posted on: Friday, March 12, 2010

By Lisa Ranghelli

A week after presenting our findings on the impressive impacts of grassroots organizing and advocacy in Los Angeles to a hundred foundation and nonprofit leaders, I was reminded that the theme of policy innovation we highlighted there continues to ring true. At the event, I spoke about cutting edge policies community leaders developed in Southern California that were emulated elsewhere, such as community benefits agreements. Dr. Bob Ross, CEO of the California Endowment, who described his foundation’s decision to embrace advocacy and systemic change strategies, noted that “Innovation does not scale without dealing with power.” I interpreted his words to mean that you cannot make real changes to systems and institutions without challenging the powerful, and by bringing community power to bear.

L.A. Voice and the PICO National Network are dealing with power, all right!

L.A. Voice, one of 15 organizations we studied in L.A. County, is taking on the banks. On March 5th, as part of a coalition that includes SEIU, National People's Action and the California Reinvestment Coalition, L.A. Voice and PICO helped convince the Los Angeles City Council to pull city funds from irresponsible banks and set new standards for investing public dollars in institutions that offer tangible benefits to the community.

As L.A. Voice faith leader Nathan French put it, "Banks were created for people. People were not created for banks."

The legislation is designed to ensure that taxpayer money is only invested in banks that actively help families keep their homes, expand lending to small businesses to create jobs, end risky derivative deals that put public services at stake and relieve the city's budget gap. According to PICO, the move will save the city at least $10 million immediately.

PICO and its allies will be organizing in communities across the country to promote similar reforms, meeting power with power to replicate this innovative response to the financial crisis.

Lisa Ranghelli is senior research associate at NCRP and co-author with Julia Craig of Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities: Impacts of Advocacy, Organizing and Civic Engagement in Los Angeles County.

posted on: Monday, April 27, 2009

by Lisa Ranghelli

The Foundation Center’s new publication, Foundations and Public Policy: Leveraging Philanthropic Dollars, Knowledge, and Networks for Greater Impact (edited by James M. Ferris, Director of the Center on Philanthropy & Public Policy), is a welcome addition to the growing list of resources available to help grantmakers decide whether and how to add the tool of policy engagement to enhance their effectiveness and advance their missions.

Ferris makes two important points in his foreword to the book:

1) “Public policy engagement is a natural extension of foundation efforts to address public problems.”

And indeed, what problems in our society are not public in some sense? Especially in the current economic crisis, in which everything from the arts to zoos is at risk of being dismantled, not to mention the dire situation facing nonprofits that are working to meet the rising demand for basic services (food, shelter) with less capacity and resources. Public policy is playing an important role in addressing these immediate challenges, such as economic stimulus funds. And public policy will play a critical role in the longer term (one hopes) to help our country avoid another economic catastrophe by shoring up the financial regulatory structures. This recession reminds us all that even markets and the private sector are indeed matters of public policy, or at least they should be.

2) “Foundation involvement in public policy is not new.”

As Chapter 3 of the book points out, philanthropists have been influencing policy practically since the nation was founded. While the Tax Reform Act of 1969 tightened the regulatory framework governing foundations, “The federal tax law provides considerable latitude for private foundations to participate in the formation of public policy” (page 79). Chapter 4 concisely describes this latitude within the current legal framework. Despite philanthropy’s history of policy engagement and today’s easy access to good legal information, somehow many foundation leaders continue to believe mistakenly that they must avoid engaging directly in policy or funding nonprofits that do.

At last year’s Council on Foundations summit, I attended a session on rural philanthropy. As I applauded one rural funder’s comment about the importance of advocacy, the foundation leader sitting next to me said, “Why are you applauding illegal behavior?” Lawyers who advise grantmakers to err on the side of caution are doing them a disservice by discouraging perfectly legal strategies that can help funders make a big difference on the issues they care about.

In addition to offering a historical perspective on philanthropic policy engagement, the book also provides present-day case studies of funder engagement in four policy areas: health, the environment, child care and education. Health is a major concern for institutional philanthropy: according to Chapter 6, based on a sample of 1,200 of the largest foundations, nine in ten funders award grants in this field (page 121). Yet, the health care system suffers from many challenges that seemingly demand a policy response. Can all these scattered grants address the high rates of uninsured and high costs of care that are bankrupting thousands of Americans? The chapter’s authors suggest that bold coordinated action at all levels of policymaking is needed by philanthropy to make a difference.

While there has been much discussion lately about the supremacy of “donor intent,” which supposedly puts constraints on what a foundation can do, this chapter asserts quite the opposite: “Perhaps the most critical asset of foundations is their nearly complete freedom to select the issues they wish to address and the means of addressing them. … Unlike government officials who must confront a wide range of issues and typically take a conservative posture, foundations can focus quite narrowly on a problem and inquire into radical solutions without direct constraints” (page 121). Even the Helmsley estate has exercised discretion to support medical research and human services, rather than giving all of its $137 million of grant funds to just benefit animal welfare.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is one of a dozen foundations featured in Chapter 6. Although RWJF is a national foundation, the book praises RWJF for its willingness to invest in policy networks at the local and state levels, where the potential to achieve policy change is greater than at the federal level. NCRP’s research on the impacts of advocacy, organizing and civic engagement has turned up a great example of what this approach looks like on the ground—and the impact it can achieve.

On May 11, NCRP will release its second report in a series, Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities: The Impacts of Advocacy, Organizing and Civic Engagement in North Carolina. The first report focused on New Mexico. The North Carolina report features the advocacy and organizing impacts of 13 local and state organizations. One of these is Senior PharmAssist, which helps senior citizens obtain affordable medications and manage those medications. Advocacy has become a central part of the organization’s mission, especially since Medicare Part D was implemented. According to Senior PharmAssist’s executive director, Gina Upchurch, a leadership grant from RWJF provided the springboard to coordinated action. Upchurch used the grant to convene a broad range of stakeholders in 2006 to discuss Medicare reform and how it was affecting seniors’ access to medications in North Carolina. The stakeholders decided to create Advocates for a North Carolina Prescription Drug Assistance Program. To date the coalition has successfully advocated for:

- Creation of NCRx, which provides state funding of $6 million for Medicare D monthly premium assistance to more than 5,000 lower-income seniors.
- Creation of ChecKmeds, a pharmaceutical reimbursement program for medication therapy management services that has benefited more than 17,000 seniors, with state funding of $2 million.
- State appropriation of $250,000 for the Seniors’ Health Insurance Information Program (SHIIP) community-based outreach grants to connect 15,000 eligible seniors to services such as NCRx and Medicare D subsidies.

The advocates continue to push for expansion of NCRx to cover low-wealth disabled residents and to raise the eligibility level above 175 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. Upchurch neatly summarized the value of stakeholders coming together: “As a coalition we have power. Elected officials can’t easily dismiss or try to heavily influence the coalition’s focus – because we’re all in this together and have a process for making decisions.”

RWJF has certainly seen some bang for its buck with its modest investment in Senior PharmAssist. To learn about other impressive foundation-funded nonprofit advocacy and organizing impacts in North Carolina, look for the report on May 11th – when a copy can be downloaded for free at http://www.ncrp.org/. The policy impacts in the report were achieved by nonprofits of all sizes and collectively funded by local, state and national grantmakers. Even small, local foundations can affect policy in their community by leveraging their “dollars, knowledge, and networks.”

Lisa Ranghelli is senior research associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). She is the author of the report Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities: Impacts of Advocacy, Organizing and Civic Engagement in New Mexico.