The West is magnificent, grand, thoroughly tough and awe-inspiring – even in places where there are human settlements.

It’s challenging for human beings to live peaceably and fruitfully on the land and with the land, but there are hopeful signs everywhere that more and more people are trying, individually and severally, to do so.

Thank the balance-of-powers-that-be-so-far that a total rape of the West has not occurred, through apparent affirmation of the enormous public interest in keeping these lands well-stewarded.  Public land and private land both, it seems to us in our limited drive-by assessment, are increasingly managed with an eye toward sustainability.

It doesn’t look as though gigantic faraway intrusive and disregarding corporate interests have completely captured the West (though I’m probably naïve).   But to the extent that they have not, we must have civic groups and nonprofit advocacy organizations to thank for maintaining vigilance, pressure, and accountability.

Networks of social of environmental indicators that actually measure the qualities of our lives and environments can be seen in snippets of local and regional newspaper coverage, with a tendency to improved reporting.

We feel grateful to have such an opportunity to explore this exceptional country.  As is evident, we feel both hope and fear, optimism and pessimism for the future.

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Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Effective Communities Project / May 20, 2013

He points to five ways that the non-profit world is explicitly kept on the sideline and rendered ineffectual by the attitudes and practices of the for-profit world.  Non-profits are forced to endure…:

• dysfunctional compensation practices that don’t reward genuine productivity that makes a difference;
• virtual prohibitions against advertising and marketing, throttling resource development;
• non-rewards and even punishment for taking risk, especially to develop new revenue streams;
• prohibitions against taking time to build the infrastructure and momentum before rewards are demanded,
• denial of profit even when plowed back into the organization, starving the sector of growth and idea capital.

These restrictions on nonprofits, imposed by traditional donors who ask innocent-seeming questions that limit support for overhead, have the effect of stifling deserving nonprofits in their pursuit of solutions to big social problems.   The nonprofit world wants these points made loudly.  If the general public understood these realities about nonprofits and the handicaps they labor with, there could well be a surge of support for the work nonprofits do, and a restructuring of the non-profit/for-profit misalignment for the better.

Pallotta creatively traces this dysfunction to the operating assumptions brought to this country by its first immigrant populations, Puritans and Calvinists, who lived and left a legacy that combined piety, ambition and shame, a combination giving rise to American philanthropy, a form of penance, he says.  If we want to make headway with the causes we fight for, we have to go beyond those inherited cultural strains and re-imagine the possibilities.

Pallotta suggests that if we could get philanthropic contributions “up to scale,” which he defines as contributions at 3% of GDP rather than 2%, the level it’s been stuck at the last several decades, 50% more resources would be available to tackle society’s problems.  And we could get there, he says, if society knew more about and fixed the dysfunctions of the non-profit/for-profit schism.

Perhaps so, but I worry that he carries forward the same mistake as our Pilgrim ancestors, assuming that money is the root of all solutions.  Is it really the case that all that’s needed is more money?  I’m not so sure.

Look at all the money held by private foundations and community foundations, all raised in the last few decades on the promise of solving these problems.  Billions.  Throw in public money and we have major mass. Yet the same huge social problems persist, and are perhaps even worse.  Why would making charitable organizations more massive be better, I wonder?  Please let’s not think that just by throwing more money in their direction we can say “problem solved” or “mission accomplished.”  Possibly, shockingly, perhaps heretically, social problems are worse because of the way we throw money at them. 

A key, I think, to fanning the flames of change Pallotta wishes to fan, is to shed light on yet another dysfunctional schism, one that operates within the world of institutional philanthropy, between grant-making foundations and grant-receiving nonprofits.

Grant-making foundations create terrible choke points in the supply of charitable dollars. Individuals give money in the hope of solving important social problems, but institutions (foundations) hold the money, investing it in questionable commercial operations that work against their very own missions, creating beautiful offices for themselves with wonderful salaries and perks, acting more like banks than like partners in problem-solving, and releasing only a trickle of cash on terrible terms to do the important work.

The donating public (most Americans), even the well-to-do donating public, doesn’t differentiate foundations from nonprofits – both are philanthropic charities in their eyes, which is largely true in the eyes of the IRS, institutional charity’s governing authority.   Yet those two sides of the philanthropic world operate at odds with each other every bit as much as the for-profit and non-profit worlds do.

Many of the inequities Pallotta points to actually stem from the practices of grant-making foundations.  It’s the private foundations, corporate foundations, and even community foundations that ask those inappropriate questions about overhead that keep nonprofit salaries low, that put nonprofits on short time lines that inhibit risk-taking and innovation, that prohibit taking in enough money to plow back into R&D.  It’s at these choke points where change must happen.

I’m not saying that nonprofits know exactly what to do to fix the problems of breast cancer, homelessness, and hunger (to draw on the same issues Pallotta cites), because they don’t yet – largely because, I believe, they’ve been denied the real opportunity to push out on these fronts.

Most people are terribly misinformed about the realities of the nonprofit marketplace, as Pallotta suggests.  If the public knew more about how the right hand (foundations) squelches the left hand (nonprofits) they would demand change.

I credit Pallotta for raising these issues, especially in articulating the historical forces that perpetuate how the profit-making side of our society’s consciousness (and marketplaces) continues to marginalize, demean, and dismiss its benevolent side.  But the goal has to go beyond that of raising more money, it has to go to investing in and testing workable solutions, just as the for-profit world is permitted to do.

Otherwise all we’ll have is a bigger nonprofit economy and the same high problem rates.

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Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Effective Communities Project / March 26, 2013

Call it the “Good particle.”

Taking the form of Einstein’s famous theorem, it looks like this:

B = Rc²

Where:

B is “Benefit.”  B expresses the smallest increment of positive change recognizable as “satisfying” to more than 50% of the people.  For example, it’s the increment of Annual Personal Income, or Emotional Intelligence, or World Peace that’s recognized as satisfying by more than half of the people.  “Change” can be to any of the indicators of quality of life recognized by the Effective Communities Project or other sanctioning body.

R is “Resources.”  Resources includes the particular set of resources directed at producing Benefit.  The directed set is drawn from the full set of resources that can conceivably be deployed, including financial, political, organizational, cultural, moral, and spiritual resources.

c is not a constant but a complex number representing momentum towards Benefit.  It’s the result of forces that accelerate — and forces that decelerate — the momentum towards Benefit.  These forces include skills, commitment, access to resources – and their opposites.

The exponent refers to the smartness of that allocation of resources.  Zero signifies random.  Whether the exponent is 2 or something else, I’m actually not quite sure.  Okay, I’m not really a physicist.

Discovery of this “Good particle” clearly merits the Nobel Prize in Economics.  Whether it will ever be found is questionable.  Perhaps building a super-collider in which resource particles chase benefit particles around a track under the Alps would hasten its discovery.

In the meantime, the theorem can be fruitfully discussed in workshops on strategic philanthropy, among donors and their staff, and in classrooms or chat-boards.  Each of the terms in the equation has its expression in every-day philanthropy of both the individual or institutional variety.  One could bet on values of B, and create B-futures markets.

One could even build grantmaking strategies around targeted values of B, speculative values of R and possible configurations of c.

Any theorem that links benefits to resources, as modified by a complex of social forces and accelerated by the intelligence of their allocation is worth considering.  Semi-seriously.

# # #

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Effective Communities Project / March 18, 2013

A truly horrible example of how wrong-headed measurement can corrupt a gigantic swath of life in our communities and in institutions we’re obliged to trust is presented in the article, “Why police lie under oath” (NYTimes, 2/3/13), by Michelle Alexander, an Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2010).

In it, Professor Alexander reports that “in this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.”  That’s because lying by police has become the norm, she (and others she cites) says – lying under oath, lying in reports, lying when representing the facts of the case, lying when apprehending completely innocent people — for the sake of making the numbers go up.   And high numbers yield rewards, recognition, and reputation.

Does this mean I’m against measurement with numbers?  No, I’m against the corruption that facile and wrong-headed measurement with numbers can induce.  And too much of what passes for measurement is facile and wrong-headed because of the honor we falsely grant to numbers.

Remember, numbers are only proxies for the real thing.  Words are too, but words suffer the reputation of being imprecise, whereas numbers bask in the reputation of at least looking precise.  In my opinion, numbers are corrupting if they don’t honor the complexity of the underlying thing being measured.  In the reported story, it’s “criminality” that’s tacitly measured by arrest rate.  Banking on one single number, like arrest rate (or achievement test score or quarterly revenue), is investing in an especially poor and thin proxy for the real thing.  Multiple measures from multiple perspectives are required to represent something like criminality (or school achievement or corporate health).

Criminality is a complex concept, not easily reducible to a single number like “arrest rate,” which as the story relates, so easily misrepresents the truth of criminality, even while it is so easily manipulated. Districts with high levels of criminality (high arrest rates) are rewarded by government grants, claims Professor Alexander, allegedly to combat that criminality.  It’s easy to move up in the competition for such grants simply by arresting more people, and making the district look more criminal.

Why not just report high numbers?  The mildly cynical would point out that falsifying records to look good and gain rewards is an age-old practice and certainly not unique to police departments.  Everyone knows stories of this kind of cheating.

But the truth told by Michelle Alexander goes much further, of police not simply reporting false numbers, but going out and falsely arresting more people — even on completely false  charges.  Because they can, with no consequence, she says.   Because of course those people are criminal, police say.  Because no one cares if these innocent people are marked criminal for life, she says.   That’s corruption, and not only are innocent lives recorded as blemished, their entry into wage-earning society is made all the harder, derailing and condemning way too many for life.

You get what you measure?  If you measure someone’s criminal behavior by arresting someone – without regard to their actual behavior, and without regard to their guilt – but just because you can, those measures not only missing the mark by an intolerably large margin, the consequences of such measurement error are severe, creating real damage.

And regrettably, we’re not even able to say that destroyed lives are “unintended consequences,” because in this story those consequences are certainly intended.  The damage to all those maliciously arrested is obvious and incalculable, and as a karmic corollary, so is the damage to the police department.  Major corruption.

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Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Effective Communities Project / February 22, 2013

And I said that in advocacy, one of the big signs of progress is demonstrably expanded and motivated networks of support for solutions to a particular social issue.

So if our issue is  homelessness, for example, and we want to advance solutions that fix the problems of homelessness, one of the big opportunities for investment is to expand and motivate a network of support to help move promising solutions to implementation, and subsequent improvement.

I see it this way:  in the world of private and civic support for improved quality of life, an encouraging sign of progress, and therefore an opportunity for further investment, is evidence of more capable, more energized, more informed, more engaged, and more influential networks of support.

For example, the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless used grant support from a number of Minnesota-based foundations*  to engage two part-time Field Organizers, as well as a Communications Director, a Policy Director, and a Field Director,  who worked to achieve this kind of progress:

Increased the number of key people who know more about and are more sympathetic or supportive about the issue.

Built new partnerships with newly-informed, energized, creative, capable, and/or connected partners through relationships built on trust.

Expanded the demographic diversity of the network, giving added legitimacy to the cause.

Cultivated, informed and engaged champions both inside and outside the halls where policy is deliberated.

Coalesced political energy that raised resources (like $40 million to bond construction and rehab of affordable housing).

Strengthened a state-wide coalition that works to generate policies, community support and local resources for housing and services to end homelessness in Minnesota.

 In my opinion, an organization that creates such progress has earned continued general  operating support.

The discerning reader can see that terms “outcomes” or “results” as conventionally used in philanthropy are limiting and insufficient since they suggest a final or conclusive state of affairs.  “Signs of progress” or “early signs of impact” are better terms since they suggest the on-going and continuous stream of events that define “change.”

The good news for trustees, evaluators, and nonprofits alike is that “signs of progress” provide better options for showing evidence, which in turn allow for more flexible and responsive metrics.  The above signs of progress would of course look different for the National Conference of Gun Violence Prevention, the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, and the Downtown Council.

But there’s nothing wrong with that; demonstrable progress is demonstrable progress.

*Bremer Foundation, The Minneapolis Foundation, Greater Minneapolis Housing Fund, Phillips Family Foundation, Northland Initiative Fund, Headwaters Foundation, and Minnesota Family Housing Fund.

