Foundations: Is your funding overlooking civil legal aid? - NCRP

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series of posts featuring NCRP nonprofit members.

A risk-taking funder is a change-making funder. Those who help fledgling, but inventive, nonprofits get off the ground and into the air can markedly increase their social impact. Legal services in particular can be a strategic force multiplier for existing grantmaking programs.

The upstart Open Door Legal is one such example. Founded five years ago, this southeast San Francisco organization has seen its annual budget increase from $33,000 to $1.2 million thanks to its innovative, results-oriented work on legal representation.

What makes them so remarkable? Open Door Legal is pioneering universal access to civil representation, whereby every person who needs a lawyer can have one – regardless of ability to pay. Why? Because they’re out to show that when everyone has access to the law, poverty can be dramatically reduced.

That’s a big claim. But Open Door Legal has the receipts. The organization has won $1.9 million in direct financial returns via court awards, canceled debt and settlements – 78 percent of which benefitted individuals earning less than $15,000 per year. More than 140 evictions have been prevented, clients have been transferred to new housing and barriers to housing have been removed. All the while, Open Door Legal has lost only 2.5 percent of its cases.

There are hundreds of other heroic organizations working on legal aid across the United States. Three things distinguish Open Door Legal from the rest.

Universal access – They take on any kind of case: eviction, divorce, immigration or anything else, regardless of an individual’s ability to pay. In its short history, Open Door Legal has handled over 1,250 cases spread across 35 different areas of law.
Comprehensive services – An integrated intake process lets clients simultaneously get legal representation and access to social services through data sharing and joint case management (with a client’s permission).
Built to scale – A custom-built technology platform on Salesforce meticulously tracks all activities within the organization, allows for easy managing and onboarding of volunteers, and opens up a wealth of analytics to unearth ways to improve its work. This has been so successful, Salesforce invited Open Door Legal to present at its annual conference.

All told, according to their analysis, for every one dollar invested in Open Door Legal, the organization generates $21 in social returns.

There is a huge need for the services Open Door Legal provides. Nationally, 63 million Americans qualify for free civil legal assistance through federal government programs or grantees, but most Americans don’t perceive things like their wrongful eviction, domestic violence or severe debt as something a lawyer could help with, though study after study shows what a difference legal representation can make. As such, it’s distressing to see that more than half of those who do seek civil aid are turned away due to a lack of resources.

There are no public defenders for civil cases, so the United States relies almost exclusively on private attorneys to deliver justice. In Open Door Legal’s native California, the state spends only .01 percent of gross domestic product on legal aid.

Like nearly everything else in the private sector, the presence or absence of big payouts drives decision-making. In civil cases, damages are usually calculated based on lost income potential or value of property that’s destroyed. In practice, this means the poorer the client, the better their case has to be for someone to help them; for the wealthy, the quality of their case isn’t an issue as long as the check clears.

It is imperative that an Open Door Legal is available for every community. The organization wants to open five centers around San Francisco within the next three years to increase universal access to civil aid.

Funders interested in wealth inequality, immigration, women and children, or health should give Open Door Legal a strong look. Its impact is sizeable, measurable and inspirational. With innovative information technology and a broad range of service, the path to its expansion is relatively clear.

Legal services are not commonly considered a solution for these issue areas, and for some of Open Door Legal’s backers, the organization is the only one of its kind in their portfolios. Yet these grantmakers realize, or are coming to realize, how civil legal aid can improve outcomes and more efficiently deliver results.

There are new centers to build and people to help. Funders should consider providing general operating support for Open Door Legal, and clear out any internal roadblocks preventing legal services funding. In the fight for justice, philanthropy would be hard pressed to find a better ally.

Troy Price is NCRP’s membership and fundraising intern. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

At ABFE’s conference, Williams and Jeanné Isler of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy participated in a panel on NCRP’s As the South Grows reports, a series of deep dives into how national funders can engage a region where black communities—and others—face particularly daunting challenges. As we’ve seen, distance between funders and grantees is a major hurdle in the Southeast, both in terms of divergent leader backgrounds and how funders manage relationships with grassroots organizations.

