The LAFF Society

March 4, 2010

Public Capacity and Public Trust

Filed under: Members' Blog — Treasurer @ 7:06 am

Michael Lipsky worked at the Ford Foundation in 1965 and again in 1991 to 2003 in Governance and Public Policy.

From The American Prospect

Can we reverse the vicious circle of frustrated citizens denying state government adequate resources — and then resenting the lack of state services?

DIANNE STEWART AND MICHAEL LIPSKY | February 1, 2010

For 30 years we have witnessed a downward spiral of eroding public trust in government. While the federal government deals with the most momentous issues — national security, health reform, global climate change — state government has borne the brunt of a self-deepening tax revolt.

The fiscal noose imposed by tax and spending caps, now exacerbated by the recession, undermines states’ ability to raise necessary revenues. The process erodes state governments’ basic capacity to operate effectively — which further destroys public trust. This vicious circle diminishes the willingness of Americans to entrust government at any level with tackling challenges that call for decisive action or for planning and investment in the future.

As revenue collections decline due to the recession, states raise taxes or cut services to balance budgets. In hard times, reductions in public services are not only cruel but counterproductive — in a recession the economy requires not less but more public spending.

In the current crisis, government agencies cope by reducing staff, cutting hours of operation, closing local offices, increasing hurdles for service eligibility, and raising standards for what constitutes emergencies worthy of intervention. As they decimate university systems, health-care programs, public-education funding, and other essential services, the agencies reinforce the belief that states are incompetent.

The federal stimulus program enacted last year helped the states but made up only 30 percent to 40 percent of their budget shortfalls. A second round of federal support is far from certain. As this special report demonstrates, without further federal assistance, the prospect for the states is grim.

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For the most part, states are where policies become visible and people experience public programs directly. Frontline public services forge popular expectations of government. For example, state actions will determine the success of national health-care reform and will influence public opinion on the legitimacy of federal efforts to restore economic prosperity.

Yet few Americans grasp what state governments do, how they contribute to our country’s well-being, and how our federal system actually works. For instance, we educate our children through local governments required to meet state standards and aided with state and federal funds. If they attend college, most Americans receive higher education through state colleges and universities, which are financed with state funds; these costs are often supplemented through federal grants and student aid. Many of the critical programs that provide for people in need, particularly in hard times — Medicaid for low-income and disabled people, unemployment insurance, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program — are state partnerships with the federal government.

Many might be surprised that the work force of state and local governments exceeds federal employment. At the last census (2002), 12.1 million people worked for the federal government, including military personnel and post-office workers, but 15.6 million worked for state and local governments.

As our research at De¯mos reveals, too many people now see government only as polarized politics or as an undifferentiated, ineffective bureaucracy. The public has lost touch with the ways the quality of life of communities depends on government. People have lost track of government’s role in long-term planning and as steward of schools, roads, police services, and other essential public facilities. Constructive responses to the fiscal crisis, if they are to emerge, will require reconstituting an understanding of the critical role of government and support for the public purposes it embodies.

The fiscal troubles of the states are unfolding in the context of a deeply embedded public distrust of government that has been engendered over decades by individuals actively hostile to government and by organizations that promote a small government, low-tax ideology. This past year the backlash against the bailout of financial institutions, the rejection of a public option in health-care reform, and the emergence of passionate “tea party” protests all bore witness to this distrust. At the state level, the manifestations were rampant. In the midst of the worst state fiscal crisis in decades, some state governors even found it politically expedient to refuse emergency federal-assistance funds in perverse appeals to anti-government sentiment.

Public-opinion polling confirms that trust in state government is related to its ongoing capacity to manage state affairs. According to the Gallup organization, in the 1990s, about two-thirds of Americans had at least a fair degree of confidence in their state’s ability to handle state problems. By the downturn of 2003, the last time states cut services drastically, this figure dipped to barely half. In 2009, public trust fell again, as all but two states experienced significant budget shortfalls

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This cycle of public distrust and government contraction can be broken. At stake is the viability of all levels of government in a time when effective and adequately resourced public structures are as crucial as ever. Over the last five years, De¯mos has sponsored research and engaged with state partners in extensive field work across the country to develop strategies to break this cycle. This work suggests several steps that can begin to create a more constructive climate.

First, elected and appointed officials, as well as prominent civic and nonprofit leaders, need to promote a positive view of the mission and purpose of the public sector and offer a vision of the government to which we should aspire. For example, in his speech to Congress on health-insurance reform, President Barack Obama modeled a balanced approach that recognized government’s necessary role: “Our predecessors understood … that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited.” At every opportunity, we must make visible the essential roles that government is uniquely positioned to fulfill and which cannot be adequately undertaken by individuals or by private institutions.

Second, leaders can help citizens understand public systems and structures and the taxes that support them as necessary means to achieve the common good. Years of conservative rhetoric have ingrained in our national psyche the idea that the public good is best served by the dogged pursuit of private interest and that taxes merely deprive individuals and companies of their own money. While campaigning successfully to be governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick turned an opponent’s demand to “give back” taxpayers’ money into an appeal to people’s innate sense of community. “It is their money,” he declared during a debate, “but it’s also their broken road. And it’s their overcrowded school. It’s their broken neighborhood and broken neighbor. … It’s not this idea that people earn what they earn and have no responsibility for the Commonwealth. We have a responsibility, in addition to personal responsibility, to take charge of shared responsibility.”

Third, in seeking public support for government initiatives, we can rekindle Americans’ sense of citizenship and community. As a practical matter, this approach broadens the constituency for the initiative. In Wisconsin, advocates canvassing for a local tax measure realized in the midst of their campaign that they were not making headway and switched tactics to talk with voters about quality of life and the need to come together for the good of their community. In winning a surprising victory, they attributed success to the increased receptivity of voters to this new approach. Similar stories are told by leaders in other states, including those in Massachusetts and North Carolina.

Finally, it’s possible to cultivate public confidence that government can be a mechanism for pragmatic problem-solving to achieve a secure and prosperous future. Our research indicates that when this image is evoked, Americans are much more likely to have a constructive view of government and are more inclined to support specific progressive policies. Candidates and organizations whose policy goals require state revenues and depend upon effective government action should offer an aspirational picture of how adequately funded and competently managed public systems can serve people’s needs.

