As Amy Celep noted in an earlier post, “changing the conversation” can be a powerful tool toward creating the change we want to see in the world. 

I was reminded of the validity of Amy’s claim during a recent lunch meeting with Jim Down, a wonderful strategic thinker who led Mercer Management Consulting until retiring at age 50. Since then he has played a critical role in the nonprofit sector, advising organizations ranging from OxFam to the Centers for Disease Control.  Jim is on the board of OxFam and I asked him what he thought their most impressive accomplishment was so far.

“Changing the conversation. Changing the dialogue.  Whether with the coffee industry, or mining, the most important thing we’ve done is to get people to think and talk differently about what the real issues are in the developing world, and to help them understand that there are policies that can be put in place to enable people to have the means to support themselves."

That squared with my own sense of the most important thing that OxFam or any social change organization could be doing, as well as our experience at Share Our Strength.  With our No Kid Hungry campaign we shifted the conversation from emergency feeding and how we can afford to feed more people to how we ensure that people access existing, already paid for federal food and nutrition programs.

As an example, the government official in charge of the food stamp program in Arkansas told me how No Kid Hungry’s focus on access caused them to shift from focusing mostly on compliance with regulations to access and outreach, with the result being an increase in enrollment from 71% of the eligible population to 84%, and a workforce of state employees a lot more fulfilled in their jobs.

Once you change the conversation, you have won more than half the battle. The rest becomes execution, and “how to” not “whether to”.  This allows nonprofit leaders to focus on the core of their work – building solutions to solve social problems – rather than convincing others that that work is needed or possible.

1. Put our differences aside in pursuit of the mission.

In his speech, President Obama pointed to the military’s ability to put aside differences and focus on the mission.  On many military missions, it’s life or death for those involved. For much of our work in the social sector it’s life or death, too. While there are some bright spots of organizations coming together in pursuit of a common agenda, we still have a long way to go.

The call to action for all of us, social sector or not, is to do the hard, personal work that brings our individual, unconscious biases and fears into consciousness so we can move beyond them and join with others to accomplish our missions.  As I explored in my post earlier this week, those who have successfully created big, transformative social change have been skilled at finding common ground among unlikely partners.

2. Advocate for the voiceless, those who can’t even dream of the American dream.

President Obama’s speech called for keeping the fundamental American promise alive. As he said, it’s the “promise that if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement.”

I’m in full support of restoring this promise, but we must not forget the millions who can’t even dream of this most fundamental American dream because it’s so far removed from their reality.

Realizing the American promise assumes that one’s most basic physiological needs—those at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, such as the need for food and water—are met, at least to some extent.  The reality: One in five children are at risk of hunger in America.  They wonder where their next meal will come from. Their families likely aren’t thinking about owning a home, going to college or saving for retirement. They are thinking about survival. Our great opportunity in the social sector is to make sure their voices and plight are heard.

Politically, it may have been smart for President Obama to talk about the American promise, which speaks to the country’s middle class, but the independent sector has the chance to do what isn’t always politically smart yet is morally right. Our call to action is to get even smarter about how best to advocate for and put pressure on our elected officials to do what is morally right.

3. Assume our responsibility to change the system.

Numerous times throughout his speech Obama referenced the many ways in which our federal government, systems and institutions aren’t working.  This was brought to light as he talked about Jackie and her journey to get a job. He shared his agenda to “cut through the maze of confusing training programs, so that from now on, people like Jackie have one program, one website, and one place to go for all the information and help that they need.”

In this case, he was talking about the clutter of information around training programs, but there are countless federal programs, designed to help people in need, that are rendered ineffective in reaching and engaging the very people they are designed to help.  If we take, for example, the federal income tax system alone—with which we all interact every year—there is a virtual labyrinth of tax breaks and credits that were set up for the express purpose of helping us!  Every year, I find myself irritated, on the verge of anger, when it comes to tax time. That’s because even I, who have received a good education, can’t interpret some of the tax policies and determine whether or not I am eligible. Consider those who don’t have the luxury of the same education, or for whom the money at stake, if they can’t take advantage of a particular tax credit, makes the difference between putting food on the table for their family, or helping their children enroll in community college.