Read the entire article in Inside Philanthropy.

Over last few years, we’ve kept up a dizzying pace. Movements from #BlackLivesMatter to #MeToo to #EnoughIsEnough have kept philanthropy on our toes. In the best-case scenario, we’ve heeded the charge to pay attention, leaned in closer, rethought our work, took more risks and changed policies or practices that haven’t worked to improve the lives of the people we serve.

To be real about it, all this action and reaction, thinking and learning, changing and trying has worn many of us out.

I know it has taken a toll on me and the team at Deaconess Foundation. And despite the demands and the urgency of the moment, every now and then you’ve got to stop and take stock. It’s time to hold up the mirror. Quite frankly, I’m not sure we can afford not to.

The continuation of reflection, learning and doing

In 2014, we knew we were launching a new strategic direction to build community capacity, then found ourselves on the streets during the Ferguson uprising.

In 2015, trustees and staff helped facilitate grassroots engagement of 3,000 citizens to deliver a policy-centered call for regional racial equity through the Ferguson Commission, while collaborating with philanthropic partners to build power for local accountability.

In 2016, we tried to model change by working with the ABFE to train our board of trustees, staff and community advisory board in Responsive Philanthropy for Black Communities. We also recalibrated our theory of change to integrate results-based accountability, the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity’s Changing States framework and racial equity.

Rooted in our ongoing journey, last year we helped facilitate field-wide learning by leading Grantmakers for Effective Organizations’ Racial Equity Advisory Group. Then, at the beginning of this year, we opened a 21,000 square foot community action tank in an underdeveloped neighborhood, co-locating with long-term partners and granting space for convening to power-building policy advocates.

We’ve got way too much going on! But, we just added one more thing. Deaconess joined a group of foundations using NCRP’s Power Moves: Your essential philanthropy assessment guide for equity and justice to help assess and learn about how well (or poorly) we’re doing building, sharing and wielding power with our partners.

Embarking on a power journey

We’re clear that racial equity and public policy change are the most sustainable approaches to advance child well-being in the St. Louis region. Neither is possible without power.

So, we want to know just how powerful we and our partners in this movement for children really are. We’re making the time to assess ourselves and reflect with our colleagues for a couple of reasons.

First, we’re aware of the potential for self-deception. The privilege of philanthropy and power dynamics with many of our partners allows us to blame others for a lack of missional progress and social change. Meanwhile, we pat ourselves on the back for valiant efforts.

Those of us who regularly gather and are blessed to don platforms to discuss and frame explicit equity work, efforts in marginalized communities and the latest research increasingly avoid conversation about political wins and winds. Yet, our theories don’t become action without power.

And, because the case studies we present at conferences are like our personal social media feeds (only showing the best of our lives), partners on the ground and in community may give us a reality check when friends in the field applaud our leadership.

Second, we recognize The Power of Moments. In Chip and Dan Heath’s book by this title, the brothers discuss how peak moments in our lives can change everything. These times, they say, are marked by elevation, pride, insight and connection. (They warn against using the E.P.I.C. acrostic, so don’t tell them I did.) The year 2014 was a pivotal, yet tragic, moment in our history. It was the 250th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis, the 125th anniversary of the Deaconess mission and the beginning of a renewed movement for racial justice in our community. It also launched us on this path to build power.

We want 2018 and 2019 to be E.P.I.C. as well. The mid-term elections and federal political change have elevated the moment for us. We hope this process of learning in connection with colleagues will lead to insight we can be proud of.

Who needs another thing to do? We do.

And so, do you. Because you want to build, share and wield power for social change.

It’s time to make Power Moves.

The Reverend Starsky D. Wilson is president & CEO of Deaconess Foundation and chair of NCRP. He also serves on the boards for Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, Chicago Theological Seminary and the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. He is an advisor to the Democracy Fund and Let America Vote. Follow him at @revstarsky or @deaconessfound.