The state fiscal crisis is the front line of this struggle. State governments, no less than the banking system, are too important to fail. States’ ability to weather the fiscal storms, while also cultivating support for their public missions and the revenues necessary to fund them, will either help redeem the case for the role of government — or further undermine support for the public sector.

Dianne Stewart, the program director of Public Works, is a veteran of state government and advocacy on issues affecting low-income families.

Michael Lipsky, a political scientist, is senior program director at Public Works, a Program of Demos. He is the co-author of Commission Politics: The Processing of Racial Crisis in America.

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March 3, 2010

Elinor Ostrom Wins Nobel for Common(s) Sense

Filed under: Members' Blog — Treasurer @ 10:18 am

Fran Korten spent 20 years with the Ford Foundation making grants to support community management of water and forests in Southeast Asia and the United States.

Friday 26 February 2010

by: Fran Korten | Yes! Magazine

Elinor Ostrom. (Photo Chris Meyer, Indiana University)

Elinor Ostrom was an unusual choice for the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

For one thing, she is the first woman to receive the prize. Her Ph.D. is in political science, not economics (though she minored in economics, collaborates with many economists, and considers herself a political economist). But what makes this award particularly special is that her work is about cooperation, while standard economics focuses on competition.

Ostrom’s seminal book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, was published in 1990. But her research on common property goes back to the early 1960s, when she wrote her dissertation on groundwater in California. In 1973 she and her husband, Vincent Ostrom, founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. In the intervening years, the Workshop has produced hundreds of studies of the conditions in which communities self-organize to solve common problems. Ostrom currently serves as professor of political science at Indiana University and senior research director of the Workshop.

Fran Korten, YES! Magazine’s publisher, spent 20 years with the Ford Foundation making grants to support community management of water and forests in Southeast Asia and the United States. She and Ostrom drew on one another’s work as this field of knowledge developed. Fran interviewed her friend and colleague Lin Ostrom shortly after Ostrom received the Nobel Prize.

Fran Korten: When you first learned that you had won the Nobel Prize in Economics, were you surprised?

Elinor Ostrom: Yes. It was quite surprising. I was both happy and relieved.

Fran: Why relieved?

Elinor: Well, relieved in that I was doing a bunch of research through the years that many people thought was very radical and people didn’t like. As a person who does interdisciplinary work, I didn’t fit anywhere. I was relieved that, after all these years of struggle, someone really thought it did add up. That’s very nice.

And it’s very nice for the team that I’ve been a part of here at the Workshop. We have had a different style of organizing. It is an interdisciplinary center—we have graduate students, visiting scholars, and faculty working together. I never would have won the Nobel but for being a part of that enterprise.

Fran: It’s interesting that your research is about people learning to cooperate. And your Workshop at the university is also organized on principles of cooperation.

Elinor: I have a new book coming out in May entitled Working Together, written with Amy Poteete and Marco Janssen. It is on collective actions in the commons. What we’re talking about is how people work together. We’ve used an immense array of different methods to look at this question—case studies, including my own dissertation and Amy’s work, modeling, experiments, large-scale statistical work. We show how people use multiple methods to work together.

Fran: Many people associate “the commons” with Garrett Hardin’s famous essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” He says that if, for example, you have a pasture that everyone in a village has access to, then each person will put as many cows on that land as he can to maximize his own benefit, and pretty soon the pasture will be overgrazed and become worthless. What’s the difference between your perspective and Hardin’s?

Elinor: Well, I don’t see the human as hopeless. There’s a general tendency to presume people just act for short-term profit. But anyone who knows about small-town businesses and how people in a community relate to one another realizes that many of those decisions are not just for profit and that humans do try to organize and solve problems.

If you are in a fishery or have a pasture and you know your family’s long-term benefit is that you don’t destroy it, and if you can talk with the other people who use that resource, then you may well figure out rules that fit that local setting and organize to enforce them. But if the community doesn’t have a good way of communicating with each other or the costs of self-organization are too high, then they won’t organize, and there will be failures.

Fran: So, are you saying that Hardin is sometimes right?
We have to think through how to choose a meaningful life where we’re helping one another in ways that really help the Earth.

Elinor: Yes. People say I disproved him, and I come back and say “No, that’s not right. I’ve not disproved him. I’ve shown that his assertion that common property will always be degraded is wrong.” But he was addressing a problem of considerable significance that we need to take seriously. It’s just that he went too far. He said people could never manage the commons well.

At the Workshop we’ve done experiments where we create an artificial form of common property—such as an imaginary fishery or pasture, and we bring people into a lab and have them make decisions about that property. When we don’t allow any communication among the players, then they overharvest. But when people can communicate, particularly on a face-to-face basis, and say, “Well, gee, how about if we do this? How about we do that?” Then they can come to an agreement.

Fran: But what about the “free-rider” problem—where some people abide by the rules and some people don’t? Won’t the whole thing fall apart?

Elinor: Well if the people don’t communicate and get some shared norms and rules, that’s right, you’ll have that problem. But if they get together and say, “Hey folks, this is a project that we’re all going to have to contribute to. Now, let’s figure it out,” they can make it work. For example, if it’s a community garden, they might say, “Do we agree every Saturday morning we’re all going to go down to the community garden, and we’re going to take roll and we’re going to put the roll up on a bulletin board?” A lot of communities have figured out subtle ways of making everyone contribute, because if they don’t, those people are noticeable.

Fran: So public shaming and public honoring are one key to managing the commons?

Elinor: Shaming and honoring are very important. We don’t have as much of an understanding of that. There are scholars who understand that, but that’s not been part of our accepted way of thinking about collective action.

Fran: Do you have a favorite example of where people have been able to self-organize to manage property in common?

Elinor: One that I read early on that just unglued me—because I wasn’t expecting it—was the work of Robert Netting, an anthropologist who had been studying the alpine commons for a very long time. He studied Swiss peasants and then studied in Africa too. He was quite disturbed that people were saying that Africans were primitive because they used common property so frequently and they didn’t know about the benefits of private property. The implication was we’ve got to impose private property rules on them. Netting said, “Are the Swiss peasants stupid? They use common property also.”