# # #

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Effective Communities Project / January 30, 2013

The practice of advocacy has recently gained legitimacy and momentum as a strategy for promoting social change.  Wikipedia recognizes advocacy as “a political process by an individual or group which aims to influence public-policy and resource allocation decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions.”

I would add that influencing private policy, such as used to govern private institutions and even community and family institutions, counts as well.

Nonprofit organizations are all over advocacy these days, as a new means for promoting effectiveness in their various missions.  Changing public policy to prevent, ameliorate, or fix bad conditions (rather than the customary charitable approach of servicing victims one-at-a-time), has caught on as the more effective (and much more cost-effective) way to improve the quality of life for whole groups, populations, and regions at a time. 

It’s like public health in relation to medicine.  The practice of medicine can treat an illness one person at a time — one health professional working with one patient — such as in a clinic.  The practice of public health seeks to eliminate the illness at its source, one cause or contributor at a time, such as by eliminating unsanitary disease-bearing water, or controlling disease-bearing insects, or educating people on healthier practices.

Thinking like a public health professional is becoming useful in many other arenas of improving the public’s health…

If too many people are hungry or malnourished, let’s use the policy process to fix the food distribution systems.

If too many people are unable to find or get to meaningful work, let’s use the policy process to fix the employment and transportation systems.

If too many people are getting killed by gun-toting citizens not in well-regulated militias, let’s use the policy process to reduce the chances of innocent people getting killed that way.

Public policy plays the role of public health in this analogy.  Rather than let random or powerful systemic forces play havoc with the well-being of individuals, let’s use the wisdom of good policy, good practice, and good cultural norms to stabilize, elevate, and equalize the playing field to produce far fewer victims.

How does it work?

PolicyLink presented its Getting Equity Advocacy Results (GEAR) in 2012.  It names four interconnected components of advocacy: (1) organizing; (2) capacity building; (3) research; (4) communications – and four interconnected stages of advocacy: (1) build the base; (2) name and frame the equity solutions; (3) move the equity proposal, and (4) build, advance, and defend.

Aspen Institute presented its Advocacy Progress Planner in 2012.  Its on-line tool helps organizations track progress with: (1) goals: what change needs to happen? (2) audience: who can make it happen? (3) context: what else is going on? (4) activities: how will you get it done? (5) inputs: what do you have? what do you need? (6) benchmarks: how will you know you’re on the right track?

My own Effective Communities Project first presented its Pathways to Progress  online in 2007 to advocate and accelerate progress by philanthropic organizations in reducing racial disparities.  Key ingredients include grantmaking and institutional leadership to support: (1) emerging promising workable solutions; (2) organizations capable of moving them along; (3) relationships among key people built on trust; (4) networks and partnerships to generate public support; (5) financial, human, informational, technical, and political resources; (6) strategies for pulling these together that produce noticeable progress along the way.

Advocacy, as revealed in these three illustrations, requires intentional staging of interconnected phases playing out in time.  For grantmaking institutions, supporting and evaluating advocacy requires a different perspective than is the case with supporting service, just as supporting and evaluating public health requires different mechanisms than for medicine.

In particular, if foundations insist on one-year project horizons, supporting and evaluating advocacy requires legitimizing a different set of goals and outcomes to pursue in one-year grants but that connect over time in ways that move the strategy along. 

Progress in the advocacy and policy realm is sequenced in complex ways.  The funding model must adapt to this reality.

More on these tantalizing subjects in subsequent posts.

# # #

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Consulting Evaluator / Effective Communities Project

January 12, 2013

I find it hard to put corporate philanthropy and social justice into the same sentence.

Some louts might even say that corporate philanthropy is an oxymoron, and that social injustice is caused by corporate practices run amok.

After all, don’t so many of the thousands of documented disparities in the performance of our private markets and public systems – in their delivery of different outcomes for different groups in hiring and employment practices, salaries and benefits, and advancement opportunities, to say nothing of the harmful effects of manufacturing and marketing practices seen in neighboring communities, ecosystems, and labor markets – stem from the intensely short-term profit-driven motives of corporate executives and their shareholders?  These disparities are huge, persistent, and consistent across virtually all arenas of American life, from health to education, from economic development to criminal justice, and more.

If the role of corporate philanthropy is to do more than distract us from these realities of corporate practice, some serious revision of corporate work is needed, both in the name of philanthropy but even more in business practice-as-usual.  There must be some good examples, and perhaps Hewlett-Packard’s Digital Villages Project is the “shining example” that your practice of empowerment evaluation reveals.  If so, I share your hope for the field, and nominate three possibilities for consideration.

1. To better gauge the benefits of corporate philanthropy, there should be more widespread use of the principles of empowerment evaluation, to which you have contributed so much, in which intended beneficiaries of philanthropic gifts are included in evaluation planning and activities to better reflect their interests, knowledge, and ability to identify and analyze critical evidence.  Empowerment evaluation was apparently used to excellent effect to better understand the upsides and downsides of HP’s Digital Villages.

2. To better shape corporate practice to be less harmful and more benign, there should be more widespread use of advisory panels to study avenues for reducing disparities and improve outcomes to people and communities in those arenas directly affected by corporate decision making.  Northern States Power (now Xcel Energy) used to have a Low-Income Advisory Task Force and used it to excellent effect in shaping or reviewing corporate policy.

3. To incent corporate practice that stands to reduce harmful disparities, changes to corporate tax code (now, post-election, so open to scrutiny) should be considered.  A corporation that can demonstrate reduced disparities through changes to its practice in any of the arenas affected by its decision making should be penalized less, or rewarded more.  Financial institutions that can show changes in lending practices that are less predatory, for example, could be penalized less.  Manufacturing companies that can show changes in employment practices that make training more available could be rewarded.

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Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Effective Communities Project / December 4, 2012

Reblogged from Sketches:

Here’s a good video on the work of this network, which I had the chance to look at up close in Central and Eastern Europe some years ago.

When the central totalitarian governments in that region began to collapse in the late 1980s a huge void in governance was created, hastened and filled in by an emerging and energized civic sector.

• OSF-supported book stores in most major cities supplied books, videos and other literature to daring walk-in customers — on democracy in thought and practice, historical and current, from Western Europe and America.
• OSF-supported radio stations supplied audiences with informative programs and interviews with pro-democracy respondents (I was one), news on current civic events, giving good coverage to the work of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
• OSF-supported scholarships, fairly easy to obtain, allowed students to travel to the West and learn first-hand of the work of democracy on-the-ground and bring those lessons home.
• OSF-supported grants stimulated the rapid growth and deepening capacities of human rights, community-focused, civic-minded, and social justice NGOs throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
• OSF-supported grants helped bring in other pro-democracy foundations to stimulate the development of community, private, and corporate philanthropy in those countries.

I don’t know how a Peace Prize nomination gets placed or gains momentum, but hopefully some of my readers do.

# # #

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / November 16, 2012 / Effective Communities Project

How can we evaluate a program’s effectiveness?  I translate the question as, How can we collect good evidence of our program’s  effectiveness.  Evaluating effectiveness is all about “collecting good evidence.”

I use the term “evidence” rather than “data” to reinforce the notion that data, to be useful, must be persuasive, and support a use more than a theory.  Supporting a theory is the job of science; supporting a use is the job of evaluation.  In science we ideally construct experiments on comparison groups that we control; but in the real world such control is impractical to achieve.  Instead we have to rely on other methods (variations of interviews,  surveys, and time series analysis of performance data), and we rely on them to answer more immediate questions on value, performance, and opportunities for improvement.

I like to promote the notion that conducting a compelling evaluation inquiry more closely follows the rules of a courtroom than the rules of a scientific laboratory.    You want to find and present evidence that makes the case for effectiveness, and informs a particular decision.

For example, if the purpose of the evaluation is to decide whether or not to support a particular program or effort, the evidence must allow the reader/stakeholder to lean one way or the other and make an informed decision — a very different purpose than trying to prove the efficacy of a particular approach, a far more daunting task requiring the ground rules of science.  Moreover, the inquiry should be designed to reveal opportunities to improve the program’s effectiveness, not just give a thumbs up or down.

The more useful work of evaluation in most contexts is to allow us to improve, more than  prove, the value of a program.

If you (in your donor role) are wondering how much to support a particular program, and you want to base your decision on an evaluation, you could look for or ask for evidence that the program is actually benefiting those intended in the ways intended, and for recommendations on what would make it better.

If you (in your recipient role) are searching for donor support, you could report on the efforts that have brought you to this level of effectiveness (as seen in the evidence), and the efforts that will take you farther in making your mission come even more true.

# # #

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Effective Communities Project / November 5, 2012

Democracy – the system of governance where all eligible citizens are entitled to a voice and a vote – is enshrined in law and practice.  Utopia is not guaranteed, however.  Poverty is at the highest rate in the US in decades.  Public systems and private markets don’t perform equally well for different ethnic, racial, or cultural groups.  The talents and capacities of all our people are not fully permitted to come forward and be rewarded.

And “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?   The Declaration Initiative is a new movement that “inspires members of American communities to invest together in assuring access to the promises of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and end persistent poverty for all by July 4th, 2026.”

Such a movement presents some interesting evaluation possibilities.  How about an evaluation that is participatory, even empowering, even developing the capacities and patience of local folks for noticing, appreciating, and taking the measure of progress towards these goals?

After all, Freedom happens all the time, everywhere — at least, everywhere that people have choices.  The freedom to make choices, for oneself and family and others held dear, is the essence of Freedom.  Choices for right-this-minute, and choices for down the road.  Choices that effect one’s health, wealth, and future prospects.

Freedom to choose such everyday things as where to shop and what to buy, freedom to read what one chooses or to speak to whomever one wants (without fear), freedom to choose which good public school to send one’s child to, freedom to say Yes or No to proposed amendments to the state constitution, even the freedom to not pay attention.

People without those choices, or without the permission or ability to make them, are not living in freedom – their freedom is limited.  Wherever freedom to choose is limited (like in prison, or in a besieged resource-poor family, or life on the wrong side of the tracks), freedom is limited.  It’s the exercise of freedom, the making of choices, that defines Freedom and, we believe, the unfettered right to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Unfortunately there are places throughout this great country where people have become so accustomed or acculturated to limited options for improving their well-being they are unable to see any that might appear.  Or they are unable to communicate them to their children, and thus are not able to pass on the legacy of freedom.  Long-term, multi-generational poor families may have given up, or may no longer have an abiding belief in  opportunities for attaining life, liberty, or happiness.  And that’s why The Declaration Initiative exists.

How about an evaluation that supports the project’s mission and moves the ball forward.  How about an evaluation that encourages people – all people, any people – to become more fully aware of the choices immediately in front of them?  When we head out in the morning, we could keep a mental journal of the choices we make, especially those that stand to improve our well-being – from what to wear, what to eat, what to listen to, what to learn about, what to say and to whom, what to buy, what to give our support to — and what not to – and what happens as a result.

All of us, poor or rich, could learn from this exercise in “freedom awareness.”  I predict such an exercise would shake us all out of our doldrums, make us aware of our patterns of choice, and help us see opportunities we might not have seen before.  Just to test things or push the limits of our freedoms, we could try saying Yes to things we normally say No to, and No to things we normally say Yes to.

Students of all ages and disciplines could gather these notes and group them in different ways to provide meaning, and make presentations back to various civic gatherings.  What avenues for improving one’s circumstances became more visible, more approachable, more doable?  What are participants learning about freedom, choices made and not made, roads taken and not taken?  What are we learning about how to piece together more successful avenues for exercising our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Many kinds of organizations could contribute – from civic organizations to local colleges, especially for studies in urban or rural issues, political science, and American studies.  Some could focus on the local lessons being learned about “this is what Freedom looks like,” and “this is how exercising our choices can improve the chances for success for those we care about,” and “this is how we can affect the decisions that affect us.”   Others could try to draw the connections to such downstream metrics as voter registration, quality of life indicators, and poverty reduction.

It’s a substantial project to organize.  And forget about trying to standardize it.   On the other hand, there’s something cool about inviting Freedom by learning how to notice it.