Editor’s note: Deaconess Foundation is one of nearly two dozen foundations and philanthropy advisors participating in communities of practice as they begin using Power Moves. We’ll announce the list of participants in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

“I wouldn’t be Starsky Wilson if I didn’t remind folks that [five] out of the five-top offices in the state are going to be up in less than a year. There are people zig-zagging across this state right now, campaigning for votes. What they’re saying to you is ‘I’m better than the next guy.’ ‘I’m better than the next woman.’ Until they ask ‘How can I serve you?” they’ve not engaged in the kind of subversion that’s required to heal our community and get us to true reconciliation and take us down the path toward equity.”

– Rev. Starsky Wilson
President and CEO
Deaconess Foundation
In a 2015 interview on St. Louis Public Radio

The Deaconess Foundation is a faith-based grantmaker devoted to ensuring that children’s well-being is a civic priority in the St. Louis region. Since 1998, Deaconess has invested nearly $80 million to advance its mission. With Rev. Wilson’s leadership, the foundation is building a movement for child well-being through philanthropy, advocacy and organizing.

Throughout his career, Rev. Wilson has been exercising public leadership on social justice issues. In 2014, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon appointed Rev. Wilson to lead the Ferguson Commission, a group of citizens empowered to study the underlying conditions and make public policy recommendations to help the region progress through issues exposed by the tragic death of Michael Brown, Jr.

In 2015, it released the groundbreaking Forward Through Ferguson: A Path Toward Racial Equity report, calling for sweeping changes in policing, the courts, child well-being and economic mobility. Under Rev. Wilson, the Ferguson Commission produced recommendations that all center on the critical need to unravel community fabrics largely created to promote segregation. Rev. Wilson and Deaconess aim to challenge the public and policymakers across Missouri to advance racial equity and engage the community’s voice.

In 2014, under the leadership of its new president and CEO, Cecilia Clarke, Brooklyn Community Foundation moved to Crown Heights to be situated close to the community it serves. And while many community foundations seek input about certain aspects of their work, Brooklyn Community Foundation took it a step further by extensively engaging with grantees and community members to determine the future direction of its grantmaking.

Through its community engagement initiative called “Brooklyn Insights,” the foundation engaged nearly 1,000 people through 30 sector-based roundtables and “deep-dives” into three neighborhoods – striving to capture challenges and opportunities facing Brooklyn at a time of unprecedented growth and inequality and to find concrete ways the foundation could make a measurable impact.

While hosting a series of neighborhood dialogues in the East New York neighborhood, the foundation’s director of community leadership Tynesha McHarris met one on one with a range of local leaders. This led to new relationships and funding opportunities. For example, the foundation supported the nascent efforts of one leader, Misba Abdin, to bring together the Bangladeshi immigrant community, offering training and technical assistance so that Bangladeshi American Community Development and Youth Services (BACDYS) could hire its first director and be ready to apply to other local grantmakers.

Following Brooklyn Insights, the Brooklyn Community Foundation launched a resident-led investment program called “Neighborhood Strength” to empower local changemakers in Crown Heights. The initiative brings together community members to identify and direct funding to solutions that target significant local challenges. The foundation hired an experienced community organizer to facilitate the process, which included three visioning sessions and the creation of a 17-member advisory council.

The council found that the development and enhancement of public spaces would create more opportunities for residents to continue to address shared community challenges while building intergenerational relationships across class, race and ethnic groups. As a result, BCF invested $100,000 into six Crown Heights public spaces. Due to the success of this resident-driven process, Brooklyn Community Foundation has decided to implement it every year.

The foundation was awarded the NCRP Impact Award for the community foundation category in 2015.

“I think what’s undervalued and underappreciated is the issue of power and that the root of most social problems that plague our nation – health reform, education reform, fiscal government reform, housing reform – are not fundamentally innovation problems but power and equity problems. As a result of that, we have over the years increasingly been attentive to issues of advocacy, voice and power building in underserved communities and populations, and our grantmaking reflects that.”

– Dr. Robert K. Ross
President and CEO
The California Endowment
from Responsive Philanthropy (Winter 2011/2012)

On the heels of Philamplify’s in-depth study of The California Endowment (TCE), the foundation received NCRP’s Impact Award for a large private foundation in recognition of how it embraces power as a driver of change and invests in efforts to build community power, particularly of those most affected by health inequities. Also, TCE formally links grassroots power-building with statewide and federal policy change.

