NOTE: This essay is based on a longer article
by James Jennings and Ricardo Torres, Community Based Nonprofits
in U.S. Inner Cities: Collaborative Strategies for Community-Building
to
be published in Sage Race Relations Abstracts vol.
32 (4), 2007)
Community-based nonprofits, operating in low income urban neighborhoods,
have a long history of emphasizing economic democracy through
the mobilization of community residents. Today, smaller community-based
nonprofits continue to provide a range of services that are critical for the social
and economic well being of urban neighborhoods. In the U.S.,
these neighborhood-based nonprofits, with budgets under
$5 million, and even less than $1 million, are engaged in charitable
and economic activities that touch every aspect of neighborhood
life. In many instances, they provide voice to collective
interests and needs that are not typically heard in venues
of power and wealth. Recent civic
dialogue about the future of nonprofits in this country, however,
tends to overlook the role and impact of this sub-sector of
nonprofits. The public and corporate focus is on downsizing
and mergers, performance and outcome measures, or standards
of accountability. And, within this dialogue, the issue of
social justice and community mobilization is absent.
Community-based organizations
in communities of color must return to their original mission
on behalf of
social justice, advocacy, and political mobilization of residents.
This call, for greater emphasis on civic and
political mobilization on the part of smaller, community based
nonprofits, is consistent with political
and economic developments today. As the concentration of wealth
spirals upward, and government seeks to distance itself from
safety-net activities, the collective political voice of neighborhood-based
nonprofits becomes crucial for representing the needs of residents
and local communities.
At one end of the
spectrum of the overall nonprofit world are institutions with
hundreds
of employees, millions
of dollars in revenue, and millions of dollars in operating
expenditures, and in some cases, endowments worth billions
of dollars. At the other end, there are the small nonprofits
with staffs of a few people, and budgets and operating expenditures
that primarily are based on yearly foundation grants. The
latter sector is also distinguished from the "biggies" in
that they tend to have community roots where they operate. The
organizations were founded by community residents, and they
have become part of the social fabric of the local neighborhood.
Community-based nonprofits assist in making impoverished
and working-class residents and citizens aware of important
benefits that can
improve their living conditions. Community-based nonprofits
can inform government and foundations as to what are the immediate
and changing needs in specific communities. Nonprofits make
the program connections between the availability of social
welfare and outreach and accessibility. They are the implementors
of the missions of foundations, and therefore vital to the
work of this sector. These organizations have the capacity,
sometimes missing in government and the private sector, to “explain” policy and related services
in ways that are culturally, socially, and linguistically resonant
with
the target population.
The impact of smaller nonprofits has not been widely
documented. Except for a few select
examples, the general public does not have a good understanding
of how
local living conditions in low-income and impoverished neighborhoods
are intertwined with the fate of the smaller nonprofits. Despite
an important role in low-income neighborhoods, this sector
does not have the resources or revenue to promote their services
and image on a larger scale, as is the case with much bigger
nonprofits.
In spite of this limitation, community-based
nonprofits working in low-income and impoverished urban areas,
have provided voice to residents and have helped to challenge
public policies and corporate practices that exploit residents
and local workers. These kinds of organizations have helped
to build and strengthen neighborhoods. Collectively, this
sector of nonprofits represent a critical component of society’s
safety-net. Nonprofits play an important, though at times
unrecognized, economic role in many communities. In low-income
and working-class urban neighborhoods, these kinds of nonprofits
assist local and small businesses, build and rehabilitate physical
infrastructure, employ and train many workers, and provide
access to educational and economic opportunities. A number
of studies document the considerable economic contributions
of community-based nonprofits. This is ironic in that many
of these organizations are financially strapped.
The sector, as does its much larger counterparts
such as hospitals, universities, and national organizations,
raises
and expends
hundreds of millions of dollars every year on health , education,
housing, recreation, the environment, the arts, and other areas. But
they tend to have a more focused and concentrated effect in
some communities, as local spenders. As local entities, they
contribute, along with businesses, to the community, by spending
money and increasing disposable income by paying wages, rents
and fees. There are literally thousands of people employed
by this sector. Community-based organizations help to make
neighborhoods more livable and attractive to businesses and
have become a channel for the employment of disadvantaged workers,
women, and people of color.
