posted on: Thursday, June 12, 2008

by NCRP

Two new reports highlight important work undertaken by research director Niki Jagpal and senior research associate Lisa Ranghelli prior to joining NCRP's research team. The methods and results of these research efforts will inform NCRP's own work to promote philanthropy at its best.

The Solidago Fund recently released a report quantifying the community benefits achieved by its grantees and the return on investment of its funding for community organizing. Lisa Ranghelli worked with Jeff Rosen and other Solidago staff to develop the methodology and gather and analyze data for the report. She had previously worked with the Needmor fund to do a similar analysis of its community organizing grantmaking (see below). In calculating community benefits, the Solidago methodology allowed for differentiation between shared and full credit for grantee accomplishments. It also determined the foundation’s contribution to these accomplishments by calculating each grant as a proportion of the group’s budget. The report concluded that collaborative strategies yielded the greatest impact and found a return on investment for Solidago of $1 to $59. [Link]

In 2003, Lisa worked with the Needmor Fund, a small family foundation focused on social justice, to collect grantee data on organizational development. Lisa’s work found that the 18 surveyed grantees had collectively grown their membership by more than 30% and their leadership by 53% over four years. The most striking thing she found was that the aggregate dollar amount of their accomplishments during the four year time horizon was more than $1.37 billion. This meant that Needmor’s investment of $2,688,500 effectively generated a return of $1 to $512. [Link]

These two reports, which were preceded by independent research from the Jewish Funds for Justice, provide some of the framework for NCRP’s impact of advocacy and organizing work. For foundations seeking to maximize impact, NCRP wants to show the social and monetary value of investing in community organizing as a way to achieve lasting social change.

Meanwhile, research director Niki Jagpal did extensive post-Katrina research with Jim Carr, former Senior Vice President for Financial Innovation, Planning, and Research for the Fannie Mae Foundation who currently serves as Chief Operating Officer at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. Her work focused on the disparate impact on lower-income and African American communities in New Orleans both immediately after the storm and following the one-year anniversary. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies recently announced the publication of a series of reports calling for a new model of disaster response, one that considers “historic patterns of discrimination and inequality.” Niki’s work is featured in one of the reports, “In the Wake of Katrina: The Continuing Saga of Housing and Rebuilding in New Orleans.” [Link]

Niki’s previous work addressing the distinct impact of Katrina and the subsequent recovery efforts on traditionally marginalized communities sets the backdrop for NCRP’s work on developing criteria for Philanthropy at its Best (PAIB). Promoting philanthropy that explicitly identifies and seeks to remedy structural barriers to equality are integral components of PAIB

posted on: Monday, March 17, 2008

By Lisa Ranghelli, Senior Research Associate, NCRP

Last weekend’s Sunday New York Times Magazine (3/9/08) was devoted to philanthropy and charitable giving. I’d like to comment on two interesting articles on current philanthropic thinking about how to best measure the impact of grants and how to determine which strategies are most likely to effect desired change.

Jon Gertner’s article, “For Good, Measure,” raises some important questions about the extent to which funders should seek a ‘return on investment’ for their grants, and how much money they should spend evaluating and measuring impact. The article focused primarily on big fish in philanthropy like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. After all, they have the kind of resources purported to be needed to have an impact on entrenched problems like poverty.

Yet there are thousands of small and mid-size foundations across this country that might not have the resources to conduct major evaluations, but they should also be thinking about their impact. In fact, these funders could be making a much more significant difference—and some are—by realizing that investing in effective grassroots organizing and advocacy can help achieve long-term systemic change on issues they care about, from housing and homelessness to workforce development and education. Speaking of education…

In “How Many Billionaires Does It Take to Fix a School System?” Times Magazine editor Paul Tough brought together a group of ‘interested parties’--two funders, the NYC schools chancellor, a charter schools CEO, and someone from a conservative think tank-- to participate in a roundtable discussion about changes in education philanthropy. He asked the group to advise a hypothetical wealthy donor as to how he should spend $2 billion to make a difference in the field of education. Much of the discussion centered on identifying visionary chancellors and fostering competition through charter schools, with some attention to infrastructure and human resource development. Perhaps this should not be surprising, given who was having the conversation.

There were no teachers, students, parents, or other community members represented around that table. Yet these are the people most affected by schools issues and often the ones in the best position to make change happen through effective organizing and advocacy. For years foundations have used the argument that “organizing and advocacy are hard to evaluate, and it’s hard to measure their impact” as a reason (excuse?) to not fund such strategies. Yet more and more information is coming to light that challenges this claim.

A great example is the forthcoming Annenberg Institute for School Reform report commissioned by the Mott Foundation, which assesses the impact of organizing groups on education reform and student outcomes in seven cities. (Full disclosure: one of the groups studied was People Acting for Community Together in Miami, formerly run by NCRP Executive Director Aaron Dorfman.) Anyone who doubts that the impacts of organizing can be quantified, measured, and linked to specific performance indicators should plan to check out this report when it is released on March 26th here. It is notable that two of the cities included in the report are New York City and Los Angeles, two places held up for their innovations in the Times’ roundtable discussion. The Annenberg report should offer a very different perspective on ways to improve outcomes for students in those two cities, as well as the five other sites.

In fairness to the Times roundtable participants, their conversation eventually touched on issues of nonprofit capacity and the role of policy advocacy. Vanessa Kirsch, who runs a venture philanthropy firm, talked about the need to provide multi-year support to non-profits run by “social entrepreneurs,” so they have time to build their capacity and bring their innovative ideas to scale. Who are these social entrepreneurs? Low-income community leaders and organizers do not seem to be included in this group, but why not? Grassroots community organizing is about building social capital to achieve systemic change. Chris Doby, program officer at the Mott Foundation, made the case that post-Katrina organizers were in fact social entrepreneurs here.

Perhaps organizing groups need to rebrand themselves to fit in with the new lingo of philanthropy. The phrase “community organizing” causes many foundation trustees to cringe in horror, as they imagine Saul Alinsky rising from the dead and banging down their door in the middle of the night. This visceral feeling about organizing prevents trustees from supporting good work on the issues they care most about. It works against their own self interest. Would they feel better knowing that they were investing in social entrepreneurs who can offer them a quantifiable return on their investment?

To what extent do we buy into the business-oriented language sweeping across the philanthropic sector, and to what extent do we push back?