The original idea was to improve communication and collaboration among colleges and universities in Los Angeles. Our goal was to “work smarter, not harder” in creating this network. There were two levels of interest.  At the institutional level, we were curious about the relationships that our counterparts had with community organizations; no one had ever asked the question or collected this data about higher education’s relationship with agencies and organizations in the City of Los Angeles. Were we all going to the same places, and does it matter? And at the individual level, our hope was that callers to any campus could ideally get a response with no more than one additional phone call through personal referrals to network members. This would increase access to complex systems of campus departments and other units.