Tag Archives: nonprofit organizations

Organization Culture, Advocacy, and “Free Spaces”

Posted on April 30, 2012 by | 4 Comments

These days, I have the luxury of existing somewhat apart from an organizational culture. As a consultant, I get to swoop in, sometimes, knowing that my mere presence will shake things up for the organization’s traditional way of operating, and that, within that dynamic, there are new opportunities for change.

I also get to observe different organizational cultures, which is a very valuable experience. I can often get a quick ‘feel’ that a particular organization is, for example, particularly receptive to an advocacy orientation, or especially concerned about appearances and protocol. In one organization I’ve done some work with, they even started a Transformation Council, to specifically look at how the organization itself needs to change, in order to more fully live its mission. The formation of that council, in turn, has created momentum for change, which is embedding itself now within the organization’s culture (in a way that openness to change begets more openness to change).

Since much of my work involves helping nonprofit social service organizations integrate advocacy and social change work into their direct service provision, I’ve been thinking about the role of organizational culture in helping institutions make this shift, and about how to use organizational culture as a lever for the kinds of alignments and redirections necessary for the organization to take on this advocacy function as a complement to their services.

As quoted in Switch, “organizational culture isn’t just part of the game; it is the game”, and I find that that’s no where more true than in trying to get an entrenched organization, and, more importantly, the stakeholders who are entrenched within it, to embrace a new way of seeing those they serve (as co-creators of social change), their services (as bridges to fundamental social transformation), their staff (as catalysts for empowering advocacy), and their organizations (as resources to be leveraged in pursuit of social justice).

Review of case studies of organizations that successfully tackle change find an important practice in common: the existence of small-scale gatherings where like-minded individuals can exchange ideas without surveillance from opposition, including internal opposition. These gatherings allow people to gain strength in unity, somewhat set apart, until they are ready to engage more openly. Applying what social workers know about groups, that’s how cohesion, and the norms that accompany it, set in, so that, in this case, before there is an effort to unleash the new ideas on the larger entity–the organization–they have rooted themselves within a part of it, demonstrating, of course, in the process, that the sky will not fall down.

Understanding the critical role of these ‘free spaces’ within organizations, and the role they play in successful organizational culture shifts, doesn’t necessarily tell us how to build them. Or, perhaps more accurately, how to permit them to grow, since there’s a certainly organic element implied. They are in some ways like the learning circles used in the Building Movement Project’s model, except that, here, there’s a greater willingness to let only those staff members enthused about social change cluster together initially. In some ways, because of the appearance of distance from the rest of the organizational apparatus, they have a sort of ‘cell’ quality, which means that organizations, and these actors within them, will have to get at least a little comfortable with tolerating some dissent and division on the road to a larger purpose.

Have you been part of a ‘free space’ within an organization? What did it look like and how did it function? Organizational leaders, what do you do to cultivate this learning circle approach, and what within your organizational culture supports or resists those efforts? And social service agency change agents, when have you attempted organizational transformation without the benefit of this ‘incubator’? How do you think it might have made a difference?

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Maybe SMART goals really aren’t

Posted on April 24, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Note: I’m going to get (briefly) a little ‘churchy’ here.

I was on a church committee once where there was a lot of frustration with the pastor, who had submitted a budget request that many church members felt was significantly beyond the church’s fiscal capacity. Several committee members expressed some iteration of the “it’s just not realistic” or “we have to live within our means” arguments, especially upset that she had recommended a huge increase in our local and international mission giving.

She listened and then said, “Ours is not a God confined to the realm of the feasible.”

I’ve always wanted to be able to command silence like that.

Back in the secular world, we have this same problem, right? A continual battle between what we think we can really do (truth be told: what we think we can really do without too much trouble) and what we know must be done.

We have this in our own practice, when we downgrade client goals a bit because what they aspire to just “doesn’t seem that likely.” We have it in our organizations, where we laboriously craft strategic plans that are all based on whether our goals are really measurable and attainable, even when what we know we need is a messy and improbable revolution.

And we forget.

We forget that we’ll never reach what we’re not reaching for.

We forget that we’re likely capable of things far larger than what our constrained (and strained) minds can imagine today.

We forget that we need aspiration for our motivation, and that no one ever changed the world without trying really, really hard.

Maybe those SMART goals that strategic planners like so much have their place. When everyone agrees on what the end game should be, and it’s something that’s a rather technical fix, instead of a struggle of ideas and ideals, then making sure that we all know who’s doing what, and when, and how we’re going to check that it’s done is a good thing.

But when what we really need is far from attainable at this moment, then what we need are goals that speak to people’s hearts, not their cautious minds. We need outlandish, wild, terrifically powerful goals that create vivid pictures in people’s minds about the world as it should be…because those are the kinds of goals that people will sacrifice and risk for.

We need goals that are intentionally unreasonable: end poverty, eradicate racism, cure cancer, prevent child abuse. It’s not about willfully disregarding the context in which these struggles will take place. We still need to know what we’re up against. It’s about building a vision that, while unrealistic, presents a compelling alternative around which people can rally.