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Effective Communities Project / October 6, 2012

So far we’re  at the concept stage, though I’m tinkering with the instrumentation, using an airplane dashboard as my main analogy. You know how when you board a commercial plane you can sometimes peer into its cockpit?  Most of us, I suspect, marvel at its complexity, and then realize there are myriad complex facets to a plane’s operation the pilot has to be constantly informed of for the mission to be successful.

The work you do as nonprofits or foundations is also complex, at least as complex as any small or large business, and maybe as complex as flying a plane.   You know that if you take your eye off just one thing, it can turn into crisis quickly, or at least distract you from straight-ahead.

I suspect the search for a helpful dashboard in community change arenas is motivated by the wish to stay on top of all the mission-critical aspects of your organization, pretty much simultaneously.  The commander of the ship needs to know certain things…

Consider these: at a minimum, you have to contend with the details of staffing and administration, to keep  your organization’s doors open, to stay on top of its growing list of short- and long-term tasks, and to grow the organization.  That’s one set of displays to monitor.

The organization also needs resources – financial, human, informational – and be able to deploy them appropriately in the service of gaining on your mission.  A second set of gauges relates to resource levels and their distribution,  flowing into something like “engaged horsepower.”

A third set would relate to the supportive context you’ve created to sustain your flight — relationships, partnerships, networks, and political capital you need to engage as you advance.

Fourth,  you need the analog to a flight plan, a theory of action and set of activities (aka “program” or “strategy”) that mixes the above forces and moves you down the road, not just accelerating down  the runway but actually allowing you to gain on the problem you’ve declared in your mission or initiative.

Of course, Charles Lindberg just looked out the window, scraping ice off with his hand, knowing little about his situation until he landed in Paris (his intended destination, miraculously) unaided in navigation except a compass.

And how will we in the nonprofit and philanthropic activist world know if we are “getting there?”  In my first post on this subject, I lamented that existing dashboards may tell you how much fuel you have and how fast you’re going, but they won’t help you navigate to a destination – until you have the philanthropic equivalent of a GPS.

The metric most in demand is the one that displays how your organization’s work moves a needle that perhaps moves another needle in one of the ways you’ve declared important in your mission statement.  A good dashboard would show something like a progress-o-meter, the big needle in the display above.   We need the equivalent of problem reduction (or opportunity enhancement) per resource expended.  That’s a distant ideal for the field of metrics, but for the field of accountability, the demand for better communication of “progress” is close at hand.  Every organization that looks outside or upstream for resources faces it.

Fortunately,  we need not operate blind in a fog bank.  What if we navigated toward a set of key social indicators?   Couldn’t those readings guide our efforts?  Homing beacons exist in the form of key social indicators (local measures of poverty, and wealth; of increased job opportunities, and unemployment; of recidivism, and successful returns to community life, etc) that are available from government agencies and universities throughout the country.

There’s still a large gap in our navigational systems – too many organizations don’t know how their organization’s activities conceivably connect up with readings on relevant social indicators.  The goal must be to narrow that gap, first in the rhetoric and then in our ability to notice and measure progress.

The value of such a complex dashboard is that it can stimulate and enhance your strategic thinking. What exactly is to be done with more staff, more money, more political capital, more effective program design that allows you to meet up with key indicators being monitored out there?  When you can answer those questions, you can tell yourself and others if you’re making progress on your mission.

Complex, yes.  But successful work in all our areas of social life that need upgrading is a complex business.  A dashboard design, if we want to improve on Lindberg’s, has to contend with these realities.

# # #

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Effective Communities Project / September 4, 2012

“There is no ‘I’ in team,” say sports coaches to their charges at all levels, and all-stars play their game and talk about it afterwards as if they believe it.

Contrast this with philanthropy, where each prospective donor is encouraged to feel that yes, indeed, “I can make a difference.”

What if instead we were encouraged to believe that thanks to the skills and efforts of our various partners joined in an effort to move the needle with a challenging social problem, we could each contribute to the win, and together take credit for our the effects of our contributions.

Am I saying donors shouldn’t want individual recognition?  No, but challenging social problems need team effort to help win the day.   Challenging social problems need a variety of skilled and hard-working partners pulling together to focus the just-right pressure in the just-right places, drawing on the just-right resources.  There are multiple roles on such a team and credit could go to each playing its role effectively.

Am I saying individual contributions don’t count?  No, it’s clear that individual contributions certainly do count, but they count in the context of the team’s overall performance, which transcends individual performance.

Am I saying that as an individual I can’t make a difference?  No, but as with professional sports, a little generosity on the ego front allows each to rise above our individual game and make a difference that counts in the overall effort.

Even pro basketball players must have to remind themselves that team work transcends individual work.  It would be easy to crow – their talents and gifts are so immense — but it would so go against the culture their coaches have inculcated in them.

Just sayin’…

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Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Effective Communities Project / August 14, 2012

I’m writing this birthday greeting in appreciation of the challenge issued by Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, of all people, who asked us all in a full page letter published in Sunday’s NY Times to commemorate what’s right with America so that we can build on those things and help repair what’s wrong.

So I intend to use this blog site, where I write “from the confluence of philanthropy, justice, and evaluation,” to proclaim the need – no, the opportunity – to fix what’s wrong with the way philanthropy attempts to fix what’s wrong.

We can indeed fix what’s wrong using the resources of philanthropy, but only if we quit the needs-based or deficits-based paradigm that so dominates the philanthropic sector, and convert it to an opportunity-based or assets-based paradigm.

I’m speaking of a shift that was first encouraged perhaps 15 years ago by Professor John McKnight and his colleagues at Northwestern University’s Center for Urban Affairs, who likened our dilemma to insisting that the glass is half-empty when it would be far more productive to insist that it’s half-full.

The half-empty paradigm insists that people and communities are broken down, riddled with nothing but deficits, inadequacies, and limitations.  The half-full paradigm insists that even the same people and neighborhoods can just as well be seen as having at least some capabilities, assets, and a horizon toward which one can advance and build strength.

Philanthropy – by which I mean the whole gamut of nonprofits, giving programs, grant making foundations – operates primarily with the half-empty, broken-down model of humanity.  The tradition is an old one, hundreds and even thousands of years old, in which “charity,” a bedrock of virtually all religious traditions, is conceived as an imperative to help those “less fortunate.”

I’m not suggesting we stop offering help to those less fortunate.  Offering help to those less fortunate is a good thing, almost certainly for the donor, and perhaps for the recipient as well, at least in the short run.  I am suggesting that strengthening the social infrastructure so that it creates more fortunate people and fewer unfortunate people is a better goal.  And I’m suggesting, in the spirit of Howard Schultz and Pres. Clinton, that philanthropic resources be directed to fixing the systems and markets that produce misfortune, rather than putting temporary Band-Aids on their victims.

Fixing systems and markets requires that we keep our eye on an indicator of vitality or prosperity (in health, or wealth, or access to opportunity) and deploy our resources in ways that stand to bend the trend the lines or move the indicator needle into more positive territory.  To bend a trend line or move an indicator needle, we have to invest resources in the social, institutional mechanisms that control those indicators.

Opportunities for investment include:

help strengthen nonprofit organizations and institutions that can develop promising solutions to bend the trend lines;

help strengthen networks of people and organizations that can educate its members and the public on such promising solutions that take advantage of opportunities for personal, family, and community development, and advocate them to our elected officials;

help strengthen networks that create more philanthropic resources that can be deployed this way;

use of strategies that create more long-term investment streams of support for the kind of infrastructure development that can actually change trend lines.

So Happy Birthday, America!  Let’s celebrate by sending birthday gifts to those organizations that are trying to change the system so that the natural talents and gifts of our people and communities can be supported and advanced.

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Steven E. Mayer / Effective Communities Project / July 4, 2012

Big problems wouldn’t be called “big problems” if they could be solved with simple short-term project grants.

It isn’t charity work that solves big problems, it’s system-change work that solves big problems. Charity addresses immediate and important needs, but it doesn’t stem the flow of needs or turn them into assets.  System-change work, done until it actually changes  systems, works.  But the system doesn’t change with just a few one-off projects; it happens when the just-right sequences of “fix-the-system” are put into play.

While this might seem obvious, it’s been difficult to sell this kind of systemic or structural view to funders, the lament continues, because funders with boards overstocked with people of privilege find it inconvenient to think systemically.  Instead funders are said to prefer short, simple projects whose outputs can be easily counted but are, because of their necessary distance from real solutions, largely meaningless, more like tokens of effort than like real currency.  Knowing such proximate outcomes may let us manage a short-term and up-close problem, but it does little to build out enduring solutions.

If it’s true that boards want piecemeal information on piecemeal projects, then boards indeed are barriers to progress; they’d be bringing simplistic, unrealistic thinking to complex problems.  We all deserve better.  It should be part of the board’s business to be helpful.

Big problems get solved only when local leadership is encouraged to organize around the implementation of promising solutions.  Organize is the key word, and organizing is the key activity to promote.  This isn’t as simple as “project management.” Constructive problem-solving doesn’t happen overnight, or without the leadership of skilled institutional and community organizers to push collectively toward real progress and impact.

This is the work of advocacy, organizing, and community leadership, and it needs to happen at all levels, at the grass-tops as well as the grass-roots.  Institutional leadership and organizing is needed at the Chamber of Commerce level, the neighborhood organizing level, and the community foundation level to help create the space and auspices to push out with  creative activity.   This is the collective work that leads to collective impact.

We need to allow and encourage a kind of community-focused R&D that digs up new ways to draw on the local talent to pull together on one of those “needles” everyone’s talking about.  We need a culture that permits solutions to flourish.

“Permitting solutions to flourish” is a mindset that board members of funding institutions, if they tried it, could probably get behind – it should cater to their sense of entrepreneurship and bravado — but it involves a real change in outlook at the board level primarily, and a real change in practice at the staff’s.  And of course, it can’t just be a slogan.

Permitting solutions to flourish requires that a funder value and encourage certain “outcomes” (I prefer to call them “signs of progress”) that they’re not so used to valuing because they don’t sound very objective.  Nevertheless, they count, and we know them when we see them.  Some outcomes or signs of progress resulting from organizing that matter:

Bridges built in the community that increase trust, increase inter-connectedness, decrease isolation, and increase mutually obvious self-interest

The right people interested and motivated to get involved and lend their talents

Commitment and participation gained from influential institutional leadership

Expectations, responsibility, and accountability created

The right people helped to understand what’s at stake, what the options are, what can be done, what roles can be played – and supported in going there

Resources collected, financial and otherwise, to be allocated smartly to different parts of the overall effort

Much more progress would be made if funders explicitly asked for and funded these kinds of outcomes. It would surely remove some key barriers to meaningful productivity in the philanthropic sector, and accelerate progress in addressing big social problems.

Grant applicants should make clear, in an effort to educate their financial partners, that these outcomes are what’s needed and opportune, and that they have the capacity to achieve them.

A stand your ground law states that a person may use force in self-defense when there is reasonable belief of a threat, without an obligation to retreat first. In some cases, a person may use deadly force in public areas without a duty to retreat.  Florida’s stand your ground legislation declares a person is justified in using force…against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force.

George Zimmerman is said to have shot and killed Trayvon Martin when Zimmerman, on patrol in his capacity as a neighborhood watch volunteer, spotted Martin and claimed to police he was acting suspiciously; when confronting him, Zimmerman allegedly shot and killed Trayvon.  When police arrived Zimmerman said he was feeling threatened and acting in self-defense; he was not arrested, and let go.

A question arises when the situation is reversed: is a black man permitted to carry a gun and use it in defense of his neighborhood whenever he feels threatened?  Can he patrol his neighborhood in search of suspicious behavior shown by, say, a suited white man driving slowly through the streets?  Can a black man say to police, without fear of arrest and prosecution, while standing over the body of the white man he just shot, “Just standing my ground, officers, acting in self-defense from this man dressed like a white man and acting suspiciously”?

The law might say Yes, he can.  The law looks race-neutral.  But I seriously doubt there’s any way the scenario of the previous paragraph would be permitted.  I suspect that most people, at least in states where this legislation has passed, blacks and whites, would say the very intent of this legislation, while not stated explicitly, is to give whites yet another tool to use the law to control blacks.

