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Topics: Community

United Ways' Community Capacity Building Stories

The United Way of America has published two collections of, and on, community building stories. United Ways' Community Capacity Building Stories is intended to provide some exposure to community capacity-building, a new and emerging approach to community building. Story-Making: United Way and Community Building provides readers an opportunity to learn from the professional and practical experiences of the United Way's Committee on Community Building. Case study plus.

Index

United Ways' Community Capacity Building Stories
Preface
Introduction
United Ways

United Way & Community Chest
Cincinnati, Ohio

Mile High United Way
Denver, Colorado

Hawaii Community Services Council
Honolulu, Hawaii

United Way of Los Angeles, North Angeles Region
Los Angeles, California

United Way of the Mid-South
Memphis, Tennessee

Mesa United Way
Mesa, Arizona

United Way of Northeast Louisiana
Monroe, Louisiana

Challenges & Opportunties
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Readers' Feedback [not available on-line]

Contents

United Ways' Community Capacity Building Stories
Preface
Introduction
United Ways

United Way & Community Chest
Cincinnati, Ohio

Mile High United Way
Denver, Colorado

Hawaii Community Services Council
Honolulu, Hawaii

United Way of Los Angeles, North Angeles Region
Los Angeles, California

Key Issue Papers on Community Building:
United Ways' Community Capacity Building Stories

Reprinted with permission from the United Way of America.

Preface

This publication is intended to provide some exposure to community capacity-building, a new and emerging approach to community building. The community capacity-building stories featured in this report focus on the pioneering efforts of just some of the United Ways that are experimenting with this new approach in very fluid environments.

The stories in this report show that United Ways are building community capacity through such wide-ranging activities as:

• Providing training for neighborhood and community leaders in the community capacity-building approach.
  
• Making "block" grants for which neighborhood groups determine the best community capacity-building use.
  
• Making venture grants to support efforts such as an incubator for small neighborhood-based businesses, neighborhood clean-up projects, homeownership counseling, and neighborhood newsletters.
  
• Providing funding for family resource centers where local residents and families define what services are needed and program participants take part in service delivery, in both paid and volunteer roles.
  
• Providing funds for community development corporations and other community-based agencies that produce low-income and affordable housing.
  
• Administering a federal grant for creating homeownership opportunities for low- and moderate-income households.
  
• Providing a VISTA volunteer placement program that places volunteers in neighborhood-based organizations.
  
• Providing leadership and support for organizing community leaders, programs, and neighborhoods throughout a community to develop world-class levels of health and fitness, education, emotional wellness, and economic health.
  
• Facilitating a community-wide strategic-planning effort which seeks to eliminate poverty.

United Way of America has been providing some resources on a variety of community capacity-building approaches. These approaches have been featured at national and regional United Way conferences, as well as in United Way of America National Academy for Voluntarism (NAY) training classes. In addition to the publication of this report, United Way of America will be developing further resources on community capacity-building.

Introduction

The stories collected here reflect the range of different community-building strategies that are being used by a number of United Ways.

Through these new partnerships, United Ways are beginning to help revitalize all types of neighborhoods and build a solid record of accomplishment. Together, partners are:

• Increasing the capacity of local citizens and their families to care for themselves and each other.
  
• Building new and rehabilitating existing affordable housing.
  
• Creating jobs and economic opportunity.
  
• Recognizing and nurturing strong grass-roots leaders.
  
• Catalyzing a powerful community vision-building process.

Along the way these United Way leaders are rediscovering some ancient truths about the art of community building. Most important, they are reaming once again that communities must always be built from the inside out. Strong communities always stand on a foundation that is composed of the gifts and resources of individual citizens, the capacities of local associations, and the power of locally focused, community-based institutions.

In a time when traditional service delivery systems are strained to the breaking point by increasing demands and shrinking resources, these promising new approaches to empowering local community-building efforts deserve our attention and study. Perhaps these United Way pioneers will help us all to rediscover the power of "ordinary" people to accomplish extraordinary things.

United Ways

United Way & Community Chest of Greater Cincinnati
Cincinnati, Ohio

Among other factors, the topography of Cincinnati and the surrounding area contributes to maintaining neighborhood identity. The terrain is hilly and the area is composed of two states separated by a large river. All of these factors have contributed to the emergence of a distinctive pattern of neighborhoods.

Background

Since their meetings in 1992, United Way & Community Chest staff and volunteers have developed an ongoing relationship with John McKnight, his associate Jody Kretzmann, and several of McKnight's other close associates around the country. Through this ongoing relationship, McKnight and associates have helped shape several programs that are emerging through the Community Initiatives Committee.

Principles

The Institute for Community Capacity Building
United Way is co-sponsoring the institute with Xavier University. United Way and Xavier have pursued this project because they found that, after McKnight's visit, many community activists and funders were conceptually persuaded of the importance of focusing on community assets. Yet, it became apparent that the average community organization found it very difficult to move beyond the "needs" approach. Thus, United Way and Xavier felt that it was critical to provide training for community leaders in the capacity-oriented approach.

The institute's purpose is to provide practical, hands-on training for community activists. The institute utilizes a format similar to Leadership Cincinnati, in which participants attend full days of training once a month for a period of seven months. In addition, the institute follows an action-reflection model that has participants involved in asset-mapping projects in their neighborhoods from the start of the program.

The first class began in September 1994. Ten neighborhoods each have three representatives participating in class one.

Community Capacity-Building Fund
This fund is being formed to provide small grants to support the capacity-building efforts of neighborhood groups. Some of these groups will be 501(c)(3) organizations. For those that are not, support will come through fiscal agents who are 501(c)(3) organizations. United Way has committed $50,000 and is rallying support from local funders to raise an additional $150,000.