This is most explicitly illustrated through TCE’s Building Healthy Communities (BHC) – a 10-year (2010–2019), $1 billion community initiative to improve health outcomes in 14 targeted communities across the state. BHC works to build the organizing capacity of residents and service organizations, connecting advocacy to direct service work.

Using the social determinants of health frame, TCE supports organizing on a range of issues beyond health care access, including school discipline policies. Building on local community initiatives, TCE helped mobilize support to curb school-to-prison pipeline practices by expanding restorative justice policies and ending “willful defiance” as grounds for suspension or expulsion. School districts across the state have adopted favorable policies, thus elevating the public discourse statewide.

TCE also uses the power analysis framework of driving change by serving as a change-maker beyond grantmaking. This includes funding advocacy efforts, directly engaging in advocacy and strategic communications, convening and aligning its investment strategy with grantmaking goals. For example, it aggressively supported federal passage and state implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

While TCE operates at a much larger scale than most philanthropies, smaller funders can employ similar resident-led power building strategies, as well as a change-maker role, at the community level.

Foundations can gauge how they handle power imbalances between themselves and the communities they serve, and determine how much the notion of privilege plays a part in their grant making, with a free guide released today by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

“Power is one of those things funders will superficially acknowledge,” said Jen Bokoff, director of stakeholder engagement at the Foundation Center. “They’ll nod their head vigorously that they’re aware of their power, but few people in the field are will to dig into what the consequences are.”

Read the entire article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Every once in a while, if we’re lucky, we get to be part of something truly transformative. Something that has an outsized impact in bending the moral arc of the universe towards justice.

Today’s release of Power Moves: Your essential philanthropy assessment guide for equity and justice is one of those moments for me and the whole team at NCRP. And we invite you to be a part of it.

Power Moves is the only assessment guide that will help grantmakers of all sizes up their game by examining how well they are leveraging power in the fight for lasting, positive outcomes in all our communities. If you’re a funder committed to advancing equity and justice, this guide will help you get the feedback you need to understand how you’re doing and to chart a course for how to improve.

“Foundations confront multiple challenges in embracing effective, wise, responsible and relevant philanthropy. Power Moves can be a valuable asset in the hands of those who commit to that effort.”

Tom Lambeth
Director emeritus
Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation
Power Moves Advisory Committee

Power and equity: The missing link

“I think what’s undervalued and underappreciated is the issue of power and that the root of most social problems that plague our nation – health reform, education reform, fiscal government reform, housing reform – are not fundamentally innovation problems but power and equity problems.”

Dr. Robert K. Ross
President and CEO
The California Endowment
In “Responsive Philanthropy” (Winter 2011/12)

Efforts in support of equity and justice cannot be successful without taking power into account. Power Moves is a comprehensive toolkit that helps grantmakers explore three dimensions of power by asking themselves the following questions:

How effective are we at building power? Are we supporting systemic change by funding civic engagement, advocacy ad community organizing among marginalized communities?
To what extent are we sharing power? Are we nurturing transparent, trusting relationships and co-creating strategies with stakeholders?
How is our foundation wielding power? Are we exercising public leadership beyond grantmaking to create equitable, catalytic change?

Power Moves is the only self-assessment guide that helps grantmakers examine how well they are building, sharing and wielding power to achieve goals on equity and justice.

“With Power Moves, NCRP is stepping up once again to help the field understand what’s needed at this important moment to take meaningful action to advance social justice.”

Suprotik Stotz-Ghosh
Senior Advisor, Racial Equity
Grantmakers for Effective Organizations
Power Moves Advisory Committee

With grantmakers, for grantmakers

The toolkit was created with the help of an all-star group of thinkers and practitioners working on issues of equity, evaluation, assessment and learning. NCRP is extremely grateful to the advisory committee and external reviewers for their contributions.