I acknowledge that putting my question and doubts out there is bold.  Am I trying to start a race war?  Do I want more white people killed just to even things up?  Of course not, I’m trying to stop a race war, to shed light on one that began hundreds of years ago with slavery, continued through the Jim Crow era, and continues through today.

I suggest our legislatures take steps to ensure that the intent and enforcement of this law – of all laws –  is no more harmful to one group than another.  This “stand your ground” law, enforced selectively, practically declares open season on black men, a notion reinforced by this inserted image of a gun range target sold openly in Orlando, in the same state  where Trayvon Martin was killed.

It will take activist nonprofits and activist funders to push against this legislation and to insist on equity in law enforcement and law enactment.  Is that a proper role for nonprofits and funders?  Absolutely; let’s recognize that two of the principle parties advocating for stand your ground legislation are themselves part of the nonprofit sector, 501(c)3 tax-exempt organizations supported by donations from individuals and foundations — the National Rifle Association, and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

A law-by-law and state-by-state evaluation of disparate impact of law enforcement will reveal where progress most needs to be made.

* * *

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Effective Communities Project / May 13, 2012

It will also be the first assigned reading in my upcoming class, “Program Development and Evaluation,” offered this Fall by Johns Hopkins University through its Advanced Academic Programs, one of six courses leading to a graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management.

I will need something, and this fills the bill nicely, to help students appreciate that the business sector doesn’t hold a monopoly on effectiveness, and excellence is not uniquely a business concept.  It would be as absurd to argue that the primary path to greatness in the business sector is to become more like a charity.  The fact is that a great many organizations from both sectors are simply mediocre, because their practices are mediocre.  Collins explains this very nicely, in both his books.

For the social sectors, Collins puts forth five principles, the first one — the necessity of defining “great” without business metrics – setting the stage nicely for explorations of evaluating effectiveness in the public and nonprofit realm.

Collins continues, “To throw our hands up and say we cannot measure performance in the social sectors the way you can in a business is simply a lack of discipline. … It doesn’t really matter whether you can quantify your results.  What matters is that you rigorously assemble evidence – quantitative or qualitative – to track your progress.  If the evidence is primarily qualitative, think like a trial lawyer assembling the combined body of evidence.  If the evidence is primarily quantitative, then think of yourself as a laboratory scientist assembling and assessing the data.”

I’ve espoused this principle for years, first in a 1983 project that mimicked a courtroom presentation of evidence on the merits of a school-based drug prevention program, using a model advanced by the National Science Foundation.  “Pretend you’ve been accused of running a trivial or ineffective program – what evidence can you marshal in your defense,” I ask.

This – the presentation of worthwhile evidence of effectiveness – will be one of the core themes of my class at Hopkins. The course is one of six required for a Certificate in Nonprofit Management, a program developed for Johns Hopkins by Char Mollison, a former Vice President at the Council on Foundations.  As the program materials say, “The fully online Certificate in Nonprofit Management recognizes the substantial role nonprofits play in the formulation and delivery of public services, and as vehicles for citizen influence and expression.

“The coursework focuses on building the specific analytical and management skills needed by those assuming leadership roles in a variety of nonprofit fields. All the courses feature a global perspective for relevance in today’s world of interconnected economies and communication.”

Preparing and then presenting the course on nonprofit and public program development and evaluation will provide me many opportunities to create blog posts informing the larger themes of JustPhilanthropy.org.  Who knows – maybe someday there’ll be an online course on philanthropy, justice, and evaluation.

# # #

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Effectiveness Communities Project / April 18, 2012

It’s hard to see racism when you’re White is no doubt true, but not because Whites are stupid.  It’s because,  just as fish will be the last to discover water, Whites are so enmeshed in the systems we created that we can’t see how it works in our favor.  We’re just too close.

Society’s systems and markets for housing, finance, employment, law enforcement, economic development, etc are riddled with privileges that favor Whites as a group over other groups, on average, as virtually every study in these arenas shows.  These differences in the ground-rules are barriers to more equitable outcomes, and form a pattern of institutional racism that is typically unseen and unacknowledged by Whites, as the billboards point out, because we’re just too close.

Racism isn’t only about hateful attitudes, or intelligence, it’s about the unfair performance of our society’s systems.  Exposing the privileges enjoyed by Whites – not all Whites, of course, but on average — is a challenge in the face of emotional, angry resistance by Whites who refuse to look or listen.

Of course lingering in the land of anger and resentment is counter-productive. Anti-racism workshops or white privilege workshops can begin to open minds and hearts, but only if minds and hearts are willing to open.

What else can be done?  If institutional barriers to fairness is the problem in our systems of economic development, justice, school-to-life pathways, etc., then how about some fair-minded folk coming together to focus some creative energy on the institutional barriers themselves – forget the feelings — and promote some fixes?  That seems more productive than provoking people (though some say, with justification, you have to provoke some people first to rouse them from slumber, get their attention, and inspire them to act).

Pushing for change in these systems will require pressure from outside and leadership from inside these institutions.  Also needed is community leadership, some good ideas for improving policy and practice that could productively address the equity issues, perhaps one barrier at a time in one arena at a time.  See my two most recent posts, here and here.

This in turn requires sustained energy, leadership, and resources.  The Monday morning evaluation discussions should focus on “Are we making progress in addressing this particular equity issue?”   Participants should come prepared to discuss, “Are we getting to know a promising leverage point — the just-right tweak to the policies and practices that determine how decisions get made?” “Do we have the just-right partners to move these changes along,” and “Will our people understand how this is a win-win solution?”

Philanthropy, in the form of precisely-targeted gifts to the right organizations, can support these activities.

* * *

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / February 23, 2012 / JustPhilanthropy.org

Truthfully, there are an amazing number of legal impediments “in the area of discrimination.”   Take housing — while it’s possible that a person of color, let’s say African-American, who has found the home he/she wants to buy and who has the full purchase price in hand may be able to buy without legal impediment, this situation is far from typical.

Studies consistently show that African-Americans looking for a home are steered away by realtors from largely White neighborhoods into predominantly Black neighborhoods, yet this is illegal.  Studies also show that African-Americans are more frequently denied mortgages or given mortgages with more onerous terms even when they present the same qualifications as Whites, and this is illegal too.

The recent mortgage foreclosure crisis has revealed other problems.  African-Americans are faced with more predatory loan practices, and African-Americans at risk of defaulting on their mortgage are less frequently helped and therefore pushed into default than Whites in the same predicament.   The rental market shows additional problems of discrimination, with disproportionate harassment by landlords leading to eviction.

It’s very common for people to think that such problems don’t happen in their community, even when the data (and other people’s experience) show otherwise.  While the efforts by ERASE Racism reported in my post are limited to discrimination in one region of New York (and who thinks such problems exist on Long Island, of all places?!), these same problems of lax enforcement of fair housing laws are found virtually everywhere.

Here is the link to Montgomery County’s (where Chevy Chase is located) fair housing enforcement efforts, and here, for the sake of comparison, is New Orleans.  For more on fair housing enforcement and advocacy see here and here.

It has taken the efforts of advocacy organizations such as ERASE Racism to insist on better rules and more effective law enforcement.  Every state and city has such advocacy efforts, which are typically non-profit organizations funded largely by philanthropy, from individual donors to local and national foundations, on web pages like this.

The reality of unfair housing discrimination even after it was made illegal shows the persistence of the problem.  Housing discrimination is an arena like others where perhaps well-meaning people who don’t think of themselves as racist nevertheless benefit from a system that produces results that favor Whites over others.  I’m not suggesting such people are racist, but that the (housing and finance) systems are racist; this is referred to as institutional or structural racism.  Worsening the problem is that solutions that ignore race in favor of income, class, poverty, or opportunity are inadequate for erasing the racism that remains.

* * *

Posted by Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / February 13, 2012

Strong language, almost shocking in its clarity.  It’s how Elaine Gross of ERASE Racism begins her January “Message from the President.”

ERASE Racism is a regional organization (based in Nassau County on Long Island, NY) that leads public policy advocacy campaigns to promote racial equity in areas such as housing, community development, public school education and public health.

Its M.O. is to work directly against the formal, legalized barriers to equity and the disparate impacts of seemingly benign policies and actions.  If public officials have used the rule of law to deny equal opportunities to African Americans, as her introductory statement charges, one must direct efforts to re-design the rules of law to be more equitable.  Sometimes the problem is badly conceived law, other times it’s badly implemented law enforcement, but the two together have led to wide disparities in housing, community development, public school education, and public health.

Working with data and the power of persuasion, “we expose forms of racial discrimination and advocate for laws and policies that help eliminate racial disparities,”  Ms. Gross says.

Three important victories:

Through its participation in a governor-appointed Regional Economic Development Council, ERASE Racism was a leader in  inserting policy language that “increases the diversity of Long Island housing stock by producing affordable non-age restricted rental housing, affirmatively marketed, and without residency requirements.”

Its research report, “Long Island Fair Housing: A State of Inequity,” along with a press conference and coverage from Newsday, Long Island’s daily newspaper, educated a largely-surprised Long Island audience on the extent of housing segregation throughout Nassau and Suffolk counties.  Momentum was created and co-operation gained  from Nassau county leadership at the highest levels, resulting in  new “fair housing” laws that provide an administrative enforcement system and strong civil penalties for violations.

In marking the 50^th anniversary of the groundbreaking Supreme Court school desegregation case, ERASE Racism brought together local colleges and universities, developed a conference and monograph, “Brown v. Board of Education: The Unfinished Agenda,” which attracted over 600 people.  It increasingly engages those in the region about the need for  structural changes in the public education system.  One current project: developing an index to monitor disparities on the input side of public education, such as disparate college readiness curriculum, disparate teacher quality, and disparate levels of poverty, all of which in turn correlate with disparate student outcomes.

In discussing these with me, Ms. Gross concluded with these important lessons. “It’s very easy to miss the mark in addressing structural impediments to equity if one is not looking very specifically at race.  One can substitute the language of economic disparities, or talk of the benefits of diversity, but one still has to look at the racial equity impact of policy decisions.  And in doing that one has to be straightforward and persistent.  It’s not only the work that gets you into headlines that’s important, it’s laying the groundwork, building the relationships, connecting with people who can do the heavy lifting that’s important.  And having funders that recognize the value of these steps.”

February 3, 2012 / Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D.

But that’s what the Duluth-Superior Area Community Foundation did.  Its motivation to make evident the benefits of its work lay in its own convictions:

1. that discretionary grantmaking can be powerful, especially if pursued through five fields of interest in which the nonprofit communities themselves get to define and promote their own goals.
2. that the CF’s  core values of Generosity, Inclusiveness and Engagement are excellent values to promote through the discretionary funds and leadership role of a regional community foundation.
3. that development of more discretionary funds is in the community’s best interest and therefore a priority of the community foundation.

DSACF hired us, the Effective Communities Project, to address these evaluation opportunities, which we did through a series of focus groups to nominate the primary qualities of “benefit” experienced by recipient organizations, followed by an on-line survey of these recipients to estimate the extent of these particular benefits.

It worked out well.  Almost all recipients of grants from discretionary funds were included in the project.  They certainly got the message that the CF cares, that it listens, that it wants to learn, and that it sees itself as partner in the quest to legitimize and secure  discretionary funds that benefit the region.   Through this evaluation inquiry the CF could  show its colors and hear well-expressed views of what community benefit looks like in its region.   The focus groups in particular became a series of organizational learning events, with sharing across organizational boundaries, and highlighting themes around which the CF can communicate its value.

Another thing.  As DSACF’s vision statement makes clear, the values of Generosity, Inclusion and Engagement are important ones for the region.   Since we already had grantees’ attention, staff and board wanted us to check out how well these key values are playing out and being influential.  Here, too, it became clear that it was  beneficial simply having the discussion about what generosity, inclusion, and engagement even look like at a community or organizational level.  One could easily say these discussions themselves manifest generosity, inclusion, and engagement!

Several lessons for discretionary fund development became clear as well.  The stories of accomplishment told by focus group participants make very clear the value of discretionary grants.  From these stories Effective Communities Project could present specifics, themes, and numbers – which all make great talking points to any prospective donor.