Because reality is part of the problem.

So refusing to play by reality’s rules may not be SMART.

But it’s smart.

Because today’s dream is tomorrow’s fight is the next day’s victory.

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2010 Turnout Gaps: Our Marching Orders for the 2012 Elections

Posted on April 5, 2012 by | 4 Comments

Yes, I am haunted by voter turnout statistics.

And you should be, too.

Because this report from Nonprofit Vote has some fairly alarming data about what happened to voter turnout in 2010, particularly compared to 2008.

All of which matters tremendously for 2012.

And these figures should serve as a challenge for nonprofit organizations, because we are uniquely positioned to move the needle on these particular populations’ voter turnout.

And so we must.

Some of the “highlights”:

  • Only 24% of youth (ages 18-29) turned out in 2010, a sharp drop from 51.1% in 2008. When so much is at stake for future generations–the state of the economy, the future of entitlements, the availability of higher education, the likelihood of future foreign conflicts–allowing these decisions to be made, essentially, with only marginal input from those most affected is unconscionable.
  • There was a 20 point turnout gap between members of lower income and higher income households. Nonprofit organizations have strong relationships in many low-income communities, and significant presence as institutions shaping their lives. If we want to be a true, vibrant democracy, we’ve got to do better than this.
  • Only 35% of those with a high school diploma or less turned out in 2010, compared to 61% of those with a college degree or more. We will end up with policies that only work for those highly-educated, if only those who have been so advantaged are writing the rules.
  • There was a 34 point turnout gap between individuals who had resided in their home for less than a year (28%) and those who had resided in their home for at least 5 years (62%). Because this is often a proxy for both age and income, and because mobility is associated with some technical difficulties in actually registering and voting, we should make it a priority to reach out to those who are new in our communities, and to pursuing public policies (same-day registration, anyone?) that remove barriers to voter participation for these more mobile citizens.

There’s nothing magic, or even all that shocking, about these statistics; we know that those who are marginally connected to our political life 364 days a year–separated from the policies’ development, although certainly not from their impact–do not magically connect on Election Day.

But these statistics should be alarming to us, both because of what they represent about the failings of our representational system, and because nonprofit organizations need our constituents, including those who fall into the categories above, to participate in the electoral system if we hope that it will ultimately reflect our concerns.

So, I see these data as a to-do list. We know who we need to target for voter registration and Get-Out-the-Vote work, and we even have some benchmarks that can guide our definition of what “success” looks like.

Let’s produce some different figures in 2012.

And close the gaps.

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We have to start by claiming our failures

Posted on March 18, 2012 by | Leave a comment

There is growing recognition, I think, of the importance of owning our failures—in advocacy and in life—so that we can learn from failings (ours, which is a sort of eternal life lesson, and, increasingly, those of others, too, through shared learning opportunities that have taken some of the ‘sting’ out of failure). We should celebrate the liberating power of being comfortable with failure, of even rushing to it, in pursuit of the victories that we know can and often do follow in its wake.

Certainly nonprofit advocates are not immune from this imperative to acknowledge, analyze, and even disseminate our failures; we can do more, certainly, through the deployment of systematic advocacy evaluation efforts, but I see a trend of reducing stigma around failure, and it’s one that I think will benefit us in the future.

But there’s an extension of this idea that is harder, I believe, for nonprofit advocates to embrace. It’s even more central to our advocacy success. And we’ve got to put it out there together, because it’s too much to ask any one organization, or even any one sector, to go out on a limb.

So here it is.

To fully transform our nonprofit social service organizations into effective advocacy forces, and to make the strongest case possible for the policy changes that those we serve so desperately need, we have to admit the truth:

Our services, our programs, our intense direct services, are failing.

Yes, I know; that sounds brutal.

And of course I don’t mean that there isn’t tremendous value in what nonprofit social service organizations do every day—feeding people who are hungry, mentoring kids at risk, helping people free themselves from addictions, training people for better-paying jobs. There obviously is.

That work meets people where they are, provides hope, helps people survive to fight the larger structures that create and perpetuate need. It is noble work, and it lifts my own soul and has the potential to transform individual lives.

But, measured against the scope and scale of the problems we face, it’s failing.

We’re working smarter, and working harder, and bringing more and more bright and talented individuals around to the ‘social sector’, and yet we haven’t moved the needle on very many of the most critical challenges that face our world. And the answer isn’t more services, or even more money for those services.

It’s changing the systems that create the problems in the first place. It’s addressing the root causes that make poverty and oppression and tragedy routine and predictable and crushingly continual. It’s removing the fuel instead of always putting out fires.
And it means that we have to acknowledge that, on its own, our services aren’t going to win the day. Which is a tough lift for nonprofit organizations that are, now more than ever (and not unrelated, obviously, to these structural issues) competing with each other for funding and trying to prove to donors that they have the answer. We absolutely should be measuring the impact of our services, because they’re certainly not all created equal. And goals of program accountability are not at all incompatible with this larger need to give up the charade of adequacy—we have to stop pretending that we can ever program our way to justice.