In earlier periods, these kinds of organizations also
focused on the mobilization of residents interested in pursuing
social
and economic justice for their neighborhoods. They provided
political voice to residents, and demanded resources and services
for the neighborhood. Given this kind of history and impact,
why have community-based organizations seem to have weakened
over a period of time, and more importantly, how can this sector
be revitalized, in order to carry a greater and more effective
civic and political voice for social justice on behalf of eighborhoods?
In spite of important accomplishments
in improving living conditions and providing services in urban
areas, today,
this sector faces challenges that undermine the capacity of
smaller nonprofits. Neighborhood organizations have experienced
significant reductions in resources while the demand for services
has increased. In some cases, funders of these organizations,
including foundations and corporate philanthropists, are now
demanding a greater return on their "investments" which
are made in the form of grants. Increasingly, this demand
is taking the form of seeking measurable outcomes – within very short
time frames. Unless they meet these new standards, neighborhood-based
nonprofits are being encouraged to close, or to merge with
larger, (though not necessarily more efficient or effective)
nonprofits. In other instances, smaller nonprofits are losing
access to federal assistance that is being re-directed to large
universities and giant nonprofits. Under these circumstances, it becomes difficult for individual neighborhood-based nonprofits
to focus on their traditional community-building and organizing
roles.
Devolution,
the shift of governmental responsibilities from the federal
level to the states, economic transformations, changing demography,
and the continually spiraling of the concentration of wealth,
are producing fiscal stress for this sector. Further, calls
for utilization of faith-based organizations and free-market
approaches in the delivery of public services affect community-based
organizations, as they pursue their missions to help people
at the neighborhood level. Community-based
nonprofits must carry out their missions within a context of
fiscal cutbacks, environmental emergencies and disasters on
the local, national and international levels, political uncertainties,
widening income gaps and inequality, increasing skills gaps,
increasing technology and infrastructure gaps, and increasing
needs for services. And they endeavor to carry out their missions
while government is scaling back and some foundation spokespersons
are presuming that bigger nonprofits are naturally better.
Additionally, foundation
and corporate spokespersons have raised criticisms about the
impact, or lack thereof, of
community-based
nonprofit services on social and economic problems. Nonprofits
are perceived by some of these people as lax in pursuing and
adopting organizational efficiencies to reduce repetition or
duplication of services. There are concerns about redundancy
as a consequence of rapid growth of this overall sector, and
whining complaints about the degree of dependency of nonprofits
on state government and foundation funding.
For example, in one recent guest column appearing in the Boston
Globe, entitled, Too many do-gooders (May 3,
2007), Kevin Phelan and Chad Gifford ponder that “…we have
an expansion of agencies at a time when the number of corporate
donors continues to shrink. Of course, this comes when the
needs have never been greater. The solution is that Boston
must create a new paradigm with interested and strong-willed
civic leadership willing to examine the duplication of services. Leaders
such as the United Way, The Boston Foundation, the Greater
Boston Chamber of Commerce, and small groups of others from
the profit and nonprofit world must convene and examine the
number of agencies that can be the framework of this vital
service component. Obviously any commission must involve
political leaders, who are familiar with the problems and
challenges that exist.” They add, “Wouldn’t it be great
if a university volunteered to tackle this project?”
The call for this kind of civic dialogue not only
tends to weaken neighborhood organizations in low-income places,
but also mutes
the civic and political voices of residents in these same places.
The call here is essentially a top-down dialogue, based on
the presumption that there are too many do-gooders. This is
interesting, in light of the statement made by these authors
to wit, “…when the needs have never been greater.” How can
there be too many do-gooders in this context, a context that
reflects persistent and greater poverty and economic distress
at a time when wealth continues to be amassed by lesser and
lesser numbers of people? This is the wrong paradigm and
it will not work or lead to the improvement of living conditions
for people in our low-income neighborhoods.