The Alps8 Keys to a Successful Commons
Advice on how to govern our commons by Nobel winner Elinor Ostrom.

Let’s think about this a bit. In the valleys, they use private property, while up in the alpine areas, they use common property. So the same people know about private property and common property, but they choose to use common property for the alpine areas. Why? Well, the alpine areas are what Netting calls “spotty.” The rainfall is high in one section one year, and the snow is great, and it’s rich. But the other parts of the area are dry. Now if you put fences up for private property, then Smith’s got great grass one year—he can’t even use it all—and Brown doesn’t have any. So, Netting argued, there are places where it makes sense to have an open pasture rather than a closed one. Then he gives you a very good idea of the wide diversity of the particular rules that people have used for managing that common land.

Fran: Why were Netting’s findings so surprising to you?

Elinor: I had grown up thinking that land was something that would always move to private property. I had done my dissertation on groundwater in California, so I was familiar with the management of water as a commons. But when I read Netting, I realized that when there are “spotty” land environments, it really doesn’t make sense to put up fences and have small private plots.

Fran: Lin, if you were to have a sit-down session with someone with a big influence on natural resources policy—say Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank, or Ken Salazar, Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, what would be your advice?

Elinor: No panaceas! We tend to want simple formulas. We have two main prescriptions: privatize the resource or make it state property with uniform rules. But sometimes the people who are living on the resource are in the best position to figure out how to manage it as a commons.

Fran: Is there a role for government in those situations?

Elinor: We need institutions that enable people to carry out their management roles. For example, if there’s conflict, you need an open, fair court system at a higher level than the people’s resource management unit. You also need institutions that provide accurate knowledge. The United States Geological Survey is one that I point to repeatedly. They don’t come in and try to make proposals as to what you should do. They just do a really good job of providing accurate scientific knowledge, particularly for groundwater basins such as where I did my Ph.D. research years ago. I’m not against government. I’m just against the idea that it’s got to be some bureaucracy that figures everything out for people.

Fran: How important is it that there is a match between a governing jurisdiction and the area of the resource to be managed?

Elinor: To manage common property you need to create boundaries for an area at a size similar to the problem the people are trying to cope with. But it doesn’t need to be a formal jurisdiction. Sometimes public officials don’t even know that the local people have come to some agreements. It may not be in the courts, or even written down. That is why sometimes public authorities wipe out what local people have spent years creating.

Fran: You’ve done your research on small- and medium-sized natural resource jurisdictions. How about the global commons? We have the problems of climate change and oceans that are dying. Are there lessons from your work that are relevant to these massive problems we’re now facing?

Elinor: I really despair over the oceans. There is a very interesting article in Science on the “roving bandit.” It is so tempting to go along the coast and scoop up all the fish you can and then move on. With very big boats, you can do that. I think we could move toward solving that problem, but right now there are not many instrumentalities for doing that.

Regarding global climate change, I’m more hopeful. There are local public benefits that people can receive at the same time they’re generating benefits for the global environment. Take health and transportation as an example. If more people would walk or bicycle to work and use their car only when they have to go some distance, then their health would be better, their personal pocketbooks would be better, and the atmosphere would be better. Of course, if it’s just a few people, it won’t matter, but if more and more people feel “This is the kind of life I should be living,” that can substantially help the global problem. Similarly, if we invest in re-doing the insulation of a lot of buildings, we can save money as well as help the global environment. Yes, we want some global action but boy, if we just sit around and wait for that? Come on!

Fran: Do you have a message for the general public?

Elinor: We need to get people away from the notion that you have to have a fancy car and a huge house. Some of the homes that have been built in the last 10 years just appall me. Why do humans need huge homes? I was born poor and I didn’t know you bought clothes at anything but the Goodwill until I went to college. Some of our mentality about what it means to have a good life is, I think, not going to help us in the next 50 years. We have to think through how to choose a meaningful life where we’re helping one another in ways that really help the Earth.

Fran: Let’s look ahead 20 years. What would you hope that the world will understand about managing common property systems?

Elinor: What we need is a broader sense of what we call “social ecological systems.” We need to look at the biological side and the social side with one framework rather than 30 different languages. That is big, but I now have some of my colleagues very interested. Some of them are young, and what I find encouraging is that with a bunch of us working together, I can see us moving ahead in the next 20 years or so. Twenty years from now, at 96, I probably won’t be as active.

Fran: Not as active? I wouldn’t bet on that.

Fran Korten interviewed Elinor Ostrom for America: The Remix, the Spring 2010 issue of YES! Magazine. Fran is publisher of YES! Magazine.

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February 28, 2010

Inter-American Dialogue - How Poor and Unequal is Latin America and the Caribbean?

Filed under: Members' Blog — webmaster @ 12:20 pm

Jeff Puryear worked in the Latin America and Caribbean Programs from 1973 to 1990.

Poverty and inequality have decreased recently in much of Latin America—the result of strong growth and innovative social programs. The United Nations estimates that the number of poor dropped by nearly 17 percent between 2002 and 2007—a significant achievement for the region’s governments.1 Inequality has also declined a bit, particularly in the region’s largest countries. Clearly, good policy can pay off…[read more]

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Haiti Crisis Prompts Fresh Talk of Pooling U.S. Relief Money

Filed under: Members' Blog — Treasurer @ 10:39 am

Peter Bell was at the Ford Foundation from 1964 to 1977 in Education and Research and the Latin America and Caribbean Programs.

From The New York Times

By STEPHANIE STROM

Published: February 1, 2010

Before the earthquake, the American Red Cross had 15 people in Haiti working on projects like malaria prevention and measles vaccines. Partners in Health, a charity based in Boston, had more than 700 doctors and nurses among a staff of almost 5,000 operating a hospital and multiple clinics in the country.

Yet the Red Cross has raised nearly $200 million for its relief operations in Haiti, and Partners in Health about $40 million.