If we want big change to happen, we have to get savvy about the massive systems in which we operate, and advocate for public policy and structural changes to the systems and processes that keep so many from accessing the very programs that can positively impact their lives.

I would love to hear whether these calls ring true for you or whether the President’s address brought something else to mind. Please share your thoughts below!

In the US, as we enter an election year, we are being bombarded with messages of difference, disagreement and opposition. As the American people are asked to make a choice about political candidates, it is important for us all to consider the similarities and differences among the slate of contenders. But, when it's time to get the real work done, the challenge is for our leaders, and all of us, to focus on the areas where we do agree.

Through our research of major social transformations efforts – those designed to eradicate or make dramatic improvement on a social problem – we see that those who have successfully created real change have been skilled at finding common ground among unlikely partners. They have a true commitment to taking the time to explore and identify areas of agreement rather than focus solely on all the ways in which they disagree.

For example, in their quest to instill “designated drivers” as a new American social norm, the Harvard Alcohol Project was able to rally an incredibly diverse set of institutions and individuals in the interest of reducing alcohol-related traffic fatalities.  The partners and evangelists they mobilized included TV network executives, Hollywood producers and writers, the New York Times, two US Presidents, the Department of Transportation, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, and a number of brewing companies!

So, as we enter this new year, we at Community Wealth Ventures renew our commitment to focusing on similarities rather than differences in our work with change agents, as we together seek to solve some of the world's most pressing social problems. This takes hard work, time, and patience. Yet while we work, youth continue to drop out of school at alarming rates and children go to bed hungry night after night, and it's clear that there is just too much at stake for us if we don't seek to find and leverage the many ways we are all the same.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy, which conducted the survey revealing this troubling statistic, attributes this job dissatisfaction to strains caused by the economic downturn.

While those pressures are real and surely play a role, our experience working with hundreds of nonprofits since founding Community Wealth Ventures is that much of what can be debilitating about working for a nonprofit comes from self-inflicted organizational wounds, summarized by these Five Failures:

1. Failure to diversify revenues.
2. Failure to be accountable to specific goals that can be measured by stakeholders.
3. Failure to pay talent what it is worth.
4. Failure to invest in management training and staff development.
5. Failure to look beyond short term gains in favor of investments that may not pay off until the long-term.

We rely heavily on charitable organizations to fill the gaps left by government cutbacks in social services, education, health care, community development and anti-poverty work.

We rely heavily on charitable organizations to fill the gaps left by government cutbacks in social services, education, health care, community development and anti-poverty work.  We must have strong resilient organizations, with committed and highly skilled staff, to meet such pressing needs and expectations of the communities we serve. When 4 out of 5 employees of these critical organizations want to leave their jobs, at a time when they are needed the most, we have a national epidemic of crisis proportions.

Nonprofit leaders and those who support them have an alternative to being so totally victimized by economic downturns. But it means challenging themselves to totally re-invent the way they go about their work. Rather than pack it in they need to challenge themselves to completely re-think how they go about their work, their willingness to invest in capacity, the skills needed to marshal support for such investments that may not pay off until the long-term.

Solving social problems will always be hard. But it need not seem so futile that so many talented staff of charitable organizations want to give up.

Share Our Strength and Community Wealth Ventures worked together to ensure that Share Our Strength took the steps that resulted in its greatest growth ever during and after the recent recession. We’d been guilty at times of each of the five F’s above, but we changed and it’s not too late or others to do the same.

2012 Resolutions for the Social Sector:

1. Funders make decisions based on outcomes over relationships.
2. Nonprofits increasingly consolidate and partner with each other to achieve greater community outcomes.
3. Organizations value community-wide impact more than their individual outputs.
4. Leaders set time aside to stop to think about their long-term goals, and consider how their daily actions contribute to those goals.
5. Nonprofits take more control of their financial future and think boldly about new revenue streams such as earned income.
6. The social sector achieves greater integration with the public and private sector, which leads to better sharing of capital, skills, and understanding of community needs.

