4BI ANNOUNCEMENT!
Dignity Best Practices and Fourth Branch Institute are delighted to announce that we have formally joined our two non-profits into one shared organization.
As of March 1, we are operating together as Dignity Best Practices. Fourth Branch work is a permanent programmatic effort - The Fourth Branch Institute at Dignity Best Practices.
Our missions are sufficiently well aligned that this merger allows us to pool our experience and perspectives, share administrative resources, and benefit from deeper collaboration and more ambitious proposal-building.
We expect to jointly have a larger impact than we would separately. We will continue our work as implementation experts to help cities and counties build the best fit response capabilities for crisis and conflict calls. Our shared goal is to see unarmed mobile community response teams (with behavioral health and mediation training) become just as standard as police and fire in our public safety first response ecosystems.
Our services will continue to provide guidance, training, and implementation technical assistance to 911, 988, and mobile teams to help launch and improve unarmed responses, while building and maintaining trust with first response colleagues in police, fire, and EMS.
The value created by our combination is in our people, experience, and partnerships.
From the 4BI side, we are excited to join with:
We also value, collaborate with, and happily recommend working with many other key partners in our space, including NYU Policing Project, Georgetown CICS, AMSA, LEAP, SAMHSA, NAFCM, Vera Institute, U Chicago Health Lab, Harvard GPL, Center for Policing Equity, Local Progress, Wayne State School of Social Work, CIT International, Council of State Governments. Both of these organizations worked with these partners before, and look forward to continuing that collaborative spirit as a joint organization.
We would love to support your efforts as well! We look forward to continuing to be strong partners to local governments and others in our field throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Kind regards, Dan and Claire
As of March 1, we are operating together as Dignity Best Practices. Fourth Branch work is a permanent programmatic effort - The Fourth Branch Institute at Dignity Best Practices.
Our missions are sufficiently well aligned that this merger allows us to pool our experience and perspectives, share administrative resources, and benefit from deeper collaboration and more ambitious proposal-building.
We expect to jointly have a larger impact than we would separately. We will continue our work as implementation experts to help cities and counties build the best fit response capabilities for crisis and conflict calls. Our shared goal is to see unarmed mobile community response teams (with behavioral health and mediation training) become just as standard as police and fire in our public safety first response ecosystems.
Our services will continue to provide guidance, training, and implementation technical assistance to 911, 988, and mobile teams to help launch and improve unarmed responses, while building and maintaining trust with first response colleagues in police, fire, and EMS.
The value created by our combination is in our people, experience, and partnerships.
From the 4BI side, we are excited to join with:
- Dr. Claire Ryder (Director, Development and Strategy) - is looking forward to jumping into her passion of business development; experienced clinician and consultant who among other projects helped build the New Orleans MCIU.
- Roshan Bliss (Project Manager) - community organizer and trainer, he played a leading role in the original community-led effort to launch Denver STAR.
- Ben Brubaker (Senior Consultant) - experienced CAHOOTS responder, trainer, and leader, served for a time as the Co-Executive Director of White Bird Clinic.
- Rachel Bromberg (Senior Consultant) - social worker, attorney, founder of 4BI’s predecessor, the International Crisis Response Association, has worked toward best-fit response in Toronto and throughout the U.S. and Canada
- Alisha Nash (Development & Strategy Associate) - social worker, intervention designer, writer
- Dan Kornfield (Dignity Executive Director), former researcher, budget analyst, and police officer, has enabled alternative response programs in seven states and DC.
- Maddy Tyner (Project Manager - Field Mediation pilots) - formerly in homelessness services, leads projects to cross-train mobile teams as field mediators, connected to 911
- Sherrell Hendrix (Chief Operating Officer), experienced executive, keeps us all going
- Anthony Hall (Senior Consultant): social worker, clinician, former leader of DC’s Community Response Team, director of outreach, and a clinical director in Maryland
- Joshua Reeves (Consultant): does work with Dignity and independently, helped found the 911-dispatched Albuquerque Community Safety department as its operations lead
We also value, collaborate with, and happily recommend working with many other key partners in our space, including NYU Policing Project, Georgetown CICS, AMSA, LEAP, SAMHSA, NAFCM, Vera Institute, U Chicago Health Lab, Harvard GPL, Center for Policing Equity, Local Progress, Wayne State School of Social Work, CIT International, Council of State Governments. Both of these organizations worked with these partners before, and look forward to continuing that collaborative spirit as a joint organization.
We would love to support your efforts as well! We look forward to continuing to be strong partners to local governments and others in our field throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Kind regards, Dan and Claire
Services We Offer
COMMUNITY OF PRACTICEOur Community of Practice is open to anyone interested in this work.
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RESEARCH AND EVALUATION4BI will conduct and publish their own research and are available to partner with other organizations or municipalities for program evaluation and research on these models.
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TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE4BI consultants are available to community groups, organizations, or municipalities in developing and implementing a fourth branch to their emergency response system.
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