Disaster fund-raising rewards organizations for their marketing prowess and name recognition as much if not more than for the scope, relevance and quality of their emergency services.

Now, as the total giving for Haiti exceeds $560 million, relief workers and charitable groups are revisiting a fund-raising model — last seriously discussed after the 2004 Asian tsunami — to pool disaster donations across the United States and distribute them to organizations best placed to deliver relief.

The push to consider a new approach is being driven in part by relief groups that feel eclipsed by the Red Cross and frustrated at being frozen out financially right when their expertise could be best put to use.

“So often after these major disasters, marketing alone — divorced from the quality or importance of the work an organization is doing — will drive support,” said Thomas Tighe, chief executive of Direct Relief International, a group that provides medical supplies and equipment, and often shares with other groups the money it raises after major disasters.

Many donors also say after every major disaster that they lack the wherewithal to make informed decisions about which organizations to support and feel compelled to go to the Red Cross, which has one of the world’s strongest brands.

“I don’t mean that I don’t think the Red Cross has a purpose — it does,” said Bill Mitchell, who advises donor organizations about giving and supports exploring alternatives to the current system. “But the Red Cross’s reputation in the last eight years has been really checkered. Can they effectively use all of this money that they are raising?”

Small-scale versions of the sharing model are already in place. The recent Hope for Haiti telethon, which raised more than $66 million, used a pooled fund. An advisory board will decide how to spread the money among seven participating organizations, including the Red Cross and Unicef.

The State of Louisiana created the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, a pooled fund in response to Hurricane Katrina, and the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, recently set up by the White House and also a beneficiary of the telethon, is raising money to be parceled out to organizations working in Haiti.

But the only large-scale efforts to pool fund-raising across an entire country have occurred abroad, in places like Britain and Canada.

“It would be more complex to do in this country because of the much larger number of organizations and more fragmented media market, but I think it is an appealing concept,” said Peter Bell, the former chief executive of the American arm of CARE and a senior research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University.

The Red Cross, as the largest single fund-raiser after any major disaster in the past decade, stands to lose the most. Suzy DeFrancis, a spokeswoman for the organization, said the Red Cross was not categorically opposed to a pooled fund but had many concerns. She said the organization had incurred minimal expenses to raise money for Haiti.

“If you add another layer between the donor and the people who need the aid, does that eat up time? Does it add cost?” Ms. DeFrancis said. “Those are the concerns we would have because we want to get aid there as fast as possible.” If the past is any guide, advocates of a pooled approach face significant obstacles, even from some American nonprofit relief agencies that are affiliates of international organizations participating in pooled funds abroad.

“We’ve had lengthy discussions and negotiations around the concept of establishing a pooled fund, but it confronts a number of challenges here,” said Samuel A. Worthington, chief executive of InterAction, an umbrella organization representing 190 aid agencies, 82 of which are working in Haiti. “Will this increase or decrease the pool of resources? How will the resources be divided? Which organizations will be included in the pool? Who will make those decisions?”

Even in Britain, where the pooled approach has been used for decades, organizations consistently challenge decisions about the allocation of money.

“Most of my phone calls are people complaining,” said Brendan Gormley, chief executive of the Disasters Emergency Committee, which distributes relief money in Britain. “We call it a robust dialogue.”

Founded in 1963, the committee mounts a single “appeal” that raises money to support relief services after a major disaster. It distributes the money to member organizations according to a formula calculated to ensure that it goes to those best placed to deliver effective and timely relief to people most in need.

The committee also accepts donations designated for specific members, but those typically account for a small part of the amounts raised, Mr. Gormley said.

It has 13 member organizations, including the British Red Cross and World Vision, and the committee is working on a plan to distribute more than $75 million raised so far for relief in Haiti. The money is distributed over 18 months or two years, which supports rebuilding efforts long after the cameras have moved on.

The model grew out of a similar effort in Canada and has been adopted in modified forms in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Mr. Gormley said that New Zealand and several Arab states in the Persian Gulf were considering similar funds.

Tony Pipa, a consultant who started the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, said the funds offered donors credibility and accountability. “Money is shared with different actors with different strengths and different experience on the ground in different places,” Mr. Pipa said.

The American Red Cross itself acted as a pooled fund after the Asian tsunami. It ended up passing on 46 percent of the roughly $581 million it raised to other organizations, like the World Food Program and the International Organization for Migration, Ms. DeFrancis said. It has already committed $30 million to the World Food Program in Haiti.

Mr. Bell, the former CARE leader, said that example and others could serve as a template for a larger pooled program. But the effort would also require a significant shift in the competitive culture of relief agencies.

“You do see, in the response to the Haiti catastrophe and other recent disasters, some elements of joint fund-raising coming together,” Mr. Bell said. “But it is a very complex issue here, where organizations are programmed to compete for dollars.”

An earlier version of this article, using information supplied by the Red Cross, erroneously reported that the organization passed on to other organizations 79 percent of the roughly $570 million it raised after the Asian tsunami.

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Keystone Accountability: planning, managing and communicating impact through constituency voice

Filed under: Members' Blog — Treasurer @ 10:20 am

From Alliance Magazine

February 24, 2010

David Bonbright was a program officer in the Africa Programs from 1983 to 1987.

David Bonbright

Unlike NPC, Keystone’s origins are exclusively in civil society. Collectively, the founders of Keystone in 2004 had over a hundred years of experience in non-profits and foundations, none in finance and business. We knew from experience that non-profits had poorly articulated goals and strategies and actually knew very little about their results and effectiveness, but having lived through the South African liberation movement, we also knew that social movements, though messy, work. So we sought to find how to make them work better.

At the same time we were, like others who have been critical of market-based approaches, worried about the imposition of metrics and mindsets by the rich and powerful onto the civil society sector. We believed, then and now, that who does the counting is more important in social change that what is counted. So we set out to design an approach to results measurement that was grounded in the people who were meant to benefit from the work, and came up with the idea of constituency voice, where an organization plans, assesses, learns and reports with its primary constituents. Who those constituents are will vary according to what the organization does, but it will always include the people who are meant to benefit from its work. Constituency feedback yields data about results, about performance and about relationships. Feedback can be combined with evidence from other sources to round out the picture of impact and performance.