The Community Initiatives Committee envisions that funding decisions will be made by a panel of neighborhood leaders. However, since the fund is in the process of being formed, many details have yet to be finalized.

Neighborhood Asset Mapping
Already in Cincinnati, two neighborhoods are utilizing McKnight's asset-mapping approach to identify the personal capacities of residents of their respective neighborhoods and link them with other residents in the neighborhoods for relationship-building and community-building activities. In the neighborhood called Over-the-Rhine, the personal assets of families that send their children to the neighborhood Catholic school are being mapped. In the neighborhood called Walnut Hills, community leaders are mapping the assets of persons who eat regularly at a neighborhood soup kitchen.

United Way helped the neighborhood leaders from Over-the-Rhine and Walnut Hills secure funding for these projects by introducing them to local funders.

Economic Development
United Way & Community Chest is beginning to make plans with United Way of America to hold a national conference that would explore how United Ways can meaningfully support economic development issues. United Way envisions that the conference will address various theories, including how to promote economic development generally and, more specifically, how United Ways might add value to various economic development efforts.

Outcomes

The Institute for Community Capacity-building and the Community Capacity-Building Fund, the projects upon which the Community Initiatives Committee has focused the bulk of its energy, are coming to fruition. The institute's first class was held in September 1994. The Community Capacity-Building Fund is expected to be operational by January 1995.

Future Plans & Tips

Tips

• Be careful of the politics and secure the buy-in of key internal constituencies (i.e., United Way board of trustees, United Way chief professional officer and senior management, influential directors of member agencies, etc.) before launching projects.
  
• Build external constituencies for the capacity approach (e.g., city government, civic associations, coalitions of neighborhood groups, the religious community, other funders, business leaders, etc.).
  
• Learn how to get into neighborhoods and talk to people. Do not rely solely on agencies to build relationships with neighborhoods.
  
• Spread funding for capacity-building efforts as broadly as possible (i.e., over several funders) so that existing funding relationships with agencies are affected as little as possible in the early stages of your efforts.

Mile High United Way
Denver, Colorado

Metro: I
Region: Western

As the United Way moved from concept to program development, the idea of a single fund did not materialize in the way that it had been originally conceived. Based on the Community Strategic Assessment conducted in 1992, a traditional needs assessment that had a small community capacity-building component, a category of Neighborhood Strengthening was added to categories receiving funding through general allocations. In addition, four minifunds, separate from general allocations, were formed to support community capacity-building. The minifunds include the following:

• Housing Development Project
  
• Community Development Enterprise
  
• The Denver Neighborhood Partnership
  
• Barrio Aztlan

Furthermore, NSG helped sponsor a national conference in July 1992, "What Works and Why," as a follow-up to the 1991 conference. This conference featured neighborhood success stories and provided momentum for Mile High United Way's community capacity-building efforts.

Principles

Mile High United Way views its support for community capacity-building efforts as an approach that adds balance to its support for more traditional health and human services. Its community capacity-building activities are based on an investment philosophy. United Way has specifically based its activities on community assets, self-help, resident control, and economic development.

Community Capacity-Building Efforts

United Way is using its Neighborhood Strengthening funding category to test a strategy in which it directs funding to neighborhood initiatives that are resident-organized and resident-operated, and that address both short-term and long-term issues as identified by their own community. Thus, United Way allocated $212,675 in 1993 and $219,626 in 1994 to neighborhood strengthening. Funding decisions for projects within this service area are made by Mile High United Way's board of trustees based on a request-for-proposal process.

As previously mentioned, Mile High United Way also operates four community capacity-building minifunds. A description of the status of these funds follows:

Housing Development Project
Since 1993, Mile High United Way has provided annual operating support to between seven and nine community development corporations and other community-based agencies that produce low-income and affordable housing.

The United Way administers this fund, which totaled $250,000 in both 1993 and 1994 and in 1995 will total approximately $500,000. Contributions for this fund come from the Enterprise Foundation, the Alexis de Tocqueville Society, as well as corporate and other local gifts earmarked for housing development.

Community Development Enterprise
In 1993, a feasibility study was completed to explore the possibility of developing a program that would provide support for training, mentoring, and technical assistance to low-income neighborhoods for housing and economic development activities. What emerged was the Community Development Enterprise, which will make grants for feasibility studies and the development of business plans for housing and economic development projects in low-income neighborhoods, and arrange loans from a series of guarantors and banks.

A nonprofit technical assistance contractee will serve as the first guarantor of loan funds to a community. The guarantee will cover the first five percent of the loan loss. A combination of community guarantors (i.e., neighborhood residents who collectively must commit a minimum of $25,000 per neighborhood) and public guarantors (e.g., municipalities and economic development agencies) collectively will guarantee the next 15 percent of loan losses. Finally, a statewide guarantor pool, supported by philanthropic investors, will cover the next 15 percent of loan losses.

Traditional financial institutions are responsible for all other loan losses. A typical community project will include $25,000 in community funds, $25,000 in public funds, $50,000 in statewide guarantor funds, and $300,000 in bank loans.

The Community Development Enterprise will begin operating in 1995 with a budget of $250,000, of which $80,000 will come from United Way for nonprofit technical assistance contractees. The enterprise will serve three neighborhoods, or clusters of neighborhoods, initially.