We are excited about the possibilities for 2012 and our team is eager to do its part to make these resolutions a reality.

What are your resolutions for the social sector this year?

We underscored in our last post the centrality of culture and leadership in building an organization’s evaluation capacity. But sustaining evaluation capacity also depends on an organization’s ability to sell the value of their evaluation efforts to its stakeholders.

Effective evaluation depends on the engagement of numerous key stakeholders: you need staff to collect and use data; you need funders to support the costs of evaluation; and you may depend on community partners to collect and share their data that affects your outcomes.  Unfortunately, a strong evaluation system alone does not automatically translate into greater support from these stakeholders. In particular, in our assessment of the funding environment for evaluation, we have learned that funders differ significantly in their views of what evaluation means, the degree to which it is valuable, and what it should cost.

With the philanthropic community disjointed in its views of evaluation, you must make a succinct and strong case for why evaluation is central to your ability to grow and sustain their organization’s impact. To that end, there are several specific actions you can take:

• Be clear about who your most important stakeholders are and what they value. Stakeholders are really anyone who “have a stake” in the success of your organization – your key board members, community partners, beneficiaries and funders. Be explicit about who the key stakeholders are as it relates to evaluation and what it is they value.
• Articulate a clear value proposition for evaluation. You have to be able to articulate the value of evaluation to your organization’s impact in a way that appeals to the needs and expectations of your stakeholders.
• Develop communications plans for key stakeholders. As each stakeholder may be different, you must deliberately plan how you will communicate with and engage each group.  Our client, Connecticut Association for Human Services (CAHS), developed a pithy weekly “top 3 things I learned this week” email from Executive Director, Jim Horan, initially meant to drive home to staff the organization’s learning culture. The email proved so effective that Jim now sends the email to board members as well, consistently driving home the value of evaluation to CAHS.
• Emphasize transparency and a commitment to learning from outcomes. Increasingly, stakeholders, particularly funders, value organizations that are transparent and honest about their evaluation outcomes.

This last point is a critical one. Many nonprofits are under the impression that, when it comes to evaluation, their funders care mainly about their ability to accurately measure and report strong results. Yet, funders tend to value whether an organization is honest about and has learned from its outcomes even more than they care about the strength of the outcomes themselves. In short, you can most effectively engage and win the support of your stakeholders when you understand that evaluation is about learning and improving programs, not just reporting strong results.

Sustaining your evaluation capacity is tough. There is no silver bullet that can suddenly produce more funding or better systems. Yet you can overcome these challenges if you are committed to building, little by little, a culture of evaluation and if you can clearly articulate the value of your evaluation work to your supporters. To quote Mario Morino in Leap of Reason, “None of this takes big money. It takes time.”

This question has been the focus of our recent work with the Connecticut Association for Housing Services (CAHS) and CASA de Maryland (CASA), two organizations that had come to recognize that evaluation capacity was about more than collecting some good data.

As Mario Morino, author of Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity, recently noted at an Urban Institute symposium, “[managing to outcomes] is about… the people and strong leadership who have the culture and desire to collect and use information as the basis for continually improving what you are doing.”

It became overwhelmingly evident in our work with CAHS and CASA that sustaining capacity for evaluation starts with culture – the values, norms, and behaviors of an organization. And to infuse evaluation into a culture, you have to change the underlying beliefs of your organization, the rules that guide behaviors, and, ultimately, the actions that people take on a daily basis.

We have identified a few best practices that can help inculcate a commitment to evaluation into an organization’s norms and behaviors.