We have worked with scores of organizations large and small over the past six years to create effective measures of constituency voice using surveys, interviews, focus groups and observational techniques. Little by little we are seeing an accumulation of good examples of constituency voice measurement practice. A group of East African foundations, for example, have used a common survey instrument to collect feedback on their performance from the 305 small community-based organizations that they fund (www.keystoneaccountability.org/resources/reports). Maybe the most complete example of constituency voice metrics is a joint project of the Gates Foundation and the Center for Effective Philanthropy, YouthTruth, which involves listening to the students in American high schools receiving Gates Foundation support.

In many ways, constituency voice in social change is analogous to customer satisfaction in consumer markets. The customer satisfaction industry grew out of a social movement, the consumer rights movement. That movement led to the consumer rights legislation promoted by the Kennedy administration and passed in 1962. Without it, there would be no customer satisfaction industry today, or at least not the one we know.

Which begs a question: does philanthropy require a social movement to move forward? If so, where will it come from? Or, to put the question as we see it: how can philanthropy move forward if charities and donors are not systematically measuring and reporting what those meant to benefit think about their work?

Towards reconciliation?

So, beginning from very different standpoints and with very different approaches, NPC and Keystone both work to explore and improve how values and evidence interact to drive non-profit and philanthropic activity. But it is critical to recognize that we mean much more by data than simple numbers, ratios or reductive proxies. We need only look at how focusing analysis of charities on cost ratios has twisted the non-profit sector to see the danger there. We are looking for more evidence about impact not because we want to build a technocratic world of mechanistic charities and giving, but because we want non-profits to be able to do full justice to their values and aims and to ensure that the people charities aim to help are, in both senses of the term, the ones who count.

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February 10, 2010

Harvard Law School Launches New Public Service Venture Fund

Filed under: Members' Blog — Treasurer @ 6:21 am

from law.harvard.edu

Harvard Law School today announced the creation of the Public Service Venture Fund, which will start by awarding $1 million in grants every year to help graduating students pursue careers in public service.

The first program of its kind at a law school, the fund will offer “seed money” for start-up non-profit ventures and salary support to students who hope to pursue post-graduate work at nonprofits or government agencies in the United States and abroad.

“This new fund is inspired by our students’ passion for justice,” said Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow. “It’s an investment that will pay dividends not only for our students but also for the countless number of people whose lives they will touch during their public service careers.”

The creation of the Public Service Venture Fund is the latest step taken by the Law School to offer new forms of assistance for students who are interested in public service careers. In November, Dean Minow announced an increase in the availability of financial aid overall and a broadening of eligibility for the school’s loan relief program. She also established 12 new Holmes Fellowships for students interested in post-graduate public service work. All told, financial support for students interested in public service has increased by $2.75M this year.

To obtain support from the new fund, applicants will submit proposals explaining how the post-graduate grants will help them get started in public service. Minow said the fund will bolster the creative thinking of publicly spirited law graduates at a time when the legal profession itself is becoming more entrepreneurial.

“The new venture fund is exactly in sync with that,” said Professor David Wilkins, the faculty director of the Program on the Legal Profession and the Center on Lawyers and the Professional Services Industry at Harvard Law School. “It’s also in sync with the values emphasized in our curriculum, and with our pro bono ethos and our strong emphasis on clinical education, all of which encourage students to think creatively about designing interesting projects and approaches to helping people.”

The new venture fund follows a three-year pilot program covering the third year of HLS tuition for graduates who commit the first five years of their careers to public service. It will offer targeted and flexible support for students who are embarking on public service careers, said Alexa Shabecoff, Harvard Law School’s assistant dean for public service.

“When jobs are especially hard to come by, the fund may provide fellowships in order to create jobs,” Shabecoff said. “It will also supplement salaries for graduates hoping to work for nonprofits that can only afford to pay for part-time positions. In this ever-shifting legal job market, we will offer our students the ability to land the job of their dreams or create it.”

A number of HLS alumni have started nonprofits straight out of law school or soon thereafter, such as Alan Khazei ’87 and Michael Brown ’88, who started City Year, and Jennifer Gordon ’92 who started the Workplace Project and won a MacArthur ‘genius’ award for her work. “The new Venture Fund honors some of our most successful and inspiring alumni even as it plants the seeds for the next generation of public service leaders and social entrepreneurs,” Minow said.

The fund is planned to start with distributions of $1 million annually and to increase as the Law School works to raise additional resources, Minow said.

The fund will be governed by a board established by the Dean. The board will include senior administrators, faculty members, and alumni from both the private and public sectors. Advisors helping as the school launches the fund include:Susan Butler Plum, director of the Skadden Fellowship Foundation; Alan Khazei ’87, founder and chief executive officer of Be The Change, Inc. and founder and former chief executive officer of City Year; Rebecca Onie ’03, founder and chief executive officer of Project HEALTH, and winner of a 2009 MacArthur ‘genius’ grant; Paul Rosenberg ’79, a partner at The Bridgespan Group in Boston; Ken Zimmerman ’88, a partner at Lowenstein Sandler PC and chair of Lowenstein Sandler Center for the Public Interest; and Alan Jenkins ’89, executive director and co-founder of the The Opportunity Agenda, and former Director of Human Rights at the Ford Foundation, where he managed over $50 million in grants annually in the United States and overseas.

Susan Butler Plum: “This project is simply admirable and inspiring. Harvard Law School sets the national standard for public interest advising and support, and this new approach will enable more graduating students to do more kinds of critically important public service work than ever before.”

Alan Khazei: “In starting City Year, we wanted to make it an ordinary occurrence that all young people would complete at least one year of public service. That program was truly born at Harvard – it’s something we thought about as undergraduates, and then we committed to making a reality after we graduated from Harvard Law School. Through this new venture fund, Harvard Law is moving forward with an idea that I think is absolutely necessary to this nation’s future success – we all need to invest as much as possible in the future of public service. I sincerely applaud Dean Minow and Harvard Law School for making this happen.”