Barrio Aztlan
This project, a partnership between Mile High United Way and the National Council of La Raza, is in the final planning stages. It will utilize Ford Foundation funds, as part of the Southwest Community Development Initiative of the National Council of La Raza, to assist a minimum of two Latino neighborhoods, or cluster of neighborhoods, with their community capacity-building efforts.

Denver Neighborhood Partnership
In 1994, after a year of study, six funders, Mile High United Way, the Anschutz Family Foundation, Adolph Coors Foundation, Hunt Alternatives Fund, Piton Foundation, and Norwest Bank formed the Denver Neighborhood Partnership. The mission of the partnership is to fund and link strengths and assets in five Denver-area neighborhoods to achieve greater opportunities for the people who reside there. In addition to its role as funder, United Way coordinates the organization's activities and serves as its fiscal agent.

The Denver Neighborhood Partnership is breaking new ground on several fronts. First, neighborhood representatives constitute the majority of the partnership's governance board, the Neighborhood Council. Second, rather than funding specific projects, the partnership provides "block" grants to neighborhood associations who in turn make funding decisions for specific projects.

The five neighborhoods participating in the partnership include East Montclair, Northeast Park Hill, Sun Valley, Westwood, and Whittier. The selection of these neighborhoods was based on such factors as high or rapidly increasing rates of poverty, crime, and teenage pregnancy—factors that acknowledge the neighborhoods' deficits. However, the partnership is structured to identify and build upon the assets of the respective neighborhoods.

The Neighborhood Council is a 13-person board composed of two representatives from each of five low-income neighborhoods and three representatives from among the six funders. The Neighborhood Council establishes operating procedures, makes funding decisions, and is responsible for project monitoring and evaluation.

Neighborhood associations serve as sponsors and fiscal agents for funds awarded to each neighborhood. The associations make individual project grants up to $5,000, upon final approval of the Neighborhood Council. Each team of neighborhood representatives can also make quick response grants (awards of up to $1,000 per year, with no more than $250 per project) without obtaining approval from the Neighborhood Council.

Projects are identified through neighborhood leadership forums (public meetings)—which have served as the primary source of ideas—and requests for proposals. United Way staff, in conjunction with Neighborhood Council representatives, conduct project monitoring and evaluation as determined by the Neighborhood Council.

Individual residents as well as organizations located within the neighborhood are eligible to receive grants. The funding priority criteria for projects include the following:

• Utilizes assets, skills, and resources of people and organizations in the neighborhood.
  
• Provides value directly to the neighborhood.
  
• Has results with lasting, positive effect on the neighborhood.
  
• Links, if appropriate, neighborhood resources with outside resources.
  
• Has limited or no access to traditional funding resources.

Written funding requests are made on a two-page application form. The form includes the name of the applicant, the project title, the purpose of the project, a description of who or what benefits from the project, a description of how the project will be sustained after the grant, the time-period for the project, as well as an explanation of the budget.

In May 1994, the board of trustees of Mile High United Way created a committee on community development. Formation of this committee reflects the growing interest of United Way in community capacity-building efforts. This committee's mission is, "To integrate housing, economic development, and other elements of community development with human services into a strategic community-building plan." The mission statement demonstrates the board's concern that the value of human services may be diminished by continuing deterioration in the physical conditions of low-income neighborhoods and in the economic circumstances of people who live there. Conversely, improved housing and physical conditions, as well as enhanced economic and employment activity in these neighborhoods, will help the human services efforts realize their potential.

Outocmes

There is great interest among corporate donors and foundations in community capacity-building efforts. The four community capacity-building minifunds have attracted new money that otherwise would probably not have come to the United Way.

United Way's general allocation funding, through the Neighborhood Strengthening category, has funded such organizations as Greater Auraria Neighbors Affiliated for Service (GANAS) and the Urban League of Metropolitan Denver. GANAS is a community-based partnership that has developed a multi-agency family center and brokers the agencies' services. Services range from a small business training program to mental health counseling and Head Start. The Urban League provides intervention services to families, youths, single parents, and adults.

United Way is currently conducting a new community strategic assessment. This assessment will, in part, evaluate its neighborhood strengthening efforts. Two of the minifunds that United Way operates, the Denver Neighborhood Partnership and the Housing Development Project, now have funding histories. Over the past six months, the Partnership has made dozens of modest but well-targeted grants that help empower residents. For example, the Partnership awarded funds to the Westwood Neighborhood Association, which in turn awarded $2,000 to Patty Chavez—a Southwest Denver resident—to buy dictionaries and other educational materials for an afterschool homework club called Solutions before Problems. Furthermore, in 1993 the nine community development corporations receiving support from the Housing Development Project repaired 41 units, rehabilitated 192 units, and completed 71 units of new construction.

Future Plans & Tips

Future Plans
Many of Mile High United Way's capacity-building efforts are in their formative stages. Therefore, the organization plans to continue these efforts and work toward their growth. In addition, United Way is exploring how it might partner with the Alpha Center for Social Entrepreneurs. This partnership would be part of United Way's broader based focus for nonprofit organizations. However, United Way also believes that this partnership would directly benefit its community capacity-building efforts, since building community capacity necessitates becoming more entrepreneurial.

Tips

• United Ways should not abdicate their involvement just because they have not been involved in the past. United Ways have much to offer community capacity-building efforts. For example, Mile High United Way filled a leadership void in Denver and has functioned as a coordinator, policymaker, and administrator. Furthermore, exploring what part they might play in community capacity-building is part of United Ways' search for new relevance.
  
• Do not get hung up on process. Nevertheless, develop a reasonable time for planning. . . and double it.
  
• Make sure neighborhood representatives do outreach to individuals, not just organizations.
  
