Sparking (or maybe Spotlighting) Government Efficiency

For the past six years the Community Foundation of Lorain County has been a proud founding member of the Fund for Our Economic Future, a 100+ collaborative of organized philanthropy in NE Ohio.  Beyond the unprecedented accomplishment of getting more than one hundred foundations, colleges, universities and such to agree on a data driven, unified approach to regional economic developement; the Fund has had a part in remarkable impact including more than a billion dollars of venture investment transforming the region into an entrepreneurial hot spot. 

But what has captured my excitement today is not the millions in dollars awarded to our grantees, or our mayors, city managers, and councils who are pushing regional land use planning and revenue sharing through the Regional Prosperity Initiative – it is a small initiative that has leverage not just changes in attitude but changes in behavior.

EfficientGovNowis intended to encourage, spotlight and reward real government collaboration. More than 60 applications were received for projects involving two or more public collaborators.  A committee reviewed public input on the applications and selected nine finalists, three of which will receive up to $100,000 from the Fund.  During the month of July, 2009 residents of Northeast Ohio will vote to determine which of the projects receive funding. 

The nine competing projects are:

1. Mahoning River Corridor Interactive Web site: “Rollin’ on the River”
2. “Sustain a Greener Ohio,” A Collaboration to Map the Storm Water Conveyance System in Stark County
3. Combined Dispatch to Use New Technology to Save Lives and Money (Ashland County)
4. Westshore Regional Fire District Project (Cuyahoga County)
5. Mahoning/Youngstown Regional Information System (MYRIS)
6. City/Township/School District Fleet Management Collaboration Project (Oberlin, New Russia)
7. Creating Efficiencies and Cost-Savings through Consolidation of Public Health Services in Summit County
8. Rittman and Orrville Schools Administrative Compact
9. Master Plan for the Western Reserve Joint Economic Development Zone of the Cities of Cuyahoga Falls, Hudson and Stow

We know that some of the projects had been under discussion prior to the initiative, but we also know that several of the projects were crafted specifically for the application.  Regardless of their genesis, what inspires me is the desire by so many public leaders to shed the confines of our traditional boxes and to explore new and better ways of working together.  It may be the realities of the current economy that triggers change, or it may be the grant dollars from the Fund, but whatever the cause – I’m glad to see it happening.

A new generation of community philanthropy leaders

Last week I had the distinct pleasure of serving as faculty for 39 people who are relatively new to the community foundation field.  I’ve been teaching the 3-day Community Foundation Fundamentals for the Council on Foundations for about six years now and this class was particularly special as it included colleagues from Ohio and our neighboring States of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois.  The Midwest Community Foundation Ventures (I serve as Vice-Chair of the Board for this collaboration), sponsored the training and the Cleveland Foundation graciously provided free meeting space. 

I teach the course for a number of reasons.  This fast paced, interactive class gives me energy and charges my motivational batteries.  It is next to impossible to spend that amount of time with enthusiastic minds and not become inspired. And I invariably  learn something new in the process.

I also believe that we in the field have a responsibility to raise the bar for our own organizations and the community foundation field in general.  Sharing of best practices, promoting National Standards for US Community Foundations and assisting with professional development through courses like Fundamentals does make a difference.

But perhaps the main reason I teach is to help continue a long and honored culture of sharing and collaboration that is inherent between community foundations.  The history of field is a story of this grand idea (called a Community Foundation) passed from Cleveland in 1914 throughout the United States, Canada and then the rest of the world.  The Community Foundation of Lorain County has experienced such remarkable growth because of the ideas, policies, programs and efficiencies we’ve borrowed from colleagues.  It would be difficult to go anywhere in the world and find a Community Foundation that has grown in a vacuum.  But like many native american cultures – if the stories aren’t told and future generations aren’t taught the language, it risks fading away. 

I wasn’t disappointed in Cleveland last week. Thirty-nine people came into the course wanting to learn more about their jobs and hopefully left with a little better understanding the 100-year evolution of a remarkable community building tool.  And more importantly, by understanding our past and present and culture, they now will begin to refine this model to better serve the needs and dreams of our communities in the future.

Earning Trust

It probably isn’t’ any surprise to you that I’m a big fan of accountability. I’ve often said that the most precious asset of the Community Foundation, even beyond our endowment, is our integrity and the trust we’ve earned from the donors, grantees, and the community we serve. If we lose that, we’ve lost everything.

I know that earning the trust of our constituents is increasingly difficult as public scrutiny has increased along with the number of public charities and the massive dollars being socially invested by our nation’s foundations and nonprofit organizations. Both supporters and critics alike want charitable dollars spent wisely for results and we often hear calls for nonprofits to be “more business-like”, or to measure the impact of our actions, and we are seeing indications of growing interest in legislative regulation. Paul Light had a great discussion of this in his book Pathways to Nonprofit Excellence.

