Since its early years, the Blue Shield of California Foundation (BSCF) has been strongly committed to ending domestic violence (DV) in California. This commitment to large-scale social change has led the Foundation to adopt a field-level lens for creating the conditions necessary for DV leaders and organizations to become more effective in addressing domestic violence.

In response to a comprehensive scan of the strengths and needs of the DV field in California, the Foundation launched a bold, multi-million, five-year initiative called the Strong Field Project (SFP) in 2010. The SFP's ultimate goal was to strengthen a DV field that is "equipped with a critical mass of diverse leaders and organizations with sufficient capacity and the right support, tools, skills and knowledge to lead a stronger movement forward to prevent and end DV." The SFP has a three-pronged approach: (1) leadership development program (LDP), (2) organizational strengthening grants (OSG), and (3) networking building and knowledge sharing (NBKS).

BSCF engaged Social Policy Research Associates (SPR) to assess the SFP's impact and contributions to strengthening the DV field. In this final initiative report, we look at the legacy of the SFP at the individual, organizational, and field levels and implications for the field as leaders move beyond the SFP to make their own legacy.

SPR used various methods to assess progress towards the major SFP outcomes. These included (1) interviews with 66 SFP participants, alumni, Advisory Group members, Coordinating Committee members, and DV field leaders; (2) an SFP Alumni Follow-up Survey, (3) LDP organizational case studies; and (4) information gathered from training evaluations, pre and post assessments, observations, and document review.