of need,
● and that they can access those supports when they need them.

A key factor in enabling this change is that youth & young adults have access to peers who can promote positive norms and beliefs about mental health norms. Research shows that in times of need, youth prefer to talk to peers rather than a professional or adult. Our institutions & systems must enable and facilitate help-seeking behaviors.

Most importantly though, we need to engage youth & young adults as a key part of the solution. Young people know best what they need; it is time that we empower them to voice their needs, inform the solutions, and give them tools and paths for change.

While there is much work to be done, Active Minds is uniquely positioned to catalyze change. For 20 years, Active Minds has held a unique position in the mental health field, empowering young adults themselves to change the conversation around mental health. Our presence is far-reaching, with active participants on more than 600+ college campuses, and a growing reach in grades 6-12 throughout the country—with a goal of reaching 1,000 middle and high schools in the next two years. We also operate several nationally renowned programs that are influencing the narrative on youth & young adult mental health, leading to changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors towards mental health as demonstrated by a 2019 study by RAND of Active Minds work.

We are building on our strong foundation of educating youth & young adults in order to create even greater impact by inspiring action that ultimately changes norms and behaviors of individuals, communities, and systems around mental health. Ultimately, we seek for our work to create a movement that forever changes how mental health is valued and prioritized.

Our work is about empowerment and mobilization of youth & young adults. Active Minds’ focus is amplifying the collective, diverse voice of youth and young adults to build a movement of lasting champions who improve mental health.

This exciting and important work reflects our journey to change the conversation around mental health. It also fills a critical gap in the space today; despite the many organizations providing education on mental health and enabling supports, without a movement that inspires and demands change, we fear that our country will not have the watershed moment it needs to create sustained change around the state of mental health for our youth & young adults.

Our Theory of Change highlights key elements of how we will pursue our intended impact, prioritizing equity to represent and reach BIPOC and LGBTQ+ youth.

Our Theory of Change highlights three key elements of how we pursue our intended impact:
● We connect, unify, and support a network of mental health champions
● We equip them with the knowledge, tools, and resources to influence their spheres now and into the future
● We activate them to share their voices publicly and mobilize them to create change amongst their peers, institutions, and communities.

Underpinning all of these approaches, we prioritize equity by tailoring our work to represent and reach BIPOC & LGBTQ+ youth. There are a few important elements of our strategic work to highlight: our focus on mobilization, especially with youth & young adults ages 14-25, and our focus on equity.

Mobilization: We define mobilization as a group of people coming together to take individual and/or collective actions towards a shared purpose or goal. Active Minds prepares and organizes youth and young adults to mobilize—with the goal of creating a movement of mental health champions that improve mental health norms.

We define mental health champions as individuals that i) are informed about mental health needs & supports, ii) seek opportunities to educate peers & networks, and iii) participate in individual and/or collection action to change mental health norms in their own lives and in their communities and systems.

Youth & young adults ages 14-25: Our experience and research tells us that age 14-25 is the prime age to engage in mobilization. This age range is part of Gen Z—a generation that is known to be hungry for change (Francis and Hoefel). Gen Z has already gained a reputation for being passionate collective activists, driven by the desire for change on key issues including climate, reproductive rights, and gun control. Additionally, age 14 is typically the point at which young people have enough knowledge, maturity, and access to channels and media to be able to participate in mobilizing. Finally, given the data of the increasing mental health needs of youth in these ages as well as the power of peers, young people will be able to speak to their needs and the perspective of their peers. Young people within this range of 14-25 are well-positioned, well-equipped, and have the drive to understand and vocalize their needs to influence peers, institutions, and communities.

Equity: We take a purposeful equity lens by tailoring our work to represent and reach BIPOC and LGBTQ+ youth & young adults. The data reveal that BIPOC and LGBTQ+ youth & young adults are facing more barriers than others, making it less likely that youth & young adults with these identities can access the care they need. We strongly believe that it is critical that we not only recognize these disparities but that we ensure that our approach leads to more equitable mental health outcomes. Active Minds monitors the state of youth mental health and regularly confirm the populations where we can have the greatest impact.