• Assume that there will be a significant dropout rate by neighborhood representatives for reasons of disinterest, confusion, inconvenience of getting to meetings, and time constraints.
  
• Do not view this process as a panacea. Also, as with any pioneering effort, sometimes the participants in these projects will fail.
  
• Do not establish a double standard of accountability for projects and people.
  
• Use a very skilled facilitator and/or chair during planning and implementation.
  
• Make the process mission and purpose driven, not rule and regulation driven. Be responsive to local motivating factors, whether its crime or blight—whatever gets people motivated.
  
• Funders and grantees should think and act as equal partners. In order to accomplish meaningful results, funders must be as dependent on neighborhood groups as neighborhood groups are on funders. This approach helps players steer clear of unnecessary distinctions between grant makers and grant seekers.
  
• Consider targeted fund raising rather than workplace fund raising, at least initially. The programs may be too confusing for a broad fund-raising appeal.

Hawaii Community Services Council
Honolulu, Hawaii

Metro: I
Region: Western

Community Context

The state of Hawaii is composed of seven major islands: Oahu, Maui, Hawaii, Kauai, Moloka'i, Lanai, and Nilhau. The total state population is 1.1 million. The city and county of Honolulu is coterminous with the island of Oahu. Approximately 800,000 live on Oahu. A substantial military presence (50,000 primarily on Oahu) and a daily visitor count of approximately 160,000 raise the de facto population to 1.3 million.

The population is ethnically diverse and includes Caucasians, Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiians, Koreans, Samoans, Tongans, Filipinos, and a small African-American population. There is no numerical majority among any of these groups.

With this diversity comes divergent cultural expectations, values, and understandings. To be successful, any work in the community has to consider these diverse perspectives and see diversity as a strength rather than as something to be overcome. As an island state, Hawaii's economy is very sensitive to national and international economic forces. At the time of statehood, 1959, Hawaii's economy was based on agriculture, tourism, and federal (primarily military) spending. Since then, large-scale agriculture (sugar cane and pineapple) has been phasing out, tourism has grown tremendously, and federal spending has been fairly stable.

Currently, there is no clear consensus about the direction that the state should take within the global economy. There are, however, some key concerns within the state that shape the discussion of community concerns. Underlying most issues is the high cost of living. Hawaii's cost of living averages around 135 percent of the national average, while wages do not keep pace. There is a growing disparity between rich and poor. Housing is a key concern, with the average selling price of a single-family dwelling at around $360,000 and rents averaging the highest in the nation.

Hawaii was rather insulated from the national economic decline in the late 1980s because of strong visitor interest from Japan. As the Japanese economy has cooled and the U.S. mainland economy (especially California, where most domestic visitors come from) has not yet picked up, Hawaii's visitor industry experienced a significant slowdown in the early 1990s.

The strong economic growth of the late 1980s provided the foundation for double-digit growth in state tax revenues and some increases in charitable giving. The slowing of the economy has resulted in the need to cut budgets and services. These cuts have stimulated both a desire to preserve services and, simultaneously, an opportunity to look at other ways of addressing community concerns. Hawaii's major assets include its location and its natural environment

Background

The Aloha United Way, which serves the island of Oahu, has a strong partnership with the Hawaii Community Services Council (HCSC). An independent planning council, HCSC works with various community sectors to address community concerns. HCSC handles community planning, technical (management) assistance, information and referral, and some government relations functions on the United Way's behalf.

Aloha United Way and HCSC are close collaborators in the community capacity-building arena.

There is no single chain of events that led to the current community capacity-building efforts. Instead, several streams of activity have blended together to create the current perspective and the activities that flow from that perspective.

One major influence was a community planning process called Decisions '87/Action '88/Impact '89. This process brought together more than 800 community leaders, including United Way staff and volunteers, to identify problems and strategies for addressing issues in many different areas. A list of more than 260 problems and many more strategies were identified. These were prioritized into 17 key problems. Because even 17 major problems seemed overwhelming, the next step was identifying the relationships among the key problems. It was determined that the family was at the center of each problem and strategy, and that strengthening families was the best systemic way of addressing community concerns.

State-of-the-art methods for strengthening families were sought out by inviting Heather Weiss of the Harvard Family Research Project to Hawaii. She validated the group's conclusions and described the efforts of several communities to develop family resource centers. These centers were developing differently in different communities, but they were held together by a common approach of building on the strengths of families. This was the first introduction to "assets thinking."

A family center demonstration project was initiated through the state legislature in 1990. Ted Bowman, with the Amherst Wilder Foundation, was brought in to train project staff and other interested community members in the "family resiliency" approach. Family resiliency takes as its starting point the identification of individual and family strengths and builds on the resiliency that families display in meeting life situations. This was another manifestation of assets thinking.

Working with families from a strengths perspective seemed like such an obvious approach that it raised the question of why current systems are not set up to support families as a whole. Again, trying not to reinvent the wheel, Charley Bruner, then Senator from Iowa, and Sid Gardner, a children and family policy consultant based in California, were invited to work with the council. Both individuals had developed critiques of the categorically based funding and delivery systems that have been set up during the past 30 years of public social policy. They said that categorical logic creates more and more specialized programs that serve smaller and smaller pieces of families and communities. Underlying the categorical logic is the deficits perspective, which causes people to be seen as problems/ needs/deficiencies to be solved/addressed/filled in. The question became: How does one go about flipping this system over?