In addition to these immediate benefits, which (BTW, for those evaluators present) flow directly from the process of this inquiry, came a number of suggestions for beefing up the CF’s grantmaking policies and practices. Completed in October, the report of findings and suggestions  are being studied and discussed by staff, and then committee, and then full board – and then a larger public.

* * *

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / January 16, 2012

Pathways to Progress: Focusing Philanthropy on Racial Equity and Social Justice (pdf) is the culmination of this work, drawing lessons from Ford’s portfolio of grants, “Community Philanthropy and Racial Equity in the American South.”

Formerly a website and now a downloadable document, “Pathways to Progress” presents broad strategies by which progress gets made in social change efforts using philanthropic resources.   We think it has application to addressing a variety of inequities, not only those framed in racial terms.

The analysis is based on reflective conversations conducted by our team (including Betty Emarita and Dr. Vanessa Stephens) with nearly 100 philanthropic organizations operating in both African American and White American settings.  We grounded our inquiry in the ultimate goal of closing “gaps” or “disparities”– those long-standing differences in group averages that indicate inequitable or unfair public systems and private market performance – and the challenge to philanthropy to help in that work.

What do philanthropic organizations do to close such gaps?  We present six pathways to progress that summarize how philanthropic resources are used with the intent, ultimately, of creating improvements to the benefits or outcomes along more equitable lines.   The six pathways:

1. Preparing the organization to address tough issues like social justice and racial equity
2. Building trust – talking safely and listening productively to difficulties and opportunities
3. Advancing solutions that stand to close disparities
4. Strengthening relationships, networks, and leadership
5. Increasing resources that can be deployed to address disparities and gaps
6. Combining the above to move the needles that measure system performance

The six pathways are not intended to be undertaken serially.  Rather, they represent interconnected strands that combine and recombine at different points, as with DNA, to produce a level of effort that moves those needles or metrics indicating the state of our systems.  If there’s not much interconnection of efforts, real change is unlikely to happen.

For each of the six pathways, we present a set of promising practices drawing on examples from the field as well as links to practitioner organizations.  We also include benchmarks by which initiatives to reduce inequity can be measured as well as links to short essays and tools allowing you to go deeper on key topics, including papers written by our team.

The answer to our opening question is “Yes, philanthropy can help.”  If only the piecemeal or independent efforts that currently dot the landscape could be strung together more intentionally to create more powerful efforts that create collective impact – impact that actually moves the needles indicating more equitable system and market performance –we’d see real progress, and much more effective use of philanthropic resources.

Using the Pathways as the backdrop or lens for creating meaningful strategy – making grants that collectively produce efforts with real power behind them — could make a big difference.    Some of this thinking is elaborated in Wanted: Better Evaluation Practices for Better Philanthropy.

More impactful philanthropy requires a style different from the prevailing one, which involves piecemeal, independent, and scattered efforts.   Our communities need sustained, change-focused efforts that engage a variety of essential players pushing together against the creaky mechanisms that maintain the status quo.  My hope is that foundations are open to inviting and receiving such proposals.

You can download “Pathways to Progress” here.

# # #

Steven E. Mayer / November 14, 2011

As this blog  is active at the confluence of philanthropy, justice, and evaluation, it would seem the OWS movement is fair game for discussion.  Though OWS has allegedly fuzzy goals and no apparent management structure as traditionally understood, does that mean it can’t be evaluated?   No.

In the spirit of advancing the state of the art of evaluating social change movements (a very undeveloped art at this point), I would put forward three criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of this particular movement at this particular point in time.  I base these solely on my own understanding of OWS as gleaned from the media and reading the signs, and not any insider knowledge.  

1) Growing recognition and ownership of OWS’ message.  Job One of OWS seems to be to help “the 99%” recognize the ways we’ve been abused by The System, and to be in touch with our outrage enough to demand changes in the ways The System works.  An evaluation question is, then, Is there growing recognition that the issues OWS is talking about relates to each of us, as members of the 99%?  Do I know the list of particular abuses OWS says we have experienced at the hands of the 1%?  Some, but not clearly.  And do I share in the feeling of unfairness that such abuse creates?  Yes, but I’m not sure I know how to express my outrage appropriately or productively.  So, OWS has some work to do, if my own data points are illustrative.  Carefully worded surveys and focus group discussions should provide evidence of how well OWS’ message has penetrated the hearts and minds of those it intends to speak for.

2) Growing support of the movement.   Support of the movement can be measured in many ways, not just the obvious one of crowd size (which may even be the least valid indicator of OWS success).  Evidence that could be gleaned from well-crafted surveys or polls: Numbers of people listening with an intent to understand; numbers of people identifying with intent of OWS, and cheering it on; numbers of people supporting participants with food, shelter, money, etc; numbers of people passing on the messages of OWS to others; growing access to media of various types and to people, institutions, or networks of influence.  Measuring a “groundswell of support” is an underdeveloped art, but we all know such a groundswell when we feel it.

3) Growing influence of the movement.  It may not be realistic to expect OWS, as a protest movement, to produce specific proposals or plans for fixing the systems.  Fixing the systems is more the job of people who own and keep the systems.  At this point, such people haven’t felt the desirability of moving ahead with such a change agenda.  OWS could be evaluated, then, on how well it makes its grievances known such that those with influence in policy setting circles take constructive action that closes the alleged systemic disparities at the heart of OWS’ message.  At this point, the media have provided a good deal of coverage of this movement.   Other signs of progress:  the conversation has changed, not just in the media but also at café gatherings, tailgating events, and cocktail parties.  As for influence that goes beyond talk into the realms where policy and practice can change, OWS hasn’t succeeded, to my knowledge,  much beyond head-scratching by those in charge, who ask themselves bemusedly, “What do these people want?”

In writing this blog, I find myself giving OWS passing grades so far, and recommending that greater effectiveness will come when OWS pushes out on the above three criteria.  The three sort of cascade, the first enabling the second, which enables the third.  The first is key, and so far underdeveloped, in my opinion.  Until there’s greater movement on all three fronts, OWS is little more than a consciousness-raising event.  Which isn’t all ineffectual…

# # #

Steven E. Mayer / Effective Communities Project / October 27, 2011

Consider a charity that provides hot meals.  Maybe it could design a project that not only provides hot meals but also, in the process of developing this project, allows it to create stronger connections with local food sources it didn’t have before, that can be drawn on in the future.  Or maybe it could be done in ways that give it another card to play in its communications and fund-raising efforts, or its board development efforts.  These “outcomes” strengthen the organization above and beyond what a simple grant to provide hot meals in its usual way achieves.

Or consider an advocacy organization that wants to grade its state legislature’s work – creating a legislative report card while at the same time using the grant to train legislative aides, to attract new donors who care about legislative issues, and to create stronger advocacy efforts.  Such a grant yields much greater benefit per charitable dollar spent.

The Mittenthal principle encourages grantmakers to coax multiple benefits from their grants and grantees, and helps grow the organizational capacities of the nonprofits  it cares about.

A project that delivers something important can be designed to strengthen at least one of these important organizational capacities:

• Increasing board and/or staff skills
• Creating efficiencies in program or financial administration
• Raising financial or political capital
• Strengthening connections with allied organizations or agencies
• Communications with key stakeholders
• Positioning and marketing the organization

Maybe we could host a competition, the next version of Effective Communities Project‘s  Effies (TM) Award for Effective Philanthropic Practice.  We could award prizes to organizations that maximize organizational gains from a single grant.  The most organizational strengthening from a project grant gets first prize.  If someone would step up with prize money, we could award more than just publicity to notable efforts.

• It should allow the grantee organization to deliver something valuable to its constituents or stakeholders; and
• It should allow the grantee organization to become stronger so it can do its work better, cheaper, or smarter at its next opportunity.

Not every grant routinely achieves both purposes; actions that allow this must be built in from the beginning.  This is typically done through discussions between the foundation and applicant before the grant is even made.

Dr. Mittenthal taught me this principle while I did a site visit to the Arizona Community Foundation when it was a participant in C.S. Mott Foundation’s Community Foundations and Low-Income Neighborhoods Small Grants Program, and my organization at the time, Rainbow Research, Inc., was the evaluator.

Invoking the two bullet points above, Steve explained the virtues of a grant he’d just made  to a neighborhood organization to equip a home maintenance and gardening tool library to be used by its residents.  Following discussions with the recipient group, the grant also provided an opportunity for developing a formal inventory of residents’ skills with tools; this allowed the organization to position itself as able and willing to work with outside developers with eyes on this neighborhood adjacent to the airport.  Other grants he made followed the same pattern.

Another excellent practitioner of this principle was Marian Kane while she was President of the Maine Community Foundation.  Her program officers made a point of coaching nonprofits when they presented applications for funding, asking “How can you do this project in a way that can also strengthen your Board, or your fundraising practices, or your relations with county agencies, or your standing in the community?”

Funding a project alone gives the recipient organization little room to grow or deepen its roots; the money just flows through without sticking in ways that builds capacity for the future.

Working towards both purposes of the Mittenthal principle — delivery plus growth — allows much greater progress than focusing on either one alone, and adds to the sustainability of the recipient organization.

This was amply shown in the Ford Foundation’s Leadership Program for Community Foundations (see my previous blog), which had two purposes, (a) to allow participating community foundations to play a more meaningful leadership role in their communities on an issue of their choosing; and (b) to give them the pretext for increasing their unrestricted endowments by $1 million.  Working on these two purposes together had a surprising synergistic effort: working on the one enabled progress on the other.

I’m very pleased to honor Dr. Mittenthal, now the president of The Ellis Center for Educational Excellence, by naming this important principle after him.  I’ve described this two-fold principle of grantmaking many times in workshops and presentations over the years, and believe it deserves much wider notice and practice.

There’s no reason to think the principle’s applicability is solely with community foundations; any foundation can use it to good effect, as can any individual donor.

Nonprofit applicants can promote this for themselves by designing and proposing a project that not only delivers something worthwhile to those it serves, but also strengthens the organization’s infrastructure.  Pitching a project that way should increase the organization’s standing in the competition for funds, provide more results to talk about, and present itself subsequently as a more capable organization.

Steven E. Mayer / July 29, 2011

• More cooperation between those with money to fund good work and those with the muscle, spirit, and willingness to do it.
• More development and affirmation of common purposes, less on finger-pointing or distancing.
• More demand for fairness and equity as commodities that our public systems and private markets and philanthropy must produce, compared to just settling.
• More communication of real progress and real problems, less on “community relations.”
• More support for sustained effort and helpful assistance, less on shutting down efforts that don’t pan out immediately.
• More funding to go deeper, less for one-shot skin-deep or nice ephemera.
• More space to think creatively, less enforcement of the dysfunctional business model.
• More spine from philanthropic funders, less self-protection and less avoidance of real opportunities to serve the greater good.
• More spine from philanthropic nonprofits, less self-protection and less avoidance of real opportunities to serve the greater good.
• More support of growing nonprofits’ capabilities, less on non-growth strategies.
• More resources to educate the community and engage it in a kind of activism that can energize even while it’s reeling from the effects of a hostile recession and unhelpful bureaucracies.
• More intention to fix our social systems, with support for the R&D, policy development, advocacy, community organizing, resource development, and action needed to “move the needle” in those arenas that are clearly not working.
• More support for generosity, inclusion, and engagement.

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / June 28, 2011

But the problem lies only partly with the dollar disparity.  There’s also the tendency to think in Us and Them terms, the Powerful and the Powerless, which happens at all levels up and down the philanthropic food chain.

A reader of an earlier post thought my intent of a Consumer Union for the philanthropic sector would be to protect nonprofits from the misbehavior, inattentiveness, or disappointing effectiveness of foundations.

But I don’t mean that – I think nonprofits and foundations are fundamentally allied, and that thinking of each other in Us and Them terms is dysfunctional and counterproductive to the overall effects of philanthropy, for those on the giving end and those on the receiving end.   Philanthropy is the work of both foundations and nonprofits, both with similar missions, both interested in benefiting the same people, both governed by IRS’ section 501 — and each needs the other.  Unfortunately, there’s misbehavior, inattentiveness, or disappointing effectiveness on “both sides” of the line.  [I'm curious how much of audience deserts me at this point.]