Strategic Collaboration: A Civic
and Political Tool for Neighborhood-based Nonprofits
In a forthcoming article, Community Based
Nonprofits in U.S. Inner Cities, James Jennings and
Ricardo Torres propose a mechanism, “structural collaboration,” that
can represent a way for enhancing the collective civic voice
of community-based nonprofits, and thereby help to enhance
their effectiveness and impact on social conditions. A
few successful individual nonprofits are not enough to ensure the organizational health and vibrancy
of this sector, or more importantly, the well-being of residents
in impoverished neighborhoods – places that reflect disinvestment
on the part of government, and exploitation by powerful corporate
interests. Individual nonprofits in local areas will have
to reflect greater strategic collaboration, advocacy and
mobilization, on behalf of neighborhood interests, in order
to effect positive change. This framework can facilitate
the strengthening of community voices in civic dialogues
about the future of smaller nonprofits, encourage foundations
to reflect qualitative and comprehensive input from community
organizations about what a community agenda should look like
and entail and provide a venue for considering time frames
for understanding and assessing social change.
The leadership of
community-based nonprofits and local residents must consider
how to raise and
mobilize
a collective civic voice in order to change political and economic
transformations that point to lesser resources and greater
demands upon this sector. This is essential, so that residents
can have some input regarding strategies for improving living
conditions in the places they live and work. This is not to
discourage greater attention to the issue of accountability
and impact, but the essentially corporate-based, top-down managerial
call for performance measures, or showing impact, or the reduction
of duplication, or the sharing of costs and resources is a
paradigm divorced from attention to structural inequalities. Organizational
effectiveness in becoming more accountable and being able to
measure impact should not be divorced from the continual need
to strengthen the collective political and economic muscle
of low-income people in addressing social justice issues. Not
doing this, means that the discussion of accountability and
standards will be dominated by corporate interests that can
represent agendas inimical to the well-being of poor and working-class
people, and their neighborhoods.
The pursuit of organizational initiatives to
improve efficiency and effectiveness is important but this
discourse must move beyond simply sharing costs for printing or cutesy ways
for raising more donations. A collective and consistent
civic voice, expressing concerns about challenges facing economically
distressed
neighborhoods, and led by the representative voices of neighborhood-based
nonprofits, can emerge as a key political tool in some places. Collaborative
networks of smaller, community-based nonprofits can develop
civic and political voices that are now invisible in policy
debates and many civic forums and dialogues.
Programmatic, rather
than strategic collaboration between nonprofits, can include
a range of efforts
aimed at
generating organizational efficiencies and improvement in the
delivery of services. Strategic collaboration includes
actions on the part of nonprofits to create or identify collective
impact on a community challenge or problem. It includes
planning and actions to create, identify or advocate on behalf
of community-wide interests and agendum for improving local
living conditions. This means that community-based organizations
in inner cities, interested in increasing the economic well-being
of neighborhoods, must re-organize themselves into collaborative,
and essentially, political entities. It is the only way this
sector can continue its work to improve living conditions at
the local level. It is the only way the current relationship
of recipiency with foundations will change. This call, by
the way, does not violate any laws or regulations pertaining
to activities on the part of nonprofits. The leadership of
community-based organizations must not forget that they can
talk with each other, and plan with each other. This does not
violate anything.
Neighborhood or place-based strategic collaboration
should be supported by community-based organizations because
it is a way to enhance
the sector’s collective political, economic, and civic roles. Sometimes
there are too many voices that are having individual conversations
with foundations and state government. And, while solo nonprofits
may enjoy strong reputations with foundations and state government,
it is a framework of strategic collaboration that will mean
more resources, and a greater level of equitable distribution
of such, for low-income and impoverished people. It will be
easier for nonprofits to be creative, entrepreneurial, and
bold in their approaches if they begin to think and act more
collectively in a civic and political sense.
Under the current period of globalization and neoliberalism,
terms like "strategic philanthropy", "social ventures" and "social
entrepreneurship" have emerged as a way to assess – and
control - the work of community-based nonprofits. Strategic
philanthropy suggests, in part, that foundations and
corporations become more investment-oriented and targeted in
how they work with nonprofits. Implicit in this call is the
belief that approaching grant-making as an investment creates
value. Social venturing involves the tapping of donors
to use investment strategies to support socially worthy and
efficient enterprises. Under this framework, organizations
seek to pool resources of philanthropists and donors in order
to invest in nonprofit organizations. But this approach does
not involve merely providing a grant. A relationship is established
between the venture firm and the nonprofit that allows the
former to share its organizational expertise. These initiatives
seem reasonable from a "purely rationalist" point
of view, but how will it really resolve problems associated
with inequality and a history of neighborhood disinvestments? These
ideas can be applied in a Darwinian manner, where only the "strongest
survive." Interestingly, terms like "strong" and "lean and
mean," in the nonprofit sector, usually indicates who
is raising the most money, rather than which organizations
are improving living conditions for impoverished and low-income
groups. Whether or not these "successful" nonprofits
are reducing structural inequalities in society seems irrelevant
to some representatives of corporate and foundation sectors.
Too easily, urgings for greater efficiency and impact
presume that the social and economic problems facing low-income
neighborhoods
and impoverished residents are merely managerial issues. That
is, a tighter-run organization, with enlightened and tough
leadership, can make a difference. One can only stand back
in awe at the implication that problems based in structural
inequalities, such as joblessness, poverty, poor schooling,
poor housing and homelessness, can be resolved by insisting – simplistically
- that community-based organizations become more efficient,
lean and mean.
Equally illogical and harmful is how certain foundations
decide what should be funded, how it should be funded, and
how the
funding should be evaluated, without qualitative input from
community-based organizations. Encouraging community-building
activities that are planned collaboratively and strategically
to establish community-wide agendum can discourage faddist-driven
grant-making. There should be concern that some foundations
seem more supportive of what they find exciting or avant-garde, rather than what nonprofits and community
groups might consider important.
Some now believe that competition among nonprofits,
rather than collaboration, can increase organizational efficiencies
of
smaller nonprofits in urban communities. Presumedly, this
will occur because individual organizations will be forced
to work harder and more effectively, lest they are closed or
eliminated. The call for more competition in the latter sense
does not come without a price or concerns. First, this call
is not applied equally across the nonprofit spectrum. It is
a call that can actually weaken the position of the smaller
nonprofits vis-à-vis the biggies, who might have institutional
agendum inimical to neighborhood interests. The effects of
competition will be skewed in favor of the biggies. Competition,
as a policy tool, will hurt smaller nonprofits while not addressing
incompetence or ineffectiveness on the part of larger nonprofits,
since the larger nonprofits have more resources to resist proposed
changes or scrutiny. Here, again, without a strong political
and collective voice, a framework based on competition places
the smaller and community-based nonprofits at a great disadvantage
compared with the much bigger nonprofits.
Conclusion
Nonprofits require a mechanism that will allow organizations
to share ideas and pursue and implement a framework of strategic
collaboration on behalf of neighborhood-wide interests. The
establishment of nonprofit consortia, in local neighborhoods,
can result in enhancing the collective civic and political
influence of smaller and community-based nonprofits and increase
possibilities of collaboration in terms of programs and services.
Nonprofits should consider formal consortia that encourage
common risk-taking within neighborhood-based zones. Of course,
nonprofits should establish geographically-based consortia
for increasing efficiencies but the more important reason is
to increase collective civic – and political - clout. Advantages
to nonprofit consortia could include more effective communication
and exchange of information about community concerns, better
understanding of how to utilize resources to trigger positive
community changes, help to create best practices in the delivery
of services and, show impact more clearly and effectively. Civic
and political consortia can also become a response to the broad
challenges facing smaller nonprofits and a way for the sector
to have voice in the rising call for accountability.
Accomplishing
this will be initially very difficult, since there is a range
of organizational, turf, cultural, philosophical and
fiscal issues that obstruct moving in this direction. It will
also be resisted by interests who are threatened by the political
potential of community-based nonprofits working together on
civic and political agendum. But there is one thing that immediately
provides a basis for collaboration: deteriorating living conditions
in the communities being served. Improving living conditions
for all residents is an idea that can be the glue for collaborative
and community-wide agendum. Collaborative and geographic
networks of community-based organizations in economically neglected
neighborhoods can provide space and encourage greater civic
involvement and participation in discourses focusing on social
justice. Collaborative networks of community-based organizations
can help to mold and legitimize community-wide agendum to address
economic challenges and expectations about the role of the
private sector and foundations in helping to resolve these
challenges. Only in this way will the smaller, community-based
nonprofits survive and be able to continue providing services
and resources to clients, while continuing with missions aimed
at building vibrant and healthy neighborhoods for all people.
BC Editorial
Board member James Jennings, PhD is a professor of urban and
environmental policy and planning at Tufts University.
Ricardo Torres is the founder and CEO of Venture~Preneur Consulting
(VPC) – a
management and strategy consulting firm.
Click
here to contact Dr. Jennings and Mr. Torres.