Rebecca Onie: “The Law School’s new Public Service Venture Fund creates powerful incentives and opportunities for HLS students to become public service innovators at a time when our society needs them the most. As an alumna in the field of social entrepreneurship, I see everyday the need for a rich pipeline of new leaders who can identify our society’s most pressing challenges and develop creative, effective solutions for those problems. This Fund breaks new ground in enabling HLS graduates to be great thinkers and contributors not only in traditional legal practice, but also in pursuing multi-disciplinary, unconventional pathways to achieve social justice.”

Ken Zimmerman: “Harvard Law School is once again taking a critically important step to further the next generation of public service leaders. The challenges of public interest service, especially in these demanding times, require the highest level of skill, creativity, and entrepreneurship. Through this fund, the school is making it possible for its students to take on our society’s most significant challenges and reinforcing the school’s long-standing recognition of the importance of public service and public interest work.”

Alan Jenkins: “With this new venture fund, Harvard Law School is putting its money where its mouth is, giving talented new graduates the support they need to be imaginative and inspired new leaders. Having co-founded a public interest organization myself, I know how difficult it can be to put good ideas into practice. We need this fund at this critical time in our nation’s history – to help a rising generation of leaders pursue creative solutions to our society’s most dire problems.”

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February 8, 2010

CGIAR Announcement

Filed under: Members' Blog — Treasurer @ 8:31 am

Ganesan Balachander served as Representative in the Ford Foundation New Delhi Office.

Carlos Perez del Castillo, Chair of the Consortium Board of the CGIAR, is pleased to announce the incoming members of the inaugural Consortium Board: Mohammed Ait-Kadi, Tom Arnold, Ganesan Balanchander, Gebisa Ejeta, Ian Goldin and Lynn Haight. These six members join Perez del Castillo and the two Vice Chairs, Carl Hausmann and Bongiwe Njobe, in providing leadership and strategic direction for the newly formed Consortium of CGIAR Centers.

“I am impressed and inspired by the wealth of experience and wisdom these individuals will bring to the Consortium,” said Perez del Castillo. “I am confident that the new Board members will bring the necessary energy, commitment and perspectives to our task of establishing the new Consortium and delivering on the mission and vision of the CGIAR.”

Ganesan Balachander is currently a member of the Board of Trustees at Bioversity International. His career interests have ranged from banking to environmental conservation. He is now starting up a Green Bank intended to have a triple bottom line: good for business, good for the environment and good for poor people. Balachander has represented the interests of South Asia at the Ford Foundation and has long experience in directing and implementing development projects with international and national NGOs.

In 2008, the CGIAR launched its Change Management Initiative to identify how best to adapt to and anticipate global changes and challenges, such as food price volatility, more extreme weather arising from climate change and the global financial crisis. This initiative culminated in the CGIAR’s decision in December 2008 to adopt a new business model that will enable the CGIAR do more and do better, as it fulfills its mandate to fight poverty and hunger while conserving the environment.

The core of the new model is a partnership between a Consortium that unites CGIAR research Centers and a new Fund, built on a common vision of mobilizing agricultural research to reduce poverty and hunger, improve human health and nutrition, and enhance sustainable management of natural resources in the developing world. Implementation of the new model will take place throughout 2010 under the leadership of the Consortium Board and Fund Council.

For more information on the Consortium and the Consortium Board:http://alliance.cgxchange.org/welcome

For more information on the CGIAR reform: http://www.cgiar.org/changemanagement/index.html

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February 6, 2010

Obituary - Katharine Williams Grant

Filed under: Members' Blog — Treasurer @ 6:53 am

From The Sag Harbor Express

Katharine Williams Grant of Washington, D.C., died peacefully on January 17 at home. She was 85.

Born in Utica, New York, to Henry D. Williams, an attorney and New York State senator, and Mary F. Jones, she was educated at St. Timothy’s School in Catonsville, Maryland, and Radcliffe College in Boston.

In 1943, she married David Grant, and eventually settled in Englewood, N.J. They later divorced and she continued to live there, raising a son and caring for her mother. Later, she studied art at Columbia University, Italian language and culture in Perugia, Italy, and worked at the Ford Foundation in New York City.

In 1982, she moved to Jarinu, Brazil, where she managed a dairy farm that had belonged to her aunt, overseeing its herd of Holstein cattle, creation of a lake and renovations to all buildings and fields. Accompanied by her German Shepherd, Apollo, she lived there until she returned to the U.S. for health reasons.

She is survived by her son, David W. Grant, and grandson, Byron James Grant.

Mrs. Grant loved Sag Harbor, where she spent extended periods of time with her sister, Margaret Williams Ginna, of Division Street. She will be buried next to Margaret in Oakland Cemetery, after a service at Christ Episcopal Church on Sunday, February 14, at 2 p.m.

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February 3, 2010

Guest column: International community, Haitians must work together

Filed under: Members' Blog — Treasurer @ 10:06 pm

Peter Bell worked at the Foundation from 1964 to 1976 working for a decade in its Latin American program and for two years in its domestic programs in higher education and in social policy.

From the January 29, 2010 Des Moines Register

PETER D. BELL is a senior research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations and was president of CARE. Contact: Peter_Bell@harvard.edu

The worldwide outpouring of support for Haitians from governments and ordinary citizens has been extraordinary. Rescue teams saving people pinned under collapsed buildings and medical teams performing surgery without basic supplies have been spellbinding. But this heroic phase of the emergency response is drawing to a close.

The next phase of the response has begun and is becoming increasingly well-organized. It is meant to stabilize the situation, re-establish a sense of normalcy and prevent epidemics - always a threat when people go hungry, drink polluted water and live cheek by jowl. This phase will involve the provision of water, food, sanitation, security and temporary shelter to hundreds of thousands of Haitians. In addition, tens of thousands should be put to work in temporary but paid jobs, clearing debris, building latrines, putting up tents - and returning money to the economy.