• Start with a visible commitment from senior leadership. You will only change norms and behaviors when your executive leadership commits to using data to inform decisions and “walks the walk” themselves. At CASA, many staff members, long resistant to the idea of conducting more rigorous evaluation, came to support evaluation work once the Executive Director and Board of Directors strongly emphasized its importance.
• Promote a sense of shared ownership and transparency in the evaluation process among all staff. Your leadership needs to engage all staff in the process of building, using, and improving evaluation processes. Moreover, staff members at all levels should be held accountable to using results to make their own data-driven decisions.
• Infuse a commitment to evaluation into the strategic and operational plans of an organization. All of the documents that guide an organization – strategic plans, operational plans, job descriptions, Board reports, etc. – should reflect a commitment to data collection and accountability to data-driven decision-making.

CAHS and CASA have embraced these lessons and have already seen the tides of their organizations’ cultures shift towards a stronger commitment to evaluation.  A few operational improvements have reinforced this transformation and are important tips to keep in mind:

• Designate an internal champion for evaluation. It is critical to have a part or full-time staff member who not only understands how to structure an evaluation system but also can continuously push to establish a learning culture. Ideally, this person will report to the Executive Director or CEO.  At CAHS, Executive Director Jim Horan credits his organization’s tremendous progress in building a culture of evaluation to their new Director of Community Research, Sheryl Horowitz. “Without Sheryl’s determination and expertise,” said Jim recently, “we never could have developed the level of support and functional system for evaluation that we have now.”
• Develop a simple metrics dashboard that is accessible to all stakeholders. Promote a sense of shared ownership and transparency by developing a common metrics dashboard that is simple and easily used by all staff and other stakeholders. The key is to distill the complexities of evaluation work into what really matters most for an organization and drives it decisions.
• Continually provide training to staff on how to collect and use data. To ensure sustainability of your evaluation work, you cannot just rely on a single expert or one training session with your staff.  Rather, you need to build a critical mass of evaluation expertise among all staff that can assure continuity and accuracy in the maintenance and usage of evaluation data. This collective expertise can only be nurtured through continual engagement and training of staff.

Of course, building your capacity for evaluation requires money: How can an organization build the culture and systems it needs to sustain evaluation when it doesn't have the financial support in the first place?

You have to start somewhere. Start small, build some evidence, demonstrate a culture of transparency and learning, and sell this to funders and other critical stakeholders. With enough diligence and persistence, the mantra “if you build it, they will come” will hold true. Stay tuned for more on how to engage stakeholders in your evaluation work the next post of this series.

As a part of our work studying transformational initiatives, we recently had an opportunity to speak with Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), about his organization’s efforts to break the cycle of poverty in Harlem.

We were eager to learn how HCZ has managed to adapt, grow, and ultimately sustain its programs over the long term. There have undoubtedly been many keys to HCZ’s success, but Geoffrey was quick to stress one factor: Using data to drive impact is critical to achieving HCZ’s short-term and long-term goals.

Tracking performance metrics and learning from the data is vital to improving your organization’s impact. Our experience has also taught us that a strong commitment to evaluation boosts your ability to sustain long-lasting and relevant social impact.

Why? We’ve learned a few key lessons:

• Continually measuring outcomes and results enables you to make data-driven decisions that, in turn, help your organization adapt to changing environments, improve programs and grow your impact.
• Data eases your organization’s ability to demonstrate and communicate your impact to stakeholders – your staff, funders, community partners, beneficiaries and others.
• Evaluation enhances your ability to engage your stakeholders who increasingly value results.

Measuring and learning from your outcomes contributes to a virtuous cycle of growing your impact. Our examination of transformation initiatives of all kinds - from the fight to end malaria to Denver’s movement to end homelessness - underscores the importance of evaluation in defining what success looks like, understanding whether you’re making progress, and communicating your results to your stakeholders.

That strong evaluation capacity can support your organization’s sustainability is not merely theory. A report sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that, of 120 organizations funded by the Foundation, 50% believed that evaluation was critical to securing subsequent funding and promoting their overall sustainability.

Understanding the importance of evaluation to organizational sustainability still leaves us with an essential question: How can you build and sustain your organization’s evaluation capacity?

We will explore this question in the next post in our series but, in the meantime, please share your thoughts below!