No, my point is to protect the public from unsubstantiated claims of all kinds of philanthropic organizations throughout the philanthropic sector – including foundations and nonprofits and the myriad of hybrids existing today — so that the public is better assured of getting a “safe and effective” product, with beneficial effects all around.   After all, we the public are all consumers some of the time, like when we use the educational, health, civic, or cultural services of a university, hospital, block club, or museum. What should those organizations do to earn our respect?

“But the foundations have the money,” I’m always told when I try to make the case that both foundations and nonprofits make up the larger class of philanthropic organizations, “and so there’s a power struggle, a class struggle, between the haves and have-nots.”  And there’s some truth to it, but… Plenty of nonprofits are bigger than foundations.  Plenty of nonprofits have more clout than foundations.  Disrespect, gaming, and ineffectiveness happens throughout the sector, without regard to “who has the money.” Disparities in power run throughout the sector.  And feelings of abuse or neglect by those with more happens throughout the sector; I wouldn’t say that nonprofits act any more nobly or ignobly than foundations.

Partnership is what’s needed throughout the sector, not displays of wealth and power and the hubris that goes with it.  What’s in short supply is r-e-s-p-e-c-t for the capabilities of potential partners, and respect for the opportunity of increasing the capabilities of others.  Respect is essential for partnerships, and partnerships are essential for philanthropic effectiveness in taking on large social issues.

Perhaps in denial somewhat, I would say that some of the wealth and power thing is illusory; when you’re on your knees, you naturally feel inferior, and when someone in front of you is on their knees, you naturally feel superior.  A helpful fact is that each philanthropic organization, whether nonprofit or foundation, gets its money from somewhere else.  More and more philanthropic organizations are in fact intermediaries, in function if not in name, receiving philanthropic assets (time, talent, and treasure) and distributing philanthropic assets elsewhere –also time, talent, and treasure but hopefully transformed in ways that help achieve a mission.   One can imagine the staffs of the Gates Foundation and the Anonymous Peoples Action Program as both givers and recipients, both recipients and givers, both givers and takers.  In other words, the grantmaker/grantseeker distinction is a less apt description of philanthropic entities these days, as most philanthropic organizations play both roles simultaneously.  The philanthropic food chain is a long and twisted one, with complex role differentiations.

But not in denial, it’s unfortunately the case that a big fly in the equity ointment is the ways traditional foundations, especially private foundations, are traditionally accountable to and governed by different interests, traditionally class-based, than traditional nonprofits are.  This hobbles the work of the sector as a whole, to say the least.  Wouldn’t it help if foundations and nonprofits really were allied, really could work in partnership?

Can we have another refrain of the r-e-s-p-e-c-t chorus?

Steven E. Mayer / June 17, 2011

And how would we test this philanthropic service?  Think cars – Consumer Reports includes ratings of Handling, Safety, Economy, Styling, Comfort.  They test their cars around a track, noting their performance in dozens of ways, question consumers on their experience, and report out using simple but informative tables and graphs.

We’ll start with a challenging example, let’s say our state’s coalition for/against (your cause here), which we’ll refer to as SCFAYCH.  What would  we look for in “testing” SCFAYCH?  What is it we want SCFAYCH to do really well?

Bottom line, we want it to contribute to re-shaped policies and practices that strongly influence my state’s indicator data on the status of My Cause.  In other words, we want The Problem to be reduced (or The Opportunity to be enhanced), as helped by the work of my State Coalition working on the problem.

Above the bottom line, there are many SCFAYTCH organizational activities to be supported and victories to be achieved, each requiring funding, and testing to be sure it’s being done well.  These are akin to handling, economy, styling, etc — elements of performance and quality that help make up the complete package.

We want SCFAYTCH to  push on key barriers or obstacles to re-shaping these policies and practices.

We want it to gain the support of enough people in key positions to make real changes.

We want it to promote solutions that make sense, seem feasible, and are ultimately acceptable to the growing base of support.

We want it to become big enough, strong enough, and smart enough to help make the key systems and markets make the necessary changes.

We want it to run the organization consistent with its goals and ideals.

For each of these performance dimensions, we still have to devise the tests that show us the evidence, reportable in Stakeholder Reports (the magazine of the Stakeholders Union), that this SCFAYCH produces the above results, and that an investment in this coalition, as opposed to others competing for my attention, is a good investment.

Next:  Am I serious?

Steven E. Mayer / June 10, 2011

If we, in our roles as  consumers of social services undertook to spell out the criteria against which  social services should be tested, we could then test various providers, report out the results, and  pay for their services accordingly.

If you want a thorough evaluation of dish-washing soaps,  BBQ sauce, mowers and tractors, and telecom bundling services (all in the May 2011 edition of the Union’s magazine, Consumer Reports), you will learn a fascinating amount  about how well various products and brands work, the criteria on which they test these products, what earns a failing or passing grade, and what wins their recommendations. Consumers Union practically invented transparency in the commercial sector.  The magazine has consistently produced highly readable and informative consumer-oriented reports for decades.

Call me a professional evaluator, but I have enjoyed this magazine forever, and use its philosophy in evaluation workshops and consultations.

I have also appreciated its mission: “Consumers Union is an expert, independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to work for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers and to empower consumers to protect themselves.” Earning the Consumer Reports Best Buy recommendation means something to consumers and producers alike.

Wouldn’t it be fun – fun being a big incentive these days — to extend the Consumers Union model into the philanthropic worlds of charity, development, and justice?  Wearing our consumer hats, we  could impartially and rigorously “test” our neighborhood soup kitchen, for example, and compare them with others.  We could do the same with our nearby job training and employment service.  And our state coalition for (or against) our favorite cause.

Instead of Consumers Union, we could have a Clients Union, or a Beneficiaries Union.  What about a Members Union?  Me, I’d like to be part of a Stakeholders Union.

And what would our magazine look like? This theme obviously links up with our Dashboards discussion, the Making a Difference theme, as well as this blog’s  underlying currents of Philanthropy, Evaluation, and Justice.

You’re welcome to leave a reply or comment below.

Steven E. Mayer / June 2, 2011

My concern is in the potentially corrupting effect that slavish devotion to a single bottom-line metric could have on the work of the social service provider, much as we’ve seen the corrupting effect that slavish devotion to the bottom line “quarterly profits” has had in the corporate sector.

And slavish devotion it would be if service providers’ salaries depended on how well their employer met their financial, er, service, goals.  We’d see all manner of shortcuts, like creaming, skimping on the service, workplace abuses, and simple garden variety misreporting.   I know the mantra these days is to make nonprofits operate more like business, but I’m a skeptic.

I’m not against “pay for performance” in principle, but it is essential that the right performance measures be chosen.  Frankly, I’m not sure it’s possible to do with the exactitude needed to prevent widespread dissatisfaction.  Also essential is assertive quality control to lessen the threat of mismanagement, and more important, to be assured that the outcomes obtained are quality, reasonable, meaningful outcomes.

outcomes ready for counting

Even with seemingly simple social services, like, for example, a nonprofit training and employment program with a mission to provide employers with skilled workers, a program where “job placement” might rule as the payoff metric, it’s the quality of the service—the curriculum, the mentoring, the follow-up — that drives the outcomes.  The search for bottom line payoff metrics is more difficult when the goals of the service are more complex, like affordable housing, public education, or community philanthropy.

This was made clear by W. Edwards Deming, the founder of the quality control movement.  Far being just a bean counter or numbers guy, he said business success is more about quality than quantity, and that businesses make their money and grow their market by making products and services that meet specifications of quality.

And BTW, it’s through specifying the qualities of excellent social service that the art of social service delivery will advance.  If the various social service industries were induced to focus more on their own principles of quality work, they could develop a more skilled workforce, reduce their costs, and improve the production of meaningful outcomes.

Steven E. Mayer / May 20, 2011

This book is based on our experience evaluating the performance of 17 community foundations participating in the Ford/MacArthur Leadership Program for Community Foundations, during the years 1987-1995.

I still consider this initiative the best for strengthening the leadership roles and capacities of community foundations.  It was designed to help small and emerging CFs grow their discretionary assets as well as their community leadership skills, and succeeded admirably. The evaluation yielded major insights, still completely applicable.  Chapters are devoted to:

• the nature and value of community capacity — that mix of community commitment, resources, and skills needed to address community issues;
• the work of community foundations in the US, and their potential for building community capacity;
• the four areas of organizational capacity tracked by our evaluation — areas for building organizational strength internally, needed to build up a community’s capacities externally;
• the strategies used by participating CFs, each starting with $10 million or less in permanent endowment, to meet the demanding challenge of raising $1 million in new discretionary funds in just two years;
• strategies they used to develop and implement a meaningful leadership initiative in their community — and their interplay with asset development;
• an analysis of the features of the program that made it so successful — five years’ support, an active assistance and learning agenda, and the selection of good participants, every one of which succeeded grandly, each in its own locally-appropriate way.

Once found on the bookshelf of every community foundation in the U.S., thanks to the generosity of the Ford Foundation, which sponsored the initiative and our evaluation work, and only rarely available on Amazon, this book is now a collector’s item, though I’m pleased to say it still is in the possession of most CFs that I’m in touch with.

Would that the principles of healthy institutional growth and leadership discovered in this initiative were in wider practice, and better supported by private foundations interesting in developing the capacities of community foundations in their territory.

The complete book is now available, free, in a down-loadable PDF, from my Effective Communities website, here.  Admittedly, it’s not a great reproduction, but the best this little office can do at the moment.

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / May 16, 2011

Dashboards have taken over the corporate sector as part of the “business intelligence” movement, so naturally the boards of foundations and nonprofits want to try them in the philanthropic sector.  Websites such as dashboards.org or dashboardzone.com have sprung up offering displays of dials and gauges and other cool displays of any old business metric you can think of, typically relating to finance.

The quest for “dashboards” to display organizational performance in the philanthropic sector is part of the clamor to apply metrics to everything, to quantify and monetize outcomes, and to hold grant recipients accountable for bottom-line results.

Unfortunately, most dashboards I’ve seen for philanthropic organizations don’t really do more than cram a bunch of info that’s already in the annual report into pretty graphs, pie charts, histograms, sparkling line graphs and such.  Yes, they can be visually engaging (though most cram too much into a single display just to show they can do it), and snappier than a bunch of boring paragraphs, and because they’re novel they look cool.

The idea is that they’re supposed to tell the organization “where it’s going,” just like, I’ve been told by several people, a car dashboard does.   But you know what?  A car dashboard doesn’t tell you where you’re going, or even where you are.

A car dashboard tells you the rate of speed you’re traveling, how many miles you’ve gone, and how much fuel remains.  There are a few “idiot lights” to let you know your car is about to explode, and an increasing number of entertainment gauges and comfort meters.  These are all useful, but there’s nothing at all about where you’re headed or even where you are.  Only recently has the car dashboard included a GPS, a genuine navigational aid that actually does tell you where you are in relation to a chosen destination; of course, it’s still up to you, the human driver, to punch in where you want to go, because it doesn’t know until you tell it.  Analogy, anyone?

What do we get on contemporary philanthropy dashboards?  The growth of assets over time, broken down by type.  The number and types of funds established, by year.  The number and amount of grants made, by year and type.  And a few other things, easily countable.

Conveying information graphically adds value to a report, no doubt, and communicates in ways that words or numbers alone cannot.  But do they tell anyone where you or your organization are headed?  No. The philanthropic dashboards I’ve seen are not navigational aids to the future as much as they are counters of the past.  And as with cars, there’s something missing: where are we going, what will it take, are we making progress, and where, exactly, are the ditches?

“Justice as fairness” works in many conversations, but turns impractical because of issues of impartiality, vested interests, and a lack of consensus on the importance of different principles that people bring to bear in judging fairness.

Perhaps defining “injustice” is easier; and rather than noodle about how to characterize a perfectly just society, let’s recognize that society comes with imperfections, and injustice comes in degrees, so we can get on with devising solutions.

This, if I’m getting it right, is the political philosophy of Amartya Sen, a 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics, who writes books like On Economic Inequality; Poverty and Famines: an Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation; Development as Freedom; and most recently, The Idea of Justice.