The first step is changing the mindset to an assets perspective. But beyond that what does one do? Bruner led an experiment in Iowa that decategorized several funding streams for children's welfare. But without the categories how is accountability maintained? The simple answer is that, instead of programs and agencies being held accountable for budgets, expenditures, and headcounts, they should be held accountable for results and outcomes. Obviously, making this change is not simple. Several questions emerge: First, what outcomes do we hold ourselves accountable for, and who decides on the outcomes; second, how do we do it; and third, how do we shift the thinking of all levels of the system to support this change?

To address the "how" questions, Rollie Smith of Cleveland brought to our attention John McKnight's work on assets mapping as an approach to working with communities on ways to change systems.

These various streams of thought and activity made it clear that assets thinking needed to be applied to working with individuals, families, communities, systems, and policy. It seemed that tying together the various ideas that we had been hearing from these different parties would be a good idea.

As these ideas were explored with volunteers in the business community, it became clear that there were some parallels in the business world that were being addressed through quality management practices. The focus on customers and outcomes and the emphasis on process were added to our thinking.

Principles

Several principles emerge from incorporating the influences of these different schools of thought and practice:

• Build on the strengths/assets/resources of individuals, families, organizations, neighbors, communities, and social systems.
  
• Define goals in terms of the "what"/the outcome/the result, and be able to measure achievement of the outcome.
  
• Identify and build on relationships.
  
• Bring values, vision, and motivation into alignment.
  
• Use collaborative strategies, which make the best use of resources.

Community Capacity-Building Efforts

Family Resource Center
The state of Hawaii contracted with the Hawaii Community Services Council to plan and administer a neighborhood-based family center demonstration project. As a result, four social service agencies each received $100,000 to start family resource centers.

The family center demonstration project significantly differs in several respects from current services. First, the centers are open to all families in a community regardless of economic circumstances, income level, or other identifiable category of need. Second, the $100,000 grant does not prescribe the type of program that each center must develop. Instead, families in a community define what services are needed and the centers work collaboratively with other social service or community agencies to access appropriate support for all family members. Third, each center is expected to be a place that is comfortable, accessible, informal, and sensitive to the different ways people seek and use support. Therefore, family centers may be found in such diverse settings as office buildings, schools, churches, libraries, prisons, military bases, hospitals, and homeless shelters.

Family centers work in partnership with families in order to build on families' strengths and mobilize all of the resources necessary to meet their needs. For example, a homeless family came to the Moloka'i Family Center primarily to receive some food. The staff gave them the last items of food the center had. The staff then called the unemployment office to help the father obtain a job and learned that the office was looking for a part-time cook. Since the family was homeless and they had no mailing address, the center's staff registered the family to a general delivery through the post office. The staff also helped the family find a place to live by showing them a list of available rentals the family center keeps on file, and even offered them transportation to see the houses.

Aloha United Way Venture Grant provided funds to develop a training module for family center staff, family literacy center staff, and the community. Training has also been made available to interested staff of public and private agencies. The training describes how to work with family units and the community by building on the strengths of each.

Assets-Planning Curriculum
Applying an assets perspective calls for significant change in the mindset and behavior of individuals, organizations, and systems. The assets-planning curriculum being developed by HCSC proposes to offer nonprofits and other groups the tools to begin making the journey toward change. This curriculum will incorporate the ideas that were identified earlier into a package that can be used at different stages in the process of developing an assets/capacity-building approach.

This curriculum should be finalized in the fall of 1994. Parts of the curriculum are already being field-tested in the current training and consultation being offered by HCSC.

Youth Outcomes Project
Moving to an outcomes-oriented system is more than just a matter of requiring that organizations track information in a different way, it is really a question of how to manage for results. To do so, there must be changes in outlook and changes in behavior within provider organizations and within funding organizations. The Youth Outcomes Project is attempting to answer the questions of what changes are needed to move to an outcomes-oriented approach and how can the changes be accomplished. The answers to these questions will be developed into models that can be used by providers and funders.

In order to produce outcomes—actual changes in the lives of people—the participant supplies at least half the solution. An assets perspective that looks at program participants/customers/clients as subjects who have something to contribute, rather than as objects that are to be acted upon, is critical to long-term success.

Outcomes

The family center demonstration project is in its fifth and final demonstration year. Centers have developed new collaborative efforts within their communities, have connected many families with supports and services, have developed microeconomic development projects that grew out of the desires of the families themselves, have served as facilitators for interagency planning, have developed a sense of community in their locales, and have spun-off efforts such as neighbor associations. Centers are now developing an empowerment strategy for working with families; the strategy will become a core function of family centers.

The project's impact on the larger system has yet to be seen. Funding and service delivery continue to be offered in a categorical fashion, and even the agencies that are participating in the family center project receive most of their funding for direct, categorical services. Applying the successful elements of this project on a larger scale is the next critical challenge.

The assets-planning curriculum is being finalized. The curriculum is being put together by a group of volunteers from different disciplines and different backgrounds. Some of these individuals have already been using elements of the curriculum in their work, which has been very well-received.

The Youth Outcomes Project was kicked off in November 1993 and is scheduled for completion in 1996. After a planning period during the early part of 1994, several streams of activity are moving forward. Thirteen agencies that agreed to be test sites for this effort will be working with a consultant from the Rensselaerville Institute to develop the agencies' internal systems for identifying and tracking participant outcomes. A funding task force is working on a framework for resource allocation from an outcomes perspective.

The community climate is changing. The community has been exposed to the various concepts described in this article through workshops, speakers, conferences, proselytizing by individual volunteers, and involvement in the specific projects. As a result, the language of assets, outcomes, and collaboration is becoming familiar to people. We are hearing this from legislators, grant makers, business leaders, and providers. At the same time, budgets are being cut and community leaders are looking for better ways to address the future. This situation offers an opportunity to expand support for an assets-oriented approach to community improvement.