Across our strategic priorities, Active Minds is continually expanding its internal capacities to meet our goals. Led by Alison Malmon, our Founder and Executive Director; our Board of Directors; and Student Advisory Committee, we are focusing our capacity-building work within the following key areas:

An interdisciplinary team of Programs and Marketing staff aimed squarely at mobilization of youth & young people and a fully-staffed Research and Evaluation Team to develop robust measurement systems and practices in place for measuring against our Theory of Change.

A 50+ team of staff with the necessary skills and training to execute on our core work, supplemented by key hires to strengthen our capabilities. This is all supported by an organizational culture that nurtures a strong, diverse team.

Active youth and young adult leadership bodies, including the Active Minds Student Advisory Committee, the Active Minds Student Ambassadors, and project-specific cohorts of youth established to ensure deep engagement with BIPOC and LGBTQ+ youth to center their needs and perspectives.

A reliable, sustainable set of revenue sources including but not limited to individual and major gift donors, foundation support and corporate partnerships, event-based and peer-to-peer fundraising, and fee-for-service programming.

There are risks that come along with executing our strategy. Creating an effective movement of youth and young adult mental health champions is an ambitious goal that stretches us and takes time, effort, and learning. We carefully consider how to innovate and respond to the needs of the individuals and groups who Active Minds can reach, knowing that we will need to remain flexible and responsive to their specific needs. We are also developing new methods and measures of tracking our impact and progress.

We know that it will take more than just five years to achieve our intended impact, but we are excited about the direction we have identified to take our impact to the next level. We seek to build an organization that will drive impact in mental health for decades to come. In the near-term, this requires methodical, sustainable growth over the next five years. This is a season of living into our new Theory of Change, learning how to mobilize with excellence, and building the functions and teams that will support this mission. We are equipped and eager to build upon our years of experience and our recent growth to build the foundation for Active Minds’ future, focused on creating a movement that forever changes how mental health is valued and prioritized.

Over the next several years, Active Minds is working to enhance and adjust the programs we offer in three ways:
1. Aim programs towards youth & young adult mobilization, aligned towards the approaches laid out in our new Theory of Change (“our work”)
2. Position programs to measure our impact in collaboration with the Research & Evaluation team and to sharpen our perspective of what is necessary to successfully mobilize youth & young adults
3. Purposefully apply an equity lens in programmatic work, taking steps to ensure programming both reflects and resonates with BIPOC and LGBTQ+ youth & young adults

Through this sharpening, Active Minds will establish a strong foundation towards our ultimate goal of building a movement that forever changes how mental health is valued and prioritized. To build this movement, our programs will focus on preparing youth & young adults to be champions and leaders in their peer groups, communities, and institutions/systems. With this context, we have reviewed our portfolio of programs and identified four central paths forward:

a) Double down on programs that are most aligned with our theory of change, including our school-based chapter programming & supports and our direct-to-youth resources to ensure they foster deeper youth engagement to enable mobilization. We will also design & implement youth leadership trainings focused on equipping youth with knowledge and skills needed to be effective mental health champions and to drive the movement forward.

b) Pilot adjustments to some of our other existing programs with the goal of deepening impact and driving sustainability, including Send Silence Packing, Active Minds Speakers, and Emerging Scholars.

c) Explore emerging areas of focus, including our work in policy & advocacy and workforce development. Both efforts target critical barriers to accessing mental health supports today and we expect that we can play an important role and we are eager to learn and adjust our approach based on our early implementation.

d) Discontinue or limit programs that are not as well-aligned to our new theory of change.

Over time, we will continue to evolve our perspective on best-in-class mobilization strategies and calls-to-action, as well as the dynamic needs of youth & young adults, to ensure that we are effectively amplifying their voices and centering our work on the most effective approaches.

We will also ensure that Active Minds has sufficient financial resources to sustainably execute our ambitious strategy. To this end, we will continue to assess and evolve our funding model and build on existing efforts to strengthen our development capabilities. This includes maintaining strong relationships from valued supporters as well as exploring and establishing new sources of funding.

Finally, we will continue to assess and evaluate our role and influence in the youth & young adult mental health ecosystem, aiming to speak up as a unique voice and amplify youth perspectives.