Within the foundation, staff and board, have worked hard to hone our back-office business practices so that things like a 24-hour turnaround on gift receipts, accurate accounting on 500 individual funds, and timely grant processing all happen without the public being aware of the considerable work involved. But not all business practices work in a public charity; in fact I contend that running a for-profit company is easier than running a nonprofit, because the outcome of our work isn’t a widget with precise specifications and quality standards. Being business-like, mission focused and values driven means that sometimes the wisest decision doesn’t result from a cost benefit study.

We are trying to gauge the effect of our grantmaking and community involvement to help us better utilize our monetary and human resources to truly lead our community to a better future. But having spent the first one-half of my professional career in research and evaluation, I know too well the fallacy of relying on evaluation for “the definitive answer”. Evaluation is an important tool for learning what seems to work and what doesn’t and it is part of the business-mission-values equation.  It is critical to know what your trying to accomplish and why you believe you can accomplish the desired results.  It’s similarly critical to evaluate your actions and results, but the learnings are often less than crystal clear, especially in the difficult work of public charities.

I greatly prefer self-regulation over external regulation that derives is sanction from suspicion and punishment. We’ve seen only too clearly the unintended consequences of this form of external regulations with the implementation of the Pension Protection Act of 2008. That’s why I’ve advocated and worked for National Standards for Community Foundations since 2001 as a rigorous tool to promote quality and consistency among the 700+ Community Foundations in the United States. But National Standards mean nothing if the organization has no value for what they represent.

In the final analysis, I’m convinced that earning trust all about balance and dealing with the many shades of gray that color our day-to-day work in this field. It’s about being professional but not forgetting that we’re a publicly supported charity. It’s about doing your best to be accountable but doing so with honest transparency even if the picture is sometimes blurred. And it’s remembering that what we are trying to accomplish is sometimes illusive.

Warren Buffet described it well in 2003. “The nature of the problems that a foundation tackles is exactly the opposite of business. In business, you look for easy things, like very good businesses that don’t have very many problems and that almost run themselves. In the philanthropic world, you’re looking at the toughest problems that exist. The reason why they’re important problems is that they’ve resisted the intellect and money being thrown at them over the years and they haven’t been solved. You have to expect a lower batting average in tackling the problems of philanthropy than in tackling the problems of business.”

A National Milestone

I’m off this weekend to Washington DC (actually Crystal City Virginia) for my final meeting on the Standards Action Team of the Council on Foundations and the first meeting of the Board of Directors of the Community Foundation National Standards Board.  A number of words come to mind – “maturation”, “formalization”, “transformation”, “validation”, and “whew”.

Community foundations took a bold step in 2000 by adopting the first ever National Standards for US Community Foundations.  While we were mostly all similar, this was a significant step to ensure that community foundations employ critical policies and effective practices.  I joined the Standards Action Team in 2001 and have been engaged in the arduous process of confirmation for the 700+ community foundations across the nation.  During the past five years we’ve seen almost 563 community foundations agree to comply and  463 successfully demonstrate compliance.  Most of the rest are still in the review process.

As the field prepares for reconfirmation in 2010 (certification is good for 5 years, so the first group to comply in 2005 will need be reviewed again in 2010), the fields decided that National Standards needs to be housed in a permanent organization, the National Standards Board.

As one of the few “senior members” (referring to my time on the committee NOT my age), I’ve agreed to serve on the National Standard Board for a two year term to assist with the transition.  And I have to say that I’m feeling very proud of what we all have accomplished.  In a time where scrutiny is paramount, community foundations are well poised to demonstrate our integrity through transparency of what we do and how we do it, as well as our voluntary commitment to compliance with National Standards.  The process has been far from easy but I firmly believe that the donors, grantees and communities served by the field of community foundations in the United States can rest a little easier because of the rigor of the process. 

These two days will be a passing of a baton of sorts, and hopefully a milestone in the history of community philanthropy.

A good GPS

Managing a community foundation (or any other business) in this economy feels a little like driving through multiple poorly marked detours without a map.  Sometimes you think you’re on the right track but can’t be sure.  Thank goodness for my global positioning system (GPS).  I pride myself on having a pretty good sense of direction, but I don’t know what I’d do without my trusty “map in a box”.  Google maps are great until you hit that unexpected closed road and then things get really interesting.  But my trusty GPS always helps me find an alternate way to get to where I’m going.  The same is true for some organizations.

I’ve never been a huge fan of linear strategic planning, particularly in the world of community foundations.  The “do this – then do this” type plan works in some situations until something unexpected throws the thing offtrack.  I think community foundations need their own GPS and for the past few years we’ve been working on just that, a Goal Positioning Strategy.  The foundation certainly has our goals and strategies, but we also exercise our organizational flexibility by imagining what might be and how we might react.  I honestly believe that the scenario work we did at our Board Retreat last August helped us react quickly to the economic downturn of the 4th quarter of 2008.

I don’t know when the community will receive its next big bequest nor when this recession will end or when the next will begin.  But I’m thankful to work with a board and staff that recognize that our community foundation isn’t driven as much by our own intentions as it is by opportunity.  And a good organizational GPS certainly helps.