We’ve brought together two cohorts of leading foundations and expert consultants who will use Power Moves in the coming year. Through these pilot advisory and peer learning groups, participants will for their organizations and clients.

We look forward to sharing insights and feedback we receive from participants with the rest of the sector so make sure you’re signed up to receive the latest news from NCRP.

Free Power Moves Webinar series

Join us for a discussion on how funders can examine power, privilege and risk in the first Power Moves webinar on Wednesday, May 30, from 2:30-3:45 pm ET. Joining Lisa Ranghelli, NCRP’s senior director of assessment and special projects, are:

Hanh Le, Executive Director, Weissberg Foundation
Marcelo Bonta, Principal, The Raben Group
Gita Gulati-Partee, Founder and President, OpenSource Leadership Strategies

Our fervent hope is that Power Moves will be a transformational resource for our sector and will help many foundations of all types and sizes more effectively contribute to the creation of a fair and just society.

Aaron Dorfman is president and CEO of NCRP. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

For Immediate Release

May 2, 2018

NCRP Introduces the First Foundation Assessment Guide on Power and Privilege

‘Power Moves’ allows grantmakers to discover if practices and strategies help or hinder efforts to address equity and justice

Washington, D.C. (5/2/2018) – Foundation leaders and staff working to end inequity and injustice have access to a number of resources to enhance their impact on issues and communities they care about. These tools are important, but they provide only a partial picture of what’s working and what’s not. As a result, grantmakers may be missing opportunities to contribute to significant progress towards achieving ambitious goals.

Now grantmakers can conduct an assessment that takes into account the full picture of what it takes to have a true and lasting positive impact through “Power Moves: Your essential philanthropy assessment guide for equity and justice” by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP).

“Power Moves” is the only self-assessment toolkit centered on the role of power and privilege in advancing equity. It will help funders solicit feedback from stakeholders to determine if they are:

Enabling equitable, long-term solutions instead of temporary fixes.
Earning the trust of peers, partners and the communities they serve.
Serving as a legitimate, powerful and relevant voice on issues they care about.

With “Power Moves,” foundations can explore how well they’re
leveraging their power to meet ambitious goals on equity and justice.

Released today, “Power Moves” helps grantmakers examine how well their practices and strategies build, share and wield power. It includes ready-to-use guides, insightful anecdotes and comprehensive resources for each dimension of power to help foundation board and staff meet ambitious goals on equity and justice

Power and equity: The missing link

Many grantmakers across the country are working to make all our communities safe, healthy and secure. But existing policies and practices are stacked against some populations.

“Power Moves” is based on the tough reality that lasting equitable outcomes are possible only when people and communities that traditionally don’t have power are given the ability to change the rules and help secure a thriving future.

“’Power Moves’ is the only assessment guide that will help grantmakers of all sizes up their game by examining how well they are leveraging power in the fight for lasting, positive outcomes in all our communities,” said Aaron Dorfman, chief executive of NCRP, in a blog post. “If you’re a funder committed to advancing equity and justice, this guide will help you get the feedback you need to understand how you’re doing and to chart a course for how to improve.”

Power Moves invites you to explore three dimensions of power.

Power Moves is the only self-assessment guide that helps grantmakers examine how well they are building, sharing and wielding power to achieve goals on equity and justice.

With grantmakers, for grantmakers

“Power Moves” builds on extensive work by NCRP, CHANGE Philanthropy partners, foundations and other research and advocacy organizations.

Leading experts and practitioners from the philanthropic sector guided the development of the toolkit from beginning to end.

“Foundations confront multiple challenges in embracing effective, wise, responsible and relevant philanthropy. Power Moves can be a valuable asset in the hands of those who commit to that effort,” said Tom Lambeth, director emeritus at the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and a member of the “Power Moves” advisory committee.

NCRP has brought together two groups of grantmakers and consultants who will apply and adapt Power Moves for their organizations and clients in the next year.

NCRP also will hold a series of free webinars to help funders explore how they can use the self-assessment guide to begin their journey towards responsibly and effectively using their power to respond to the pressing needs of our communities and today’s social movements.