Future Plans

Hawaii Progress Indicators is a project idea that is being nurtured by the planning council, the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, the Hawaii Business Roundtable, the Aloha United Way, and the Hawaii Community Foundation. The intent of this project is to develop a community consensus around a statewide vision for the future, to identify goals and benchmarks, and to encourage the use of this framework for setting community priorities. By building upon existing efforts and encouraging the development of efforts in areas such as economic development and environmental protection, this project would develop a comprehensive framework for measuring and tracking community progress.

A number of states and regions have developed similar efforts. Oregon is acknowledged as a leader in this area.

United Way of Los Angeles, North Angeles Region
Los Angeles, California

Metro: I
Region: Western

Community Context

Among urban centers in the United States, the Los Angeles metropolitan area is second only to New York in population. It is home to 9 million and growing.

The economies of California and Los Angeles were once thought to be perpetually booming. As a result, over the years the Los Angeles area has been flooded with a multitude of newcomers, both American citizens seeking their fortune as well as foreign immigrants.

However, since 1990 the economy has been sluggish. Approximately 530,000 jobs have been lost in Los Angeles County since 1990. According to statistics released in June 1994, unemployment remains at nearly 10 percent. From 1992 to 1993, the total number of recipients of all forms of public assistance has increased 31 percent to almost 2.1 million.

During the 1980s, strong economic growth in California led to steadily growing tax revenues and solid charitable giving. However, the downturn in the economy has resulted in increasing demands for the charitable dollar and an even greater emphasis on accountability, cost effectiveness, and demonstrable results.

Immigration, both legal and illegal, has continued despite the downturn in the economy. Fueled by the recession, there is anger among a segment of the state's population over providing services to undocumented immigrants. This furor has resulted in a ballot initiative to deny public benefits to these immigrants. If passed, this initiative would force undocumented immigrants to seek medical and social services from private agencies, which would substantially increase the demand on nonprofit organizations.

As might be imagined, addressing regional issues in metropolitan Los Angeles is complicated by the size of the population and the tremendous geographic area it spans. Were Los Angeles County a state, it would be the ninth largest in population.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that the Los Angeles area is composed of a multitude of small cities (88 within Los Angeles County alone). Given the size and the complexity of the area, the United Way is divided into six service regions.

The United Way North Angeles Region serves the northern portion of Los Angeles County, excluding the Antelope Valley home of Edwards Air Force Base of space shuttle fame. The North Angeles region includes the entire San Fernando Valley, a significant portion of which is within the Los Angeles city limits, and the smaller cities of Glendale, Burbank, and Santa Clarita. The region also includes Northridge, an area devastated by the recent earthquake, and the Foothill Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, whose officers were implicated and convicted in the beating of Rodney King.

The United Way of North Angeles Region's FamilyCare project focuses on San Fernando and Pacoima, communities that have undergone significant demographic changes over the past 20 years. At one time the area was largely white and upper middle class. Over time, it became predominantly African American. Today, the area is approximately 85 percent Latino. The households are largely working poor. Often, multiple families live in a single-family home and include a combination of documented and undocumented persons.

Background

United Way's interest and involvement in community capacity-building stem from two separate yet intertwined strands of United Way activity: the Underserved Geographic Areas Project, which developed the Northeast Communities Action Project, and the Community Analysis and Problem-Solving Council, which created the FamilyCare Project.

The Underserved Geographic Areas Project identified two surrounding areas as underserved. As a result, in 1986, the United Way formed the Northeast Communities Action Project and convened a local steering committee to invest resources that would expand health and social services delivered by community-based agencies and to support a variety of community-building activities and events. The steering committee has provided funds for parenting seminars in the work force, a sports program for children and youth, several studies on specific employment issues in the community (e.g., coordination of job training programs, social service needs of day laborers, employment opportunities for African Americans), alcohol and drug prevention events and community festivals. After the 1992 civil unrest, the steering committee supported the production of a play, "Look Mama, Why Is L.A. Burning?", to ease racial tensions. Furthermore, the committee has leveraged a large city grant that is funding a youth-at-risk advocacy program. In recent years, the committee provided minigrants for FamilyCare (described in the sections to follow) to serve as seed funding for a gang prevention program and a dental disease prevention program.

Meanwhile, in 1987, the North Angeles United Way formed the United Way Community Analysis and Problem-Solving Council to develop a community problem-solving process that would link its campaign, allocation, communication, and marketing activities. This change in how funds were to be earmarked and distributed promoted a more comprehensive approach to understanding and addressing problems and needs.

The council concluded that lack of education is at the heart of many of the residents' health and human service needs and adopted "Youth at Risk of Education Failure" as its first priority area. The council then established an education subcommittee to narrow the focus and to develop a strategy for pursuing a new initiative.

The education subcommittee, chaired by Dr. Carlos Navarro, dean of California State University, Northridge, and staffed by Dr. Dorothy Fleisher, United Way planning director, specifically decided that it would establish a demonstration project to address non-educational barriers to educational success through integrating services.

The education subcommittee's early vision was to develop a collaborative group of social service agencies who could meet the needs of children in elementary school. Based on extremely low test scores, the leadership of the principal, and support by parents, United Way decided that Vaughn Street Elementary School would be its first demonstration site.

