posted on: Friday, March 05, 2010

By Kevin Laskowski

A gathering of more than 100 leaders in philanthropy marked the release of NCRP’s new Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities: Impacts of Advocacy, Organizing and Civic Engagement in Los Angeles County. The report documented how 15 Los Angeles-area nonprofit organizations and their allies leveraged foundation grants to secure $6.88 billion in public benefits—nearly $91 of impact for every dollar invested.

In addition to the dramatic findings of the report, participants heard from several Los Angeles grantmakers and nonprofit leaders about their experience with these strategies.

A self-described “convert” to advocacy, organizing and civic engagement strategies, Dr. Robert Ross, president of The California Endowment, discussed how the Endowment’s approach hopes to connect “grassroots and treetops,” combining capital for service provision with the resources for systemic change.

“Let’s be real,” Ross told participants. “With the possible exception of public safety, our opportunity systems are broken. Every time Sacramento or Washington don’t do their jobs, our jobs get harder.”

He acknowledged the limited resources of foundations and the difficult choices that they face in these economic times.

“Every choice we face is a Sophie’s choice,” he said. “It’s tough.”

He urged participants to “lead with results” in making the case for funding advocacy and organizing and applauded NCRP for giving grantmakers another tool to get the biggest bang for their philanthropic buck. He pointed to the importance of the popular mantra “change not charity,” also the tagline for the Liberty Hill Foundation, a noted Los Angeles-area social justice funder.

“I wish I could give you a grant big enough to steal that line,” he said, nodding to Liberty Hill staff in the audience. “Charity is good but change is better.”

Antonia Hernandez, president of the California Community Foundation, noted that her own journey in these strategies was a bit different. The former executive director of MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Hernandez is no recent convert to the importance of funding strategies that effect change.

She explained how important it was to discuss the difficult choices grantmakers face with trustees and educate others about all the options available.

As Los Angeles faced the loss of millions in Section 8 housing vouchers, the board of the community foundation could attempt to devote philanthropic resources to make up the difference.

“Or, for a $50,000 grant, we can fund an advocate to Washington,” she said.

In the same way that nonprofits use litigation, advocacy, organizing, and other strategies, Hernandez said foundations bring the limited resources they’re given to bear on the serious challenges facing Los Angeles and the country as a whole.

Is your foundation interested in learning more about how to effectively support nonprofit advocacy and community organizing? Is your community organization interested in learning more about making the case for advocacy, organizing, or civic engagement? Contact us today!

Kevin Laskowski is field associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP).

posted on: Thursday, February 25, 2010

by Julia Craig

An organizer aboard a Los Angeles bus.

Photo courtesy of Labor/Community Strategy Center Bus Riders Union

Next Tuesday, March 2, NCRP’s Grantmaking for Community Impact Project will release the fourth report from the Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities series on the impacts of advocacy, organizing and civic engagement in Los Angeles County. (Learn more about the three previous reports on New Mexico, North Carolina and Minnesota.) Lisa Ranghelli, Kevin Laskowski and I will blog over the coming weeks to showcase stories from our work in the region.

You’ve probably heard that Los Angeles is not a place known for its public transportation infrastructure. L.A. County is home to 7 million cars and its infamous smog hovers over 650 square miles of freeway. But did you know that there are 500,000 transit riders in the region, and they have a union representing their needs? That’s according to Tammy Bang Luu of The Labor/Community Strategy Center Bus Riders Union (BRU). BRU was founded in 1992 as part of the Strategy Center’s Transportation Policy Group to provide a voice to these transit users. Since then, it has fought to improve public transportation access and build transit equity in the Los Angeles region.

When the Bus Riders Union began, it was a novel concept; no one in the nation had tried to organize transit riders, who are a diverse group of people with varying priorities and backgrounds. BRU has built a multi-lingual, multi-racial organization with 3,000 dues-paying members. Today, there are transit riders unions throughout the country including Austin, Atlanta, Boston and Baltimore.

In 1996, BRU won an unprecedented Consent Decree following a lawsuit against Los Angeles MTA citing racial discrimination in MTA’s transit policies. The suit alleged that MTA violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by establishing a discriminatory, separate, and unequal transportation system while using federal funds. The decree’s provisions lasted until 2001. During that time, BRU had to fight to implement the stipulations of the agreement, which included expanded bus services in centers of employment, fare reductions and the creation of a joint working group with MTA and BRU.