Earlier this month I explored the courage of Cuyahoga Valley National Park Association (CVNPA). Today, I want to share the story of the Center for Families and Children, a large provider of quality family services throughout the Cleveland area with a budget of about $34M.

Like CVNPA, the Center participated in our Cleveland Community Wealth Collaborative (our Community Wealth Collaboratives are focused on helping organizations launch or grow social enterprises). During the Collaborative, the Center explored the feasibility of a venture that we referred to at the time as Life Care Partners. Its focus was serving as a supportive partner to parents caring for special needs children by providing life planning and management services.

Ultimately, it was discovered that this venture would require the Center to not only create new services but also enter new markets. The board saw the risk as too great, and in the end, the organization decided not to pursue the opportunity.

I recently met with Sharon, the Center’s CEO, and Jim, the Center’s Chief Program Officer, both of whom were instrumental in the exploration of Life Care Partners. They could barely contain themselves in telling me that they launched a pharmacy out of their headquarters aimed at serving their existing clientele, whom they discovered often don’t take their medication due to barriers in accessing existing pharmacies.

After nearly two years in operation, the majority of their clientele who take regular medications are using their onsite pharmacy, and most importantly, getting the medication they need, allowing them to live a better life. At the same time, the venture was profitable after six months and had $5 million in revenue after 18 months. They now are looking to launch their second pharmacy at one of the other locations in the city.

Interestingly, when you talk to Sharon and Jim now about the Life Care Partners experience, they talk about all they learned from that experience and how it contributed to their more recent success with the pharmacy.

This story is a good reminder of how failures and learnings allow us to build the resilience and courage needed to propel our organizations forward.

Miriam’s Kitchen has been serving homeless men and women in Washington D.C. since 1983, but recently recast its work by putting forth a bold new vision for the organization: ending chronic homelessness in Washington, D.C. This type of compelling articulation of how the world will look different is one of the common elements we have uncovered in our research on social transformation.

With this bold new vision in place, Miriam’s Kitchen brought in CWV to help it understand how the organization’s strategies can translate into the end of chronic homelessness.

Collaborating with Miriam's Kitchen on a plan to end chronic homelessness was eye-opening, intellectually stimulating, and inspiring.  Here are my takeaways:

• Organizational values aren't just words to hang on a wall or list on a website.  Successful organizations like Miriam’s Kitchen truly live their values.  At Miriam’s Kitchen, the values of dignity and respect are palpable in everything they do, from the way staff interact with one another to the way guests (homeless individuals served at Miriam’s Kitchen) are treated.  Guests are fed nutritious and delicious food, included in focus groups to weigh in on organizational decisions, and have a guest-led advocacy program.  The effect of this is evident as guests describe the difference between their experience at Miriam’s Kitchen and other organizations and agencies.
• Good practices are good for business.  Living its values isn't just a feel-good thing for Miriam’s Kitchen.  These practices have made the organization more sustainable:
  • Miriam’s Kitchen has excellent staff retention and was recently named one of the 50 Great Places to Work in Washington.
  • The work is supported by the efforts of more than 2,400 volunteers each year.
  • The organization has diverse sources of revenue and has grown despite the recession.
  • Homelessness is a systemic problem, made up of very personal, individualized stories.  In working with Miriam’s Kitchen I learned about the flaws in our system that result in chronic homelessness.  But because of the respect and dignity with which Miriam’s Kitchen treats its guests, I also had the opportunity to see the human side of homelessness.  I heard about guests’ lives, experiences, and goals.  They, and Miriam’s Kitchen as a whole, have made me think differently when I pass homeless people on the street.

So as I enjoy Thanksgiving dinner this year, I will be thankful for the family, food, and home in which we’re eating, and grateful to people like the staff, supporters, and volunteers at Miriam’s Kitchen who are working steadfastly to make the city I live in – our nation’s capital – a safe and comfortable place for all who live here.

Has something this year changed your perspective on Thanksgiving? What are you thankful for this year?