posted on: Tuesday, March 23, 2010

By Niki Jagpal

Catharine Crystal Foster, an independent consultant and seasoned advocate, and Justin Louie of Blueprint Research and Design, Inc., recently coauthored a good resource for funders and community organizers looking to evaluate organizing efforts. Grassroots Action and Learning for Social Change: Evaluating Community Organizing adds to the available resources for grantmakers that fund community organizing or those that would fund it if they could evaluate the work somehow.

Similarly, organizers can learn about the organic processes involved in evaluating their work to help them make a results-driven case to their current or prospective funders by using some of the information in this publication. Perhaps the most useful part of the publication for both grantmakers and organizers is the link it provides to a series of videos that were developed for grantees of the California Endowment, where organizers “discuss their experiences developing and conducting evaluations of their efforts.”

Incidentally, the California Endowment provided the financial support for this brief, and played a key role in NCRP’s recent Grantmaking for Community Impact Project report documenting the impacts of advocacy, organizing and civic engagement in L.A. County. Not only did the foundation provide funds for our report, but this grantmaker is exemplary in many ways, especially when it comes to supporting organizing and advocacy work for vulnerable communities and developing meaningful evaluation tools for such efforts.

So check out the latest addition to the community organizing ‘demystification box’ and kudos to Catharine and Justin on contributing to an important and ongoing discussion.

Niki Jagpal is research and policy director at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP).

posted on: Friday, September 04, 2009

On August 27, 2009, the California Endowment announced that it will allocate $4 million in support of a statewide campaign that seeks to encourage participation in the upcoming 2010 U.S. census, especially among “hard to count” populations. As described in the press release, these populations include some of the state’s “most vulnerable residents – low-income communities and communities of color.” It also noted that California houses 10 of the country’s 50 hardest to count counties, which are “home to large populations that have been historically underrepresented in the census, including immigrants, people of color, low-income communities, rural areas and those who live in multi-family housing.” The Endowment’s work will target explicitly these 10 communities in an effort to bolster participation among these historically marginalized groups.

Kudos to the California Endowment for recognizing the importance of counting each person for the Census for all the reasons mentioned in the press release. And even more, I applaud this grantmaker for focusing its efforts on the ten counties with those populations that would otherwise remain excluded.

Social inclusion is important for so many reasons and it has the power to bring us all together in ways that benefit all our communities. Being counted is the first step toward being included in a community or a society. If focusing on underrepresented communities in ten counties in California has the kind of ripple effect on various facets of wellbeing described in the press release, what would the world look like if all foundations identified explicitly the intended beneficiaries of their grants, prioritizing the most vulnerable in their work? Maybe those most disenfranchised one day wouldn’t be so hard to count.

I’m also encouraged by the fact that the Endowment will work collaboratively with other funders. Dr. Robert K. Ross, president and CEO of the Endowment praised the California Community Foundation, which announced recently that it would fund nonprofits working to encourage census participation in Los Angeles. One of this community foundation’s guiding principles is a commitment to collaboration because problems are best addressed when ordinary citizens are civically engaged and included in the process of addressing challenges, along with institutions and communities. That’s exactly why we began our Grantmaking for Community Impact Project – we all benefit when ordinary citizens are civically active and engaged.

The Funders Census Initiative is a great example of foundations working collaboratively. This self-described ad hoc working group is “committed to stimulating interest in the 2010 Census among funders and their grantees. It strives to move both groups to support, contribute, and engage in efforts for a fair and accurate decennial count, with a focus on hard-to-count communities.”

These are very encouraging trends in philanthropy during a challenging time for our sector. If more members of our civic sector begin to see the value of working in relationship rather than in isolation, we could bolster our impact and ride out the current challenges we’re facing.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts in our comments!

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