An advantage of focusing first on injustice is that one can compare two different relatively unjust situations and decide on priorities for remediation, tasks that non-philosopher humans are perfectly capable of, Sen says. In developing social policy, peoples’ lives, experience, and realizations should be paramount, he also says, and it’s on those criteria that sound evaluations must be conducted, we add.

To illustrate, in many parts of the world, some ethnic or cultural groups are subjected to very different justice systems, different educational opportunities, or different stations in life based on their ancestry, religion, or circumstances beyond their control.  These gaps or disparities in opportunity show up later in negative consequences felt throughout their society. In Sen’s thinking, this illustrates comparative injustice – one group may suffer, but another may suffer even more — for which remedies should be sought that focus on equalizing opportunities or chances for success.

In our own society, even after years of trying to put the shame of racism behind us, there is nearly across-the-board unanimity of studies showing that our public systems and private markets do better for Whites, on average, than for other racial or ethnic groups.  These disparities or gaps exist in almost every area of life – education, justice, economic development, even the arts.  Remedies should focus on efforts that have the result of Whites taking their collective thumbs off the scales, which would equalize the rules of the game and level the playing fields for equal freedom of participation.

Reasoning how to repair unjust situations, using the resources of philanthropy and the perspective of organizational and community development as well as system reform, is exactly the approach pursued in the earlier work done by Effective Communities Project and posted on JustPhilanthropy.org on the pages Pathways to Progress, which takes disparities as prima facie evidence of injustice.

As Steven Poole wrote in his review of Sen’s The Concept of Justice, thinkers of all political hues agree that justice means equality of some kind – the question is: equality of what?  Sen’s preferred answer appears to be equality of freedom.  And he offers a reason to hope: “The general pursuit of justice might be hard to eradicate in human society.”

Instead of simply calling for justice, organizations applying for philanthropic funds might do better, following Sen’s logic, to describe the particular injustice they’re intending to remedy, and to specify how the steps they’re taking feed into a larger process of remediation. In turn, funders would do well to recognize that unjust disparities riddle all the arenas they’ve staked out in their mission statements, and be open to funding remedies.  Evaluation in this context should focus on how intentions, actions, and actual progress are aligned.

Actually, we mostly talked about what’s good and bad about such a bottom line, but only from a measurement or evaluation standpoint.  We decided that “pounds of food distributed” has two big things going for it: it neatly sums up a key theme of a food shelf’s organizational productivity, and it’s easier to count up than some other things.

But there’s a lot that it misrepresents, underreports, or undervalues; ultimately, it misleads and directs our attention and critical skills toward the more easily countable, and away from the more meaningful, putting the organization at risk of becoming little more than a food distribution machine.  This would be an unfortunate illustration of the “you get what you measure” principle.

And it sidetracks the work needed to create a more comprehensive and meaningful effort to reduce hunger.  If all we do is relief work we never get to creating the systems that allows everyone access to healthy and nutritious food.

OK, let me back out of this diversion and start again — how does such an organization get to report such a bottom line?  Obviously this measure is assigned by its chief funder. And its chief funder is a federated workplace giving program governed by people with the perspectives of business administration, so it’s no wonder that such a bottom line is chosen.

Fortunately, we say, this organization’s charitable mission, if not its metrics, is assigned by a higher authority.  How do we report success to this higher authority?  These two different orientations set up a culture clash that pervades the entire philanthropic sector, pitting business-oriented secular types against mission-oriented help-the-world types.

Punch line: You’re gonna have to serve somebody, sings one of Minnesota’s greatest poets.  And every measure of success serves someone’s interests.  We need criteria that serve larger, multiple interests consistent with the organization’s mission.  All choices of “bottom lines” are moral and political choices.  So, choose them with care and purpose.

Some strengths and weaknesses of “pounds of food distributed” as a measure:

“Pounds” is a well-accepted, non-controversial measure of weight, with a very precise meaning regulated by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards.

It’s not so useful in regions where weight comes in kilograms, but here, it’s gold.  Or iron; when you pick up two 10-pound weights at the gym, chances are excellent they each weigh the same, at least close enough for use in a fitness regimen.

Pounds of food is less precise.  Presumably, two packages marked “16 oz” of the same brand of Mac&Cheese weigh the same.  But different brands?  And how much is food vs. packaging?  Those are questions for Consumers Union.

And how do you compare a 16 oz package of Mac&Cheese with a pound of spinach?  They may both weigh the same, but they don’t carry the same meaning or value.  They have very different nutritional values, very different comfort value, very different familiarity to different cultures, very different ease of preparation, very different yum factor – all of which is lost in the non-controversial “pound of food” measure.

A pound of Mac&Cheese lasts months, even years.  It can be trucked and shipped without losing nutritional value.  A pound of spinach lasts days, requires refrigeration, and doesn’t travel far without spoiling.  A pound of Mac&Cheese may be a good measure  for relief purposes, but not as good for evaluating a healthy lifestyle.  Spinach, vice-versa.   Needed is a metric called “pounds of nutrition.”

When we’re talking “pounds of distributed food,” who gets this food, and should we care?  Does a faith-based charity operate with different expectations than a tax-supported one?  “Pounds of distributed food” doesn’t tell us what happens to the people who receive some.  Is their distress relieved by just one meal, or by more?  It doesn’t tell us if people coming to the food shelf also get attention for other needs.  What ultimately happens to them?  And what about shut-ins? These questions are avoided with a single measure like “pounds of food distributed.”

Key lessons:

542,453 pounds of food distributed in a year is a lot of food, over 10,000 pounds per week.  Clearly this is a well-organized charity doing very important work.

“Pounds of food distributed” has, as a measure, two big things going for it: it neatly sums up a key theme of a food shelf’s organizational productivity, and it’s easier to measure than some other things.

One measure of a charitable organization’s productivity, no matter how common-sensible,  isn’t nearly enough to convey all that’s important.

And even though 542,453 pounds of food sounds like a lot, the measure tells us nothing of how adequate this is given the size of the population in need.  This is not to pick on this food shelf in the slightest, it’s only to show how inadequate even a straightforward measure can be.  Shouldn’t we be curious about all these other “outcome measures”?

Calculating “pounds of food distributed” is no easy task; someone has to weigh it out and add it up for a year.  Chances are it’s not done like that, but it illustrates how costly it becomes to answer all the questions raised above.

Funders of relief efforts should consider what, really, are the important measures of success.  If there’s money enough to evaluate two or three outcomes, what should they be?  Organizations providing relief efforts should continually educate their donors what  is and is not being communicated with their measures of success.

We concluded the last post (Making a Difference #2) with the notion that evidence of impact of your gift or grant can best be found near the action you just funded.

It must be there, if it’s anywhere — at least its early signs.  If you look too far down the road, the impact of your gift is mixed in with many other influences.  And if you wait too long to look, your impact could well have dissipated, or morphed into something unrecognizable or unrelated.  On the premise that actions lead to immediate consequences which lead to subsequent consequences, you need to look early and closely, adjusting your view as necessary.

The proposal or solicitation that secured your gift probably made clear what should be happening.

This is an exercise; I can’t answer these questions for you.  But if you put your heads together, you could come up with a good list.  And if your issue is something other than hunger, the above questions still work.

If they also remind you of an episode from that new TV hit series, “PSI*: Miami,” I intend it, if only to facilitate a more evidentiary approach to grant evaluation.

“Horatio … look at these fresh bread crumbs and catsup stains on the clothes of this panhandler; what could that mean?

… and look at these kids showing those kids how to cook with cilantro they grew in the community garden — could this be a sign these kids are doing something useful?”

… and look at this report with recommendations and designs for improving food distribution in low-income neighborhoods, do you think this means people here are in the early stages of making upgrades?”

*PSI = Philanthropic Scene Investigation

The questions above were asked from a donor’s perspective.  If you’re a recipient, what kind of evidence would you hope to leave behind?  Try incorporating those signs of evidence into your proposal.

Comments?  Clever responses?  Good ideas?  Suggestions for a sequel?

Pondering the choices described in the last post (Making a Difference #1) you ask yourself, “How would I know if I made a difference or not?  Where would I even look for evidence?”

Well, it is easy to look in all the wrong places.  Somehow we hope that we can “address the hunger problem” by giving the just-right gift in the just-right amount to the just-right organization.

Unfortunately, to the frustration of donors everywhere, hunger won’t be resolved so easily.  But knowing where to look for evidence of impact from one’s own gift or grant is approachable; it’s first a matter of adjusting the focal length of the lens you’re using.  My advice: look near the action you just funded.

If your focus is on relief, such as relieving the hunger of the person panhandling in front of your grocery, or relief of the hungry in Haiti, then look to see if your gift is likely to translate into food-in-belly.  Follow the money. If you’ve given to the food shelf, see if the money goes toward food-on-shelves and into the hands of hungry people.  After all, the intended impact of service delivery is delivered service (decent food, to the right people, before it spoils, etc.).

If instead your focus is on strengthening the community rather than relief, as in the cited community garden project, look to see if your gift helps the community get stronger, especially in ways that help the community address its food supply issues.  Follow the action. Does the gift help people learn, help them get skills, access resources, plan and move forward, connect with others seeking the same goals, develop leadership – help it grow stronger?

And if instead your focus is on upgrading the food distribution system, look to see if your gift contributes to this upgrade.  Follow the progress. Does your gift help leadership identify the upgrades needed? Does it help them advance promising solutions?  Or develop the community, political, and financial base for implementing them?  Or the community sentries, monitors, or indicators that can reliably and honestly measure progress?  Does your gift, in short, help provide the pieces needed to assemble a much improved food distribution system that reduces hunger and increases health?

Some of you might say this is obvious, but the behavior of donors who think they’re changing the world suggests it’s not.  Some of you might say I haven’t simplified things enough, that my evaluation questions are not easily answerable.  Perhaps, but a good start is to direct your search to the right places.

Bottom line: Evidence of the impact you’ve created – the difference you’ve made through your gift — can best be found near the action you just funded.

Comments?

I could take him home, cook him a meal, talk to him, listen to him.  Or, if I didn’t want to get that close but still wanted to help, I could simply give him money for a decent meal.  Or if I didn’t want to deal with him at all but felt sympathetic to his plight, I could send a check to the neighborhood emergency food shelf – maybe enough to feed someone for a week or month.    That’s making a difference.

Or, from a  different perspective, we could remember where  food comes from.  If people could grow their own food, they’d also be learning about cooking and nutrition, becoming healthier and more productive.  So I could make a difference very locally by supporting my local youth farm and market project.  Maybe I could show kids how to cook something I know how to cook, and they could get other kids involved, and older folks, and new arrivals, and shut-ins, helping neighbors connect and engage productively with local issues.  That’s making a difference.

Or, having spent some time packing bags at the food shelf myself, I got to ask a lot of questions.  “How can we get more healthy and nutritious food into the hands of people who are genuinely hurting for food?  What has to be done differently?”  Turns out it’s a complex, multi-layered system, with lots of weak or broken parts.  Supporting my local alliance for advocating and implementing changes to the good food distribution system – overcoming food deserts, market access barriers, transportation and spoilage issues, counterproductive farm policies, and creating new partnerships and markets — that’s making a difference.

These are all legitimate ways of making a decent difference, right?  Right.  Each illustrates a very different approach, and it’s own opportunity for engagement and learning and being useful.  Each has its own set of intentions of what good could come of it, and its own opportunities to discover and consider results.

Big picture, providing philanthropic funds at each of the above points of entry stands to “make a difference,” but at different scale and with different potential consequences.  To address hunger (and we’re not even talking homelessness or unemployment yet) at a meaningful level, funding at only one point is insufficient; each point has to be linked to others with sustained effort such that the community hunger and health needles move.

Stay tuned for more on “Making a Difference.”  In the meantime, let’s not forget the guy on the corner.

Comments?

“Social justice” gets hot because it goes directly to peoples’ sense of fairness and unfairness.  This sense of justice is learned early in life, as toddlers at home with brothers and sisters, and as school children on the playground.  And however those incidents turned out for us,  we take away from them a sense of right and wrong, fair and unfair, just and unjust.  Whether this has been demonstrated with formal social science, I don’t know.