Separate from United Way's efforts, similar ideas were percolating at Vaughn Street Elementary School and the Los Angeles Educational Partnership (LAEP), a nonprofit, educational reform agency that has moved into community development and services over the past 10 years. Vaughn Street School focused its energies on instructional reform, received a state grant to develop its ideas, and in 1993 was granted charter status. Quasi-independent from the school district, the school has control over its budget and freedom from state educational codes to redesign curriculum.

LAEP's primary interest initially focused on improving early childhood education through a network of family day-care providers, other preschool programs, the school, and family services. LAEP envisioned that the school would serve as a one-stop resource and referral site, would assist with children's transition from preschool, and would promote a pattern of parental involvement in the school. LAEP also selected Vaughn Street School as its initial demonstration site.

After receiving approval from their respective boards, United Way and LAEP began pursuing a combined initiative that ultimately became known as FamilyCare. Helen Kleinberg, a United Way volunteer, played a significant role in the development of FamilyCare. United Way and LAEP jointly focused on Vaughn Street School as FamilyCare's initial demonstration site, known as the Vaughn Family Center (VFC). United Way's Dorothy Fleisher and Connie Dubin, director of LAEP, serve as co-directors of FamilyCare.

The community capacity-building efforts of the Vaughn Family Center have created synergy that is reaping benefits for economic development in the community as well. The first chair of the Underserved Geographic Areas Project, Dr. Kay Inaba, is the system integrator for a strategy called Quality Workforce Development (QWoD). QWoD utilizes the Vaughn Family Center—and ultimately will use family centers at other elementary schools in the area—as building blocks in the community upon which to focus its economic development efforts.

Principles

United Way and LAEP based the formation of FamilyCare on the belief that engaging parents substantively in dialogue and development with service providers would trigger reforms in the health and social service system. Furthermore, United Way and LAEP's ultimate goal was to establish the role of parents as full partners with public and private agencies in the design of services, which were to be locale-based and prevention focused.

FamilyCare is built around the following community capacity-building principles:

• Parents are equal partners in every aspect of program development and delivery.
  
• Service delivery is customer driven.
  
• Everyone holds high expectations for people and results.
  
• Community organizing is focused on development, not confrontation.
  
• People give services as well as receive services.

The essential features of the QWoD strategy, as described in The State of Development, 11 July 1994, include the following:

• Develop partnerships of outside resources and community members that will work together in a win-win relationship.
  
• Apply the system approach to address all relevant parameters of an impoverished community in a cohesive and integrated manner, maximizing the use of local talent and community-based organizations.
  
• Adopt Total Quality Management principles to build individual companies and the community from within and make the community and its residents competitive.
  
• Develop criteria for both economic development and quality of life in the community and a strategic plan to meet the criteria.
  
• Develop a two-prong economic development program to (a) increase recirculation of money within the community and (b) increase income for the community with a combination of skilled local workers employed within commuting distance and local quality companies in niche markets.
  
• Focus on an urban village to generate a positive impact in a relatively short period of time and have a process for expanding the impact to the rest of the community.

Community-Capacity-Building Efforts BUILDING EFFORTS

Over 200 parents, teachers, service providers, community members and public/private partnerships played a part in crafting the Vaughn Family Center (VFC) program. Operating out of a converted classroom and under the able leadership of center director Yolond Trevino, VFC has become a welcoming hub of activities for parents and children. It is a one-stop resource that integrates the services of more than 30 providers. Residents have access to free food and clothing. In addition, parents can see a nurse practitioner and obtain a medical referral or counseling. They can take classes in parenting, English or Spanish literacy. They can also receive job training in such fields as child care or computers.

The Vaughn Family Center is pursuing five goal areas, which include the following:

• Enhanced development and school readiness for 0- to 5-year-olds.
  
• Enhanced development and educational achievement for 6- to 12-year-olds.
  
• Strengthened family functioning.
  
• System transformation.
  
• Community development.

In contrast to many programs, FamilyCare not only serves participants, it also engages them in serving on several different levels. Parents/residents participate in everything from program development and governance to service delivery alongside trained professionals. The programs preserve the participants' dignity and utilize their strengths while also addressing community needs.

Parents make up half the membership of the program commission, the governing body for the Vaughn Family Center, and half of the membership of all committees. As a result, the programs reflect the needs and cultures of families living in the neighborhood. This grassroots involvement has also facilitated community building. In the process of developing programs for their children and providing services to each other, the parents are developing a strong sense of community.

Many residents volunteer at the center. In fact, the center has an informal rule referred to as the Service Exchange Bank, requiring that anyone who receives help must give back some time as a volunteer. Parents contribute child care, transportation, tutoring, gardening, painting, and maintenance and governance for the school and community. A common experience of the Service Exchange Bank is that offers to help precede requests for service.

The center also hires community residents. By way of example, five mothers work as community liaisons. In this capacity they are given part-time pay to handle free food and clothing distribution and manage the library service and various center operations.

Three residents also serve as family advocates. They have been trained to assist local families directly in what has become an informal network for information, education, and support.

For example, a family advocate saw a child crying on the playground. The family advocate found out he was crying because he had been caught stealing food. In probing the matter further, the family advocate leamed that the child only eats one meal a day, the free lunch he receives at school. Immediately, the family advocate made contact with the family to get concrete help for them. This type of active outreach and bringing people in to get help is instrumental to VFC's success. The fact that the family advocate is a community resident and has received help herself, facilitated trust.

Although the Vaughn Family Center is located on the grounds of Vaughn Elementary School, the Los Angeles Unified School District has not been the primary funder for the project. Instead, funding for FamilyCare has come from United Way, foundations, corporations, and state grants. The advantage of this situation is that the center director is a peer of the elementary school principal rather than an employee.