The first “Power Moves” webinar on May 30 will feature Hanh Le of the Weissberg Foundation, Marcelo Bonta of The Raben Group and Gita Gulati-Partee of OpenSource Leadership Strategies.

“Power Moves” can be downloaded for free today from www.ncrp.org.

About NCRP

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy amplifies the voice of nonprofits and the communities they serve in the philanthropic sector. Through research and advocacy, it works to ensure that grantmakers and donors contribute to the creation of a fair, just and equitable world. Learn more at www.ncrp.org.

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Media Contacts:

Yna Moore: (202) 557-1381 or ymoore@ncrp.org

A graduate student interviewing me for a paper recently asked “How could we force foundations to transform their internal culture and open wider conversations about equity to as many stakeholders as possible?” I told her we can’t force foundations to do anything, unless or until the entire nonprofit sector calls a general strike.

If all 501c3 organizations refused to take money from institutions whose only obligation is to pay out 5 percent of assets per year toward charitable causes, presumably they would be compelled to come to the bargaining table.

I’ve harbored such fantasies during my 10 years at NCRP. But since I’m a pragmatist, I’ve also tried to create safer spaces for nonprofits to challenge dysfunctional foundation practices, as have others in the sector.

Inside Philanthropy’s platform to rate foundation staffers fell flat. So did our Philamplify web forum to encourage debate and discussion about the foundations we assessed. Now GrantAdvisor is showing promise with its feedback interface. All of these platforms offer the cloak of anonymity.

Especially for those who straddle the worlds of social justice and philanthropy, a perennial question is, “How can we encourage social change leaders to speak truth to power directly to foundations?” Pablo Eisenberg modeled this at the Center for Community Change for decades, telling off his funders with ease and confidence. And the organization thrived.

At NCRP, which Eisenberg helped found, we joke that we’ve been biting the hand that feeds us for more than 40 years. Yet racial and social justice organizations remain reluctant to apply the same tactics they use with public officials and corporate titans to philanthropy.

Within Our Lifetime (WOL) and Old Money New System Community of Practice (OMNS) are trying to change that with their bold new campaign, #DisruptPhilanthropyNOW. Fed up with foundations that espouse racial equity goals and values and then treat racial justice groups shabbily, WOL and OMNS are calling on racial justice and movement building organizations to tell their stories publicly, and to hold funders that don’t walk their talk accountable for their actions. WOL is using a blog series to tell its own story and model the accountability process it has gone through with a specific funder.

At NCRP, we know that it feels very risky to give critical feedback to a funder. Every Philamplify assessment we produced contained critiques, but I took strength from the fact that the critiques were grounded in the experience and wisdom of nonprofit and community leaders, and even peer funders. So we did not take lightly the decision to join WOL’s and OMNS’ invitation for courageous and collective action, to urge social movement groups to speak their truth.

When readers hear about the types of practices that earned WOL’s need to say “Enough!” they may say, “These are typical bad behaviors that funders engage in with all their grantees. So how is this about racial equity?” My response would be: That’s what disparate impact is about. A (bad) practice that is applied universally affects white groups differently than people of color groups.

People of color-led racial justice groups already garner meager philanthropic resources for their work. They already face many challenges that white-led organizations working on other issues don’t face. People of color-led organizations, especially those fighting for justice, are already viewed as being more radical and having less capacity than nonprofits that look and act like the dominant white culture.

So, foundations that espouse racial justice values should be working and investing to ensure people of color-led groups thrive and grow. And the beauty of targeted universalism is this: If funders improve their practices and behaviors so that people of color-led racial justice organizations specifically can fully advance their missions, those improved practices will benefit all their grantees.

If you represent a racial justice or movement organization, consider sharing your own story of inequitable philanthropic practices.

We should all be rooting for WOL’s and OMNS’ #DisruptPhilanthropyNOW campaign to succeed. Because a world in which nonprofits are able to achieve equitable philanthropic practices and funder accountability to communities of color will be a world in which we will be that much closer to achieving equity and justice for all.

Lisa Ranghelli is senior director of assessment and special projects at NCRP.