The Consent Decree set the stage for the Bus Riders Union’s ongoing work to hold transit officials accountable and bring the voices of transit users to bear on decision-making. In 2005, BRU won a streamlined process for the student bus pass application procedure. Students save $320 to $380 per year by purchasing a monthly pass instead of an adult pass or paying the full fare each day. Since the implementation of the new procedures, an estimated 20,000 additional eligible students purchase the monthly pass, netting families $47 million in savings over the course of six years.

This is just one example of the ways in which organizations in Los Angeles County are winning policy innovations that improve life for lower-income people, people of color, and other vulnerable communities. Check out the full report, which will be available for free download on our website on March 2, and let us know what you think in the comments!

Julia Craig is research associate and co-author of Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities: Impacts of Advocacy, Organizing and Civic Engagement in L.A. County.

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posted on: Friday, February 19, 2010

Editor's note: This posting has been revised to correct an incorrect link, noted below.

By Yna C. Moore

A couple of weeks ago, I developed a poll to find out what kind of annual reports from nonprofits are preferred by foundations’ staff. A heartfelt thanks to all who helped spread the word, those who provided their feedback via Twitter or in comments, and to those who responded to the poll – much appreciated!

So far, here are the preliminary results:

• Multi-media (video or audio accessed via a website or a CD/DVD) = 3 votes
• PDF only = 2 votes
• PDF + hard copy = 2 votes
• PDF + multi-media = 2 votes
• Hard copy + multi-media = 2 votes
• Hard copy only = 1
• I do not read annual reports = 1
• Other = 1
• TOTAL respondents = 14

I also received a couple of insightful comments on our blog and via Twitter:

“I think it's helpful when all the information is
available online in an accessible format, whether it's PDF or something else. I
think foundations should publish annual reports as well online!”

- By Elizabeth

“A PDF available on the organization's web site is easily
accessible and can easily be printed out if hard copy is wanted. Multimedia
takes too much time -- I have a stack of DVDs from grantees and would-be
grantees waiting to be viewed -- most never will be.”
- By Benjamin

“PDF + actual data in Xcel db .csv format @NCRP
Foundations! Which types of grantee reports would you likely read?”
- By @tomkaecf via Twitter

This isn’t a scientific poll by any means, and fourteen respondents isn’t a large enough sample to come up with anything definitive. But the question of what gets read and what doesn’t affects tens of thousands of nonprofits all over the country. Now more than ever, nonprofits must be smart about how they spend their very limited time, human resources and funds. This includes determining the most effective and cost-efficient way to get their annual reports to the hands to their current or prospective funders. And there’s no way for them to find out what’s effective and what’s not if funders don’t tell them!

So I’ll keep monitoring this poll until I reach a subjectively determined goal of 100 respondents. According to the Urban Institute’s National Center for Charitable Statistics, there were more than 115,000 private foundations in the country in 2009. So 100 respondents is not even a drop in the bucket! But it’s a start, and I hope it will yield some useful information for nonprofits as they continue to weather the storm of the current crisis.

Please help me reach my goal! Here are some easy and quick ways:

• Tweet it! (updated link)
• Share with your friends on Facebook
• Click on the “Share this” link at the bottom of the poll or this blog post for a bunch of other ways to help spread the word.

I’ll keep you up-to-date with our progress and interim poll results. Thank you!

Yna C. Moore is the communications director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). Follow her on Twitter.

February is black history month. It’s a time for us to remember the milestones and myriad positive steps we’ve taken as a country to be more inclusive of our black brothers and sisters. And it’s also a time to reflect on all the work that lies ahead because of persistent disparities and a seemingly universal assumption that we live in a post-racial society because we elected an African American man as our president. The NAACP has developed some fantastic multimedia tools for us to do just that.

1. Check out the Milestones page where you can learn about important dates in the history of our black brothers and sisters. You might be surprised to find out about the 1931 case of the Scottsboro Boys and their unfair treatment in the Emmett Till case. Have we gotten past that kind of racism? I don’t think so – remember the Jena Six case? Yes, they got a second chance and it was great that we came together to confront racial disparities in our justice system. When ordinary citizens are active like they were in the civil rights movement, we can make a difference. But we’ve clearly got work to do – and lots of it to ensure justice and parity in our criminal justice system (The Sentencing Project is a great resource for this if you’re interested.)
2. And then there’s the People – sure, we’ve all heard of the great Dr. Marin Luther King Jr. and other big names from the Movement. But who’s Linda Brown? Yeah, we’ve heard of Brown v. the Board of Education but check out the story of this brave third grader from Topeka. I think we can all learn something from her and her family’s story as we continue working towards a having real access to equal education.
3. There’s also the Pictures section – a great collection marking the NAACP’s 100th’s anniversary. A picture can speak a thousand words, right? I think there’s about a million in here!

