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?