We started with a small group, a brain trust so to speak, of six organizations that really identified the need to collaborate more effectively. At that time, during the Obama administration, we were facing large-scale reductions in force. We thought we would see almost double the number of service members coming into our communities, so we needed to prepare ourselves. And it's good to prepare ourselves, no matter what, for the future transitioning population.
We started with six organizations that were like-minded. They were willing to give up a little bit of autonomy and a little bit of their time in order to make the community more effective and a lot more collaborative. When we did that, everyone else.... It was the Field of Dreams concept—the Kevin Costner movie—“If you build it, they will come.” Sure enough, once we built it, we all moved in together instead of being located all over town, which had made it very difficult for service members to access those services provided. We co-located, and when we did that, everybody wanted to be a part of it. We grew from six to 40 within a year.