On Monday, members of the international donor community met in Montreal to begin focusing on the long-term task of rebuilding Haiti. They know what made so many Haitians so vulnerable to this disaster was extreme poverty. Haiti is poorer than Bangladesh, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

In this moment of worldwide solidarity with Haiti, international political leaders - with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the forefront - are eager to turn a disaster of unfathomable proportions into a historic opportunity. They want to help put Haiti firmly on a path toward economic, social and political development. They are signing up for a task that will take a sustained international and Haitian commitment, stretching over at least a decade.

Here are just a few of the challenges:

- Coordination of the international effort will be crucial. Both U.N. headquarters and the Haitian government literally were decimated by the quake. The United States must step into the breach, but tread lightly: giving primacy to civilian American leadership, welcoming the partnership of other contributors and progressively ceding coordination to the United Nations and to the Haitian government.

- The Haitian government and people must be masters of their own development. This is a tall order in a nation with a long tradition of the state being “owned” by those who occupy it, and of the people too often being treated as though they were there to be exploited. President Rene Preval, a quiet, self-effacing leader, will need to reach out to others, crossing lines that have long divided Haitians, welcoming the inclusion of civil society and business, reining in corruption, and building the institutional capacities of all three branches of government.

- It can be argued Haiti is a country in which everything is needed and must be done at once. Yet ambitious projects must be based on sound assessments and engagement of the presumed beneficiaries.

Despite the challenges, there is some basis for hope.

Unprecedented media coverage of the Haitian disaster, the vast outpouring of support from ordinary Americans, and the commitments of U.S. leaders for long-term support auger well. It is up to all of us to urge follow-through.

Once, much of the world considered Haiti the problem exclusively of the United States. But the world has changed. The United Nations and its peacekeepers, led by Brazil, have helped provide security. They have been joined by Chileans, Argentines and Uruguayans. Canada has provided key development support. For historic reasons, France is present. So, too, are others, including China and Israel. The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank are important players. And the Haitian Diaspora has a significant role.

Ultimately, of course, the rebuilding of Haiti will depend on the Haitians themselves.

Even as the international community is rallying and providing crucial support, the little-covered story in Haiti has been about Haitians rescuing and helping Haitians. So, too, must they do the bulk of the work over the coming months and years. What has always been most remarkable to me about Haitians is not their poverty or the fragility of their institutions, but their faith, resilience, resourcefulness and hard work. If the United States and our partners are truly to help Haiti, we will need to respect Haitian strengths and aspirations, and build on them. They will be the foundation of the “new” Haiti.

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February 2, 2010

Building Back Better: Revisiting the Roles of Government, Donors and INGOs in Haiti’s Reconstruction

Filed under: Members' Blog — Treasurer @ 6:48 pm

Steven Lawry was at the Ford Foundation from 1992 to 2006 as Program Officer in Namibia, Representative in Cairo and Director in the Office of Management Services.

From hausercenter.org

Submitted by Sherine Jayawickrama on January 31, 2010 – 3:04 pmOne Comment

By Steven Lawry

It is well known that international NGOs had a huge presence in Haiti before the devastating earthquake of January 12th. Upwards of 8,000 NGOs were working in nearly every developmental and humanitarian assistance sector. The greater portion of foreign assistance was channeled not to the Haitian government, but directly to NGOs. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive in an interview on CNN with Christiane Amanpour on January 23rd estimated that 80 percent of all development assistance to Haiti before the earthquake went to NGOs. He added that 90 percent of US official assistance goes to NGOs.

While some NGO recipient organizations are locally-led and governed, and international NGOs employ large numbers of Haitian staff, Haiti’s development sector is largely led and managed—effectively controlled—by international NGOs and their donors.

The important question of accountability goes a long way toward explaining how this state of affairs came to pass. International donors have lacked confidence in the ability of the Haitian government to manage development assistance in an effective, efficient and corruption-free manner. Donors believe their funds are more likely to be used for agreed purposes and will reach intended beneficiaries if the money goes to international NGOs and contractors directly accountable to donor governments. But Prime Minister Bellerive went on in the CNN interview to raise a fair question: how can Haiti’s government be called to account for the management of development assistance when 80 percent of funding goes directly to international organizations that are not accountable to the Haitian government itself?

While international NGOs have contributed significantly to the well-being of Haitians over the years, the near complete control they exercise over Haiti’s development sector is not without its problems. The lack of accountability to Haiti’s government, which I have noted, is among them. Another is the missed opportunity for donors to work closely with Haitian institutions in developing Haitian capacity to manage development programs (including exercising some measure of authority over the work of international NGOs and contractors) in ways that are free of corruption and which give Haitians valuable leadership, policy and management experience.

Harvard professor Paul Farmer and co-founder of Partners in Health, a health and human rights organization that has worked in Haiti for 20 years, spoke to the need to change the relationship among donors, the Haitian government and international NGOs in testimony before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on January 27th: “The aid machinery currently at work in Haiti keeps too much overhead for its operations and still relies overmuch on NGOs or contractors who do not observe the ground rules we would need to follow to build Haiti back better. The fact that there are more NGOs per capita in Haiti than any other country in the hemisphere is in part a reflection of the need, but also in part a reflection of the overreliance on NGOs divorced from the public health and education sectors.”
Sentiments similar to Farmer’s have been expressed by many public figures in recent days.

“Building back better” has become a frequently used term in the past three weeks. A return to the pre-earthquake status quo of ineffective official authority and “the Republic of NGOs” in the development sector is not acceptable. Many advocate, and I agree, that Haitians must take principal responsibility for Haiti’s reconstruction, with official aid agencies and international NGOs playing strong supporting roles.

Let’s consider for a moment the attributes of a post-earthquake reconstruction and development era that Haitians would be proud of and the international community would have confidence in.
Clare Lockhart is executive director of the Institute for State Effectiveness, an organization based in Washington, D.C. that specializes in the study of failing or failed states. The Institute’s research has drawn out important lessons from the experience of recently failing or failed states that have put themselves on a path toward legitimacy, effectiveness and accountability. In an extended interview on BBC radio on January 23rd, Lockhart shared four lessons learned from studies of Mozambique’s and Rwanda’s recovery from failed-state status that she thought Haitian leaders, donors and international NGOs might consider carefully. These are:

A broadly unified and inclusive national political leadership
Zero-tolerance for corruption
Investment in human capital development, particularly in education and health
Heavy investment in local economic growth and especially the growth of indigenous businesses and enterprises. (Here Lockhart noted the likely enduring value to the Haitian economy of reconstruction money for roads and other infrastructure being directed to local firms as opposed to large international contractors.)