VFC is working with Quality Workforce Development to build upon and further its community-development efforts. QWoD is seeking to foster an improvement in local socioeconomic conditions through a combination of job training and job-creation strategies, as well as through the development of businesses in niche markets that will keep dollars recirculating in the community.

QWoD is also facilitating the work of community-based groups to improve the quality of life in the community so that when the socioeconomic conditions improve, the residents will remain in the neighborhood. One of the key ingredients of QWoD is that it reflects a partnership of residents and outside resources.

QWoD's approach is intertwined with the family centers. QWoD is looking to train family advocates to assist families in developing their own socioeconomic development plans. Fundamentally, QWoD envisions the family centers as nodes to the development of the urban village. The family centers will build local community capacity and address health and social service needs. QWoD will build upon this infrastructure to address economic development issues and housing.

QWoD is developing a variety of programs to assist residents in developing or upgrading their marketable skills. These programs include the following:

• The Workforce Preparation program was developed by a network of several local schools, with Mission College as the hub and support from California State University Northridge. The program has approximately 50 graduates. Four of the original graduates had children at Vaughn Street School and two work at VFC as family advocates.
  
• First Chance is a program that is being developed to help motivated gang leaders develop marketable skills and secure employment. The program has successfully established credibility with local gang members and has helped several secure employment. The program developers have recognized that to move forward, they must hire an adult supervisor, preferably one who is a former gang member. The program is currently looking for funds to hire such a person.
  
• A Distance Learning System for Basic Skills is being developed. With the help of GTE and Mission College, the system will broadcast lessons over a satellite network and thus provide the FamilyCare centers with the capability to offer basic skills and total quality training.

In addition to developing job training classes, QWoD, VFC, and parents are developing the foundation for a sewing co-opt A retired executive, Sam Winston, is providing technical assistance. The owner of a garment-making shop is giving practical advice based on local experience. It was recently determined that the co-op's start-up costs would be $2,500. However, rather than immediately fuming to outside resources, interested neighborhood residents each pledged $100. In addition, they decided to raise the remaining funds from within the community.

Meanwhile, Vaughn Elementary School encourages students to wear uniforms to school in an attempt to reduce gang identification. Since Vaughn is a charter school within the Los Angeles Unified School District, it has the authority to contract with individual vendors. Therefore, there is a possibility that the school will contract with the co-op to make the uniforms for the students.

Outcomes

From a multiplicity of indicators, the Vaughn Family Center is making an extraordinary impact in the community. The program's outstanding achievements include the following (listed by goal area):

• Enhanced development and school readiness for 0- to 5- year-olds. Kindergarten and pre-Kindergarten teachers report that they can distinguish children who have been exposed to the Parent Educator and alternative pre-Kindergarten programs by the work they produce in class, their familiarity with concepts and books, their ability to play and explore materials, the way they relate to adults and children, the way they follow directions, and their psycho-motor skills.
  
• Enhanced development and educational achievement for 6- to 12-year-olds. There has been a 300 percent increase in standardized test scores since 1990 (students at Vaughn have moved from the 9th to the 32nd percentile in reading and from the 17th to the 50th percentile in math), despite the increases in both the number of impoverished students and the number with limited English proficiency.

In addition, there were no school suspensions in the 1993-1994 school year. Disciplinary referrals by teachers dropped from 456 to 167 during a seven-month period in 1993-1994, as compared to the same period in 1992-1993.

• Strengthened family functioning. Ten community residents graduated from Healthy Beginnings training to become new lay health educators. As they recruit participants, nurture support groups, and teach classes, they tell the staff that they are also demonstrating to themselves, their children, and their spouses their capability.
  
• System transformation. The school hired 15 parents to serve as recess and lunch-time playground directors and two parents to complete attendance bookkeeping and make home visits when necessary. These shifts indicate the school's growing confidence in the capacity of the parents.
  
• Community development. The school put out for bid the development of its newly purchased lots across the street. Martha Ashkenazy, the director of Women at Work, a Vaughn Family Center partner agency, and her husband, a builder/developer, have submitted a bid and, demonstrating their grasp of VFC's approach to parent capacity-building, have invited parents to learn some new skills along the way—starting with skills in moving through the bidding process.

United Way has found that agencies involved with FamilyCare are generally excited about the program. Furthermore, this project has strengthened United Way's working relationships with the participating agencies, providing an opportunity to work together as equal partners/problem solvers. It has facilitated more collaboration on service delivery than ordinarily occurs between the United Way and its member agencies.

Future Plans & Tips

Future Plans
Since the Vaughn Family Center is well under way, the United Way is pursuing the development of family centers on the campuses of the five other elementary schools that feed into the local high school. The goal is to build linkages between the feeder schools to assist parents as their children move through the system.

Unlike VFC, which received funds from a variety of public and private sources, these newer family centers will receive a substantial portion of their funding from the school district.

Tips

• Do not expect a short-term payoff.
  
• It takes a long time to earn the trust of community residents. In the beginning, service providers have to earn it every day.
  
• In order to succeed, everyone has to be open to change and willing to listen.

Index

United Ways' Community Capacity Building Stories
Preface
Introduction
United Ways

United Way & Community Chest
Cincinnati, Ohio

Mile High United Way
Denver, Colorado

Hawaii Community Services Council
Honolulu, Hawaii

United Way of Los Angeles, North Angeles Region
Los Angeles, California

United Way of the Mid-South
Memphis, Tennessee

Mesa United Way
Mesa, Arizona

United Way of Northeast Louisiana
Monroe, Louisiana

Challenges & Opportunties
Conclusion
Acknowledgments

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