When people of political persuasions, left and right, hear “social justice” they quickly go to their hot-button places.  Like, “Social justice is Marxism” (said in either pro- and con- tone of voice), or “Social justice is the Sermon on the Mount,” (“yes it is” vs “no it’s not”) or “Social justice is in the Constitution and the Pledge of Allegiance” (“where?”).

Long story short, conceptions of “social justice” are shaped by personal experience and bounded by culture.  Everyone has their own comfort zone when it comes to “justice,” whether we like it or not.  People who use the phrase must be ready for hostility.

The values of social justice flow from doctrines of religious faith, as well as law and politics. These two streams are intertwined in different ways, and play out differently in different cultures.  One finds references to social justice or social justice values in writings from the major branches of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which all hold that, before God, all people are equal and must treat each other with respect.  The term “social justice” is foundational in US law and political theory.  Some examples of how the term “social justice” is used are in a four-page paper we did in 2007.

For me, “social justice” is another way of saying “a just society,” a term that does not seem to push as many buttons as social justice.  It’s an aspirational goal achieved when everyone is treated fairly, without reference to race, creed, or color.  Or gender, or any other way of categorizing individuals in ways for which they are not responsible.

It’s true that googling the term social justice yields a predominance of internet sites presenting the case of people who feel the scales of justice are tilted against them.  This shouldn’t be surprising; those favored in the way the dice are rolled are not likely to have reason to complain, or call attention to their favored situation, or even see the situation as unfair.  This makes it all the more important that the victims of injustice have their advocates — the judicial system and faith traditions in particular, and increasingly in organizations supported by philanthropy.

Some in philanthropy say that in order to fund social justice we need a solid definition of it.  I would say it’s too easy (for funders as well as activists) to get caught up in wars of definition.  Where it comes to ground for me: it’s better for donors to invite or be open to proposals from organizations that make a reasonable case for their way of addressing what can reasonably be called an unjust situation.  How to make this case in proposals, and how to hear one that’s made to you, are necessary skill sets.

“Philanthropy,” for one, takes in the full sweep of the nonprofit, foundation, civic, community, associational, networked sector. It includes institutional, non-institutional, and anti-institutional donor interests. The philanthropic sector is, by common definition, distinct from the business sector and government sector.  “Philanthropy” is itself formed from the confluence of generosity, strategic giving, faith, accountability, and quality of life.

“Evaluation” is the process of discovering and communicating the value of an effort. It is practiced by social scientists as well as by everyday human beings as they notice what’s good and not good enough in the way things are done.  In its path are discussions of evidence, signs of progress, measurement, effectiveness — and who gets to say.

Where “Philanthropy” and “Evaluation” flow together, I’ll blog on evaluating the practice and fruits of philanthropy.  By what standards and with what evidence can philanthropy be judged successful, or held accountable?  What would upgrade the state-of-the-art?

“Justice” refers here to social and economic notions of justice applied to an entire society. It is based on the idea of a just society which gives individuals and groups fair treatment and a just or equitable share of the opportunities and benefits of society.

The intersection of “Philanthropy” and “Justice” suggests posts on how the resources and authority of philanthropy can be used in furthering a more just society.  How can the resources of philanthropy be used to further progress?

Where all three themes flow together – Philanthropy, Justice, and Evaluation – I’ll write on how we can know when societal institutions, drawing on the support of philanthropic actions, are creating more positive opportunities for all, more equitable outcomes, and a more just society?

There’s obviously lots to consider, and this blog thing is a whole new genre to explore. There are forms for haiku, forms for book reviews, forms for research reports – but there is as yet no form for a blog at the confluence of justice, philanthropy, and evaluation.

I’ll limit my posts to 1-2 pages, typically.  I make no promises about frequency.  Any special requests?

If you want to go public (subject to review), use the Reply/Comment feature below.  Otherwise, write me privately at StevenEMayer@justphilanthropy.org

By Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / Effective Communities Project / November 2010

Philanthropy, by definition, is a noble endeavor. Generous gifts of time, talent and treasure have no doubt improved the world in countless ways. Whether the motive is to provide immediate relief of suffering, to support people in their development or to change systems’ ground rules to improve outcomes for even more people, philanthropy enjoys visibility and growth.

And yet, people want to know what good comes from their gifts. They want to know their gifts are in fact helping to make the world a better place. Congress, which covets the sector’s considerable assets, wants to know how to justify tax-exempt status. The pressure’s on to “show results.” Unfortunately, there’s a big disconnect between the knowledge of results we crave and the “knowledge” we get back from formal evaluation inquiries.

It seems simple enough. People want the data, knowledge and wisdom that assure we’re making progress on the big issues – issues like hunger, homelessness, injustice, ignorance. We want to know that the institutions we give to – our educational, arts and culture, social service, advocacy and justice institutions – are delivering. Does evaluation of results show our gifts make a difference? Are the measures of quality of life going up or down? Are we “moving the needle” and “bending the trend lines?” Unfortunately, the field of evaluation, itself an evolving profession with noble intentions, has not geared its practices to answer these questions in a way that satisfies our hunger to know.

The problems with evaluation are rooted in problems with philanthropy.

A concern for funding the well-being of individuals can prevent us from seeing the larger systemic problems that keep people suffering. When we see a hungry person, we want to feed him. When we see a homeless person, we want to house her. When we see an injustice done, we want to right it. However, this practice of rescuing casualties one a time keeps our vision too close to the shore where casualties are found, without enough focus upstream where casualties are created (see “Saving the Babies: A Clash of Philanthropic Approaches”).

Funding the rescue of one person at a time evokes evaluation practices that score success one person at a time, however temporary. Evaluation, asked to give an accounting of these rescue efforts, gives adequate information on how many people received soup, or affordable housing, or their day in court. These data may answer the question well enough, but they say nothing about the bigger question, “Are we stemming the flow of hungry, homeless or wronged people?” Both charitable and structural reform efforts are needed to stem these flows, with evaluation practices that honor the difference.

The typical practice of grantmaking – making one grant at a time, to one organization at a time, for one project at a time, for one year at a time – is a good way to keep order, but a poor way to support progress on the bigger issues. It keeps grantees’ efforts fragmented and focused on the small and the short-term, just so that they can report immediate results. But the short-term outcomes of a single grant can’t possibly resolve the big issues. One soup kitchen’s outcomes will not move the hunger needle beyond the meal just served, and neither will the efforts of all soup kitchens combined.

Making nonprofit organizations compete for relatively small amounts of cash puts them in competitive rather than cooperative modes. To survive in the marketplace of institutional philanthropy, nonprofit competitors play their cards close to the chest, choking innovation and stalling momentum and consolidation of effort that could solve real problems.

The Lady Bountiful attitude that prevailed at the birth of American philanthropy still exists and still gums the works. An attitude of righteousness can creep into the philanthropic transaction, in which those seeking money to make the world a better place are made to feel like common beggars. This attitude is well-established in institutional philanthropy, as evidenced in the kinds of criticisms leveled at funders by their nonprofit supplicants: arrogant, tardy, distant, uncommunicative, condescending, etc. As a colleague says, “Philanthropy is what allows a nonprofit to stand on its own two knees.”

Who owns philanthropy? For the answer, look at the board of directors of any philanthropic organization. Today’s form of philanthropic organizational governance comes directly from the private sector, drawing on forms from the early 20th century. “Scientific management,” all the rage then, took over American industry and from there, the institutionalization of human welfare and philanthropy itself. Scientific management advocated a standardized approach to the production of goods, managed from the top down, leading to consistent outputs that easily can be stamped out, measured and accounted for. And if it works for the production of goods, why not services? This put evaluation firmly into the hands of the bean counters. Business managers on philanthropic boards today continue to focus on organizational goals, organizational outcomes and the organization’s bottom line. The organization’s contribution to solutions to larger problems is off the books and not considered. The field of evaluation, born under the same signs that birthed scientific management, serves up what it can, resulting in the big disconnect between the answers we get and the knowledge we want.

To improve the quality of philanthropy and evaluation, we have to reframe both.

1. Let’s start with recognizing that a better world doesn’t get built in a day. If we accept this, then we can escape the limitations of short-term management thinking, and go directly to problem-solving how the bigger issues can be addressed productively. Evaluation should redirect its focus in turn.

2. For any given problem, like hunger, regional leaders of all kinds should adopt a set of metrics that reflect current progress. For example, they could adopt number of kids coming to school unfed, spoilage of healthful and nutritious food in stores, parts of town not getting enough and other related measures. Both charity and justice are reflected in those metrics. The goal of regional philanthropic efforts against hunger then becomes to move the metrics – “moving the needles and bending the trend lines.” Finding and adopting a good set of metrics is no small task, but it’s important for anchoring a serious effort, for engaging community support and for keeping eyes on a jointly held prize. It also relieves individual nonprofits of unrealistic data demands. The point is to reflect productivity at the community or regional level, rather than the organizational level.

3. Identify what moves these needles, and what keeps them from moving, to make clear what kinds of efforts to support. The social and institutional mechanisms that affect a needle’s movement and a problem’s solution are complex. Fortunately, most communities have people with a good view of the various working pieces of those puzzling mechanisms, and they can be engaged.

4. Look beyond the capabilities and performance of one organization, and look instead to supporting a more organized and intentional effort. Getting metrics to change isn’t the work of just one organization. Moving the needle requires organizations that identify, advocate and move solutions; leadership that bridges divides; financial and technical resources; organizing a growing base of support – fit together over time in ways that can move the needle. Currently dismissed by both philanthropy and evaluation as “process” rather than “impact,” the successful implementation of each piece of needle-moving infrastructure must become legitimized; doing so recognizes the realities of improving the world and encourages specialized capacities to be developed and deployed in the service of community betterment. Productivity in philanthropy could become defined as the work required to move a needle, and be measured across contributing organizations.

5. Think of evaluation as a human activity more than a scientific one. Noticing and naming simple signs of progress is the first and most important step in measuring it. We have to measure what’s important, not just what’s easily countable. Can we measure what’s important? The answer is “Yes,” though much depends on what is meant by “measure.” There’s merit in the old phrasing “to take the measure” of an effort – to size it up, sift through the evidence, get peoples’ judgments, compare notes and reckon where we’ve made progress and where we still need to push.

6. The field has to recognize the truth about funder-grantee relationships – an awkward dance tending to belittle the supplicant and glorify the donor. Things would improve if donors constructed their job as creating cooperative partnerships, helping others succeed and building on lessons learned. Evaluation in this context means getting feedback on the better qualities of grantmaking practice, and paying attention to the results. Nonprofits should get up off their knees.

7. Connect the dots. Just as funders should be assembling pieces of trend-changing infrastructure, evaluators should be building methods that connect organizational-level outputs with community-level impact on the adopted metrics. Can a case be made that the efforts of organization X, when joined with the efforts of organizations Y and Z and perhaps A through W, connect to the needles we’re trying to move? If not, funders have to redouble their efforts to put more pressure on the mechanisms that maintain the problem at problem levels, and to improve their ability to notice results.

Some parts of this vision are forthcoming. At the Community Foundation of Greater South Wood County in Wisconsin, staff position descriptions are geared to foundation goals and indicators of community vitality. At several large private foundations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations, Packard Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Hewlett Foundation, evaluation staff work to construct evaluation as a “core learning practice,” helping program staff make sense of measured experience with foundation grants and initiatives. The Boston Foundation and Community Foundations of Canada make good of public data to guide philanthropic strategy. Foundations using the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Grantee Perception Report can compare their performance with others’. Examining the root causes of social problems, inequities and injustices is becoming acceptable. But assembling actionable pieces to apply pressure on a set of community-held problem indicators, yielding a wider view of productivity, is an approach in need of promotion.

RESOURCES
Some of the above themes are sounded admirably in Grantmakers for Effective Organizations’ 2009 publication, Evaluation in Philanthropy.

The complexity of the world and its implications for philanthropy and evaluation in support of change is well-noted in Blueprint Research & Design’s (2005) publication, “The Challenge of Assessing Policy and Advocacy Activities: Strategies for a Prospective Evaluation Approach.”

FSG Social Impact Advisors’ “From Insight to Action: New Directions in Foundation Evaluation” (April 2007), spotlights emerging approaches to evaluation in philanthropy.

Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. is the director of Effective Communities Project and can be reached at StevenEMayer@gmail.com