To “build Haiti back better” is in the first instance a reform agenda, requiring fundamental changes in how the Haitian government, donors and international NGOs understand their appropriate roles and their collective responsibilities to the citizens of Haiti. Lockhart’s list of lessons learned from failed states recovering from terrible traumas provides useful guideposts toward shaping that agenda.

Steven Lawry, Senior Research Fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, is currently based in Juba, Southern Sudan, where he heads a USAID-funded project assisting the Government of Southern Sudan to develop a new land policy.

One Comment »

Peter Freeman says:

February 1, 2010 at 11:18 am

We cannot accept or support the reconstruction of slums or anything like it. I agree with the four guidelines Ms Lockhart offers.They will take time. There are urgent measures to address before tackling the results of years of ineffective government and piecemeal assistance via the steps you laid out. Yet the way immediate needs are addressed can set the stage for longer term actions in Haiti.

I am copying below an email I sent to a friend and colleague, Lou Lucke, who is coordinating USA’s emergency food and other assistance at present in Port au Prince regarding what must be accomplished in the next 6 months to set up live-able tent cities that contain the elements of future permanent communities that are indeed better.

Ambassador Louis Lucke
Port au Prince

Hi Lou.

Am I glad to see you involved! (per Washington Post article today Jan. 31). I have been fretting about what happens after the emergency health and nutrition needs are addressed.

I was in the DR many years ago(mid 60’s) workng with the O.A.S. when a hurricane destroyed many houses in a community in the southwest of the country. Reconstruction was a disaster too. The money was wasted on a handful of nice middle class homes. They could have made the same financial support and materials available to hundreds of families for each to build one hardened core structure..bathroom and adjoining storage area for instance.. and then in a second phase provide the families with materials, design and help to add on to the core structure, using their own labor and according to their needs and the site characteristics.

I would like to offer some suggestions about the work that must follow the urgent survival support actions you are coordinating…namely the creation of liveable, temporary tent cities before the rains and the hurricane season set in, that is between now and July or August. These tent cities are likely to be inhabited for a least a year and probably two years, given the imperative to reconstruct homes and buildings so that they are resistant to earthquakes as well as hurricanes.

Reconstruction will take several years in Port au Prince and other cities with major destruction.

Rebuilt structures and neighborhoods need to be hurricane proof to the extent feasible and resistant to earthquakes. Reconstruction needs to be be preceded by planning and infrastructure for sustainable, efficient, live-able urban livelihoods.

We need to embed green technologies into the reconstruction process: Solar energy capture and energy conservation. Photovoltaics, water heating, external move-able louvers to shade building facades, building design that facilitates cooling via air flow. Rain water capture from roof tops and cisterns. Grey water diversion to nearby agricultural fields or gardens. Recycling of urban organic wastes (excepting human and hospital wastes). Recycling and/or reuse of metals, plastics, cardboard, etc. etc. There is much we have learned. Pathways for pedestrians and bicycles apart from roadways. Parks. Playgrounds.

Petionville and other such unplanned communities probably did not have a sewerage system. These should be built along with an improved potable water treatment and distribution system. And storm sewers.

Reconstrcution along these lines will take several years to plan, organize and implement. We cannot accept or support the reconstruction of slums.

Meanwhile in the tent cities, there will be a need to provide for shelter in case of severe weather and hurricanes. Tents will not withstand hurricanes. They can shelter from heavy rains but not high winds. With luck there will only be rains. Of course, tents will need platforms to raise them above the ground during the rainy season and tent cities must have storm water evacuation in place…a system of ditches at the minimum.

My suggestion is to build hurricane proof facilities in the tent cities using modular construction methods. In case of a severe storm or hurricane people could take refuge in these structures. They could include primary schools, primary health care facilities, storage facilities, structures that house community administrative work and meeting rooms/places of worship, community washing and bathing facilities, community latrines. These structures will facilitate the provision of needed community services and governance. They should be equipped with the green technologies listed above. These structures should be designed to be dis-assembled and moved to a permanent location in the communities and areas that are to be re-built once the infrastructure is ready.

The tent cities will need the different functions of these modular structures, just as will the eventually reconstructed neighborhoods which could ‘inherit’ them. They would provide the displaced, homeless dwellers of the tent cities with a tangible bridge to the future.

Who can design and spec out these structures?

I couldn’t find much online about modular construction using Google.

Architects for Humanity was already working in Haiti on a few structures. I would send an appeal for suggestions and assistance to them as well as faculties of architecture and architects associations in the USA, Puerto Rico, and Central America.

The US building industry is in a slump,notably in Florida. They should be challenged to come up with designs and methods to use both US and Haitian talent, materials, labor. Modules could be built in Haiti.

Participants in the annual Department of Energy’s Solar Decathalon should be contacted. One entry from Texas in last summer’s decathalon focused on using local materials suited to the Gulf Coast climate.

An online planning process should begin ASAP to establish the specifications for the different kinds of modular structures. Identify a lead entity for each kind of structure. For instance for neighborhood primary care facilities get Medicins sans Frontiers involved in establishing specs. Neighborhood Primary care facilities would include pediatric as well as adult women and men care, treatment of basic illnesses and simple wounds, basic diagnostics and dispensing of medicine. Requirements for exam rooms, provider offices, waiting/reception rooms, power, water, waste disposal, storage, etc. Preference for green technologies.

Human waste could be dealt with using the clivus multrum composting toilet technology that the US and State park services have installed in various locations, including on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, not far from where we live. (Clivus multrum is a Swedish invention by the way). And there is the successful use in India of treating human waste in bio-digesters that generate methane gas for cooking and yield, eventually, excellent compost.

Let me know if and/or how I might be able to advance these ideas. My hope is that better minds than mine have already figured this out and it’s already underway.

All the best to you and and Joy and may your work be blessed,

Peter

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