Black history month is an opportunity for us to celebrate the milestones and victories and to look critically at where we stand currently so we can keep moving toward a society in which race and ethnicity really don’t determine how our life pans out. Kudos to the NAACP on 100 years of great work and for this fantastic resource.

Niki Jagpal is the research and policy director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

posted on: Wednesday, February 10, 2010

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

- Blanche DuBoise, A Streetcar Named Desire




Photo by: Francesco Marino/freedigitalphotos.net

Playwright Tennessee Williams’ famous line also holds true on the philanthropic stage. After all, where can strangers offer more kindness than in philanthropy—where grantmakers and nonprofit leaders depend on each other—and where so many people in need depend on the grantmaker-nonprofit partnership?

Last week, Arabella Advisers, the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers (WRAG), and PNC co-hosted a panel discussion on bolstering the impact of philanthropy. The animated discussion focused on two reports: Arabella Adviser’s High-Impact Giving Opportunities: Philanthropy That Makes a Difference and WRAG’s Beyond Dollars Investing in Big Change: How Washington Area Grantmakers are Creating Lasting Impact. Although Arabella and WRAG each published independently and included different case studies, when I read the reports in sequence, I thought they equipped grantmakers with clearer advice. Overall, I viewed the strategies WRAG identified (timing and momentum, a strong voice, leveraging resources, and true partnerships) as four tools necessary for approaching any philanthropic initiative. Then, Arabella’s report suggested four philanthropic initiatives (policy advocacy, broad alliances, mission investment, and public-private partnerships) that I thought grantmakers could better pursue with the tools from WRAG’s report.

The reports shared similar messages, but the most prominent common denominator was a simple concept: partnerships. However, don’t let the simplicity detract from its significance; partnerships should be the foundation to any grantmaking strategy. Grantmaking suffocates in silos, especially in a vastly interconnected world that reaps tremendous rewards from partnerships between grantmakers and nonprofits, as well as governments, businesses, and people in need.

Partnership Benefits:
Both reports and the panelists championed the importance of partnerships, but more can be said on the topic. Foundations benefit from partnerships during every stage of the grantmaking process.

While researching a new grant opportunity, for example, partners increase the knowledge base. Think tank scholars, professors, reporters, practitioners, retired experts, and counterparts at other organizations all hold fortunes of insights and information, and they are only conversations away. Before making a funding commitment, a grantmaker can pool resources and overcome barriers to entry by partnering with another grantmaker who shares programming goals. If grantmakers forge partnerships, they will dedicate more resources to programming. Partnerships are not vehicles for grantmakers to deliver static, one-time gifts to nonprofits. Rather, I believe grantmaker-nonprofit partnerships are proof of dynamic relationships between likeminded people who see grants not as charity or hand-outs, but as instruments of social justice.

Partnership Responsibilities:

Although the reports and panelists touched on the responsibilities grantmakers and nonprofits accept when they form partnerships, partnership benefits received more time and attention. Thus, I wanted to continue the conversation of partnership responsibilities. Interestingly, however, the responsibilities I enumerate below can become benefits. By identifying and executing each of these responsibilities, the impact of philanthropic funding expands.

(1) Conduct background research:
Understand both the big picture and the nuances of a given situation (and determine if, when, and how you can replicate best practices).

(2) Learn everyone’s role:
Who is the lead decision-maker? Who comprises the supporting cast? Who labors backstage, and how can you ensure that their accomplishments receive earned recognition? How can your performance enhance the performances of others?

(3) Read from the same script:
Share a common definition and prioritization of goals (short-term and long-term), strategies for achieving those goals, and benchmarks for achieving those strategies. For example, is your goal to create better schools? Well, how do you define “better”? Does better refer to teachers? If so, are you referring to better teacher quality or quantity? What metrics will determine if the abilities or number of teachers are met? Then, consider whether deficiencies in teacher quality and quantity are the core problems, or if they are symptoms of deeper problems in the education infrastructure.

(4) Plan the length of your run (multi-year grants):
Even the largest foundations have finite resources, and they still shoulder the burdened of saying “no” to many worthy causes. So, when foundations do say “yes,” they must grant both funding and adequate time for the funding to begin reaping success. Sometimes, unrealistic expectations of certain one-year grants can lead to failure.

(5) Encourage audience participation:
Guarantee that the goals you share with your partners align with the needs of the community you serve. If realignment is needed, listen to community members and adapt. Don’t squeeze the proverbial square peg in the round hole. Also, consider the long-term value of civic engagement, advocacy, and/or community organizing (and realize that your audience may have a different lexicon for these ideas).

Christine Reeves is field assistant at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP).