New Strategies for Funding: The Ross and Ruth Downing Family Foundation believes that for too long funding for nonprofits and community programs have focused on short-term grants, which create a fragmented set of local services often not well matched to community needs and priorities. In addition, this form of funding often results in too much focus on grant-writing and too little focus on achieving measurable outcomes and transformative changes in the community. Funding mechanisms also often result in single-agency and public sector strategies rather than holistic community planning that addresses the myriad of causes behind significant social problems. As an alternative to organizations submitting traditional grants, we recommend a flexible system which includes 1) reviewing existing program evaluation results; 2) site visits–including meetings with persons served and key informants; and 3) meetings that allow for funders and organizations to mutually set of outcomes, targets, and measures–ideally as part of a collective impact model.
Holistic-Cross System Planning: While some federal agencies have made some strides toward finding comprehensive solutions to problems, e.g. the Promise Neighborhoods and the Neighborhood Revitalization programs, these efforts need to be expanded. Too often on a local level, government and nonprofit entities are planning in isolation. These systems are developing separate education, public health, behavioral health, children’s protective services, workforce development, community development, law enforcement, and juvenile justice plans. Yet, children and families interact with all these organizations/sectors and deficits in one system of services often create negative results in the outcomes for other initiatives. Instead of a comprehensive, flexible, two generational approaches to community problems, the current funding system encourages silos. Ideally, we should eventually move to a three-generational approach that examines how seniors can also become actively involved in solving community problems. In addition, all these entities work to perpetuate their own futures and offsets cannot be achieved because the monies are difficult to move. Not only are agencies/sectors completing isolated, duplicative planning processes, but too much emphasis is put on responding to grants rather than developing evaluation systems that measure community indicators and client outcomes that all systems could support.
Input from Consumers/Neighborhoods: We also believe that the persons served, including in the case of youth–their parents, need to be a critical part of the processes for planning, implementing, monitoring, governing and evaluating services. Consumers of all types need to be much more involved as the key stakeholders in determining program delivery and outcomes. Too often, the involvement of neighborhood residents, older youth, young adults, parents and other service recipients are relegated to token advisory roles. We lose critical information when we don’t seek ongoing input and consultation from neighborhood residents, parents, and youth–to name a few consumer groups.
To address these issues, the Ross and Ruth Downing Family Foundation will be meeting with organizations, community leaders, government officials and foundations to develop a series of publications that promote these changes to funding strategies.