We have to stop for ourselves, because there’s no easier way to drive oneself crazy within a social service system. We have to stop for our clients, because how disempowering is it to think that you must be the only one whose problems aren’t being eradicated by this excellent case management or fantastic after-school program.

And we have to stop for our public policies, because we can’t be our best advocates if we’re simultaneously trying to convince policymakers that we’ve got everything taken care of.

I think we can start small, really. What if, in our annual reports where we highlight our programmatic successes, we included a column dedicated to the policy changes that would make next year’s annual report radically different? What if we added language about “ending homelessness” or “eliminating racism” to our mission statements, the way some organizations have done? What if we added “but our services can’t solve all these problems” to our agency brochures, or added an appeal to advocacy in every volunteer orientation?

It won’t be easy, but we can win.

We just have to first acknowledge that we’re losing.

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Mission-driven, Committed to Clients…and we VOTE

Posted on February 16, 2012 by | Leave a comment


Which one is a nonprofit employee?

My day with Robert Egger last fall prompted some new thinking, and reading, about nonprofit civic engagement. Where I have long helped nonprofit organizations to unleash the civic participation potential of those they serve, through client-based voter registration and Get-Out-the-Vote activities, I realize now that I had largely overlooked the employees of nonprofit organizations as a powerful electoral force themselves.

Not anymore.

One of Robert Egger’s new projects, as he described it, is to mobilize nonprofit employees for advocacy and social change, independent of the organizations they serve, as those organizations are often difficult, especially in the short term, to pivot to this transformational work. And we face urgent challenges, not necessarily amenable to a long revisioning of the nonprofit sector.

I’m still committed to harnessing the resources–financial, reputational, human–of nonprofit social service agencies, to build a strong and sustainable movement for social justice.

And I think that that’s compatible with efforts to help nonprofit employees integrate their work lives with their whole selves, to become part of something larger than their own work contexts, and to, collectively, create the “army” of social change advocates that we need…today.

A big piece of that, I think, that can be immediate and tangible and, if we are careful with messaging and organizing, a first step towards the kind of engagement we want to see, is leveraging nonprofit employees as electoral agents.

We start from a strong position here: there’s evidence that nonprofit employees vote more regularly than the rest of the public. That means that, if we can organize so that they are voting from the values of the missions that their work supports, and from the knowledge that they accumulate every day that they’re working for the public good–in the arts, education, health, and, especially for our interests, social services, then we will see a much larger and more active “pro-justice” electorate, the kind we need in order to elect public officials who will be our partners in reshaping the policy landscape.

So what will it take to help our employees claim and exercise their civic power? To do so as individuals, in their own capacities, and yet motivated by the same mission that drives them every day (and, OK, some evenings and weekends) in their work?

What we have to do, I believe, between now and November, to lay the foundation for this “nonprofit employee voter brigade”, includes:

  • Talk with our employees about elections, and about electoral issues–of course we have an obligation to be nonpartisan, and that’s not just the legal thing to do, but it’s the smart thing, too; our employees need safe spaces in which to talk about the connection between their politics (the issues they care about) and Politics (the election cycle that we sometimes want to avoid)
  • Remove barriers to electoral participation–this means giving people time off work to vote, and providing registration materials at work, and answering people’s questions about the electoral process
  • Transform our organizations into forces for social change, because working in a climate that focuses on root causes and encourages people to ask “why?” over and over again will push people to think about the kinds of structural challenges we face together
  • Empower and recognize individuals, because people who are empowered to see that they can make a difference, especially when they unite with others, will be able to transfer those lessons, and that inspiration, to the electoral context, too
  • Help non-citizen employees become citizens, by providing tutoring on the civics exam, free legal advice, and even scholarships for the naturalization fee

For many nonprofit employees, our jobs are callings. We live our missions every day at work, and we bring them home with us at night, too.

And we can take them into the voting booth.

And we should.

Because when we do, we will be a force with which to be reckoned.

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Stuff I Love

Posted on February 14, 2012 by | Leave a comment

It’s Valentine’s Day.

And, you know, I’ll admit that it’s not much of a holiday around here–we fall into the “it’s a commercialized ploy that doesn’t capture our feelings for each other” camp.

But, perhaps in an effort to demonstrate that I, too, can pour forth my feelings on February 14th, here is some stuff I totally love.

What are you loving this Valentine’s Day?

There’s a lot of love to go around, folks.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Finding our Voices

Posted on February 13, 2012 by | Leave a comment

I was talking with a group of nonprofit CEOs the other day, about advocacy (of course) and our collective responsibility to stand up and speak out on the issues that affect those we serve. I pointed out that there are some systemic issues that affect nonprofits as a sector and that, sometimes, starting to come together around those issues–foremost in my mind, of course, is the revenue foundation–can help to overcome our silos and bridge the divisions that often keep us quiet.

And then one of the executives said, with more dismay than disdain, “that sounds like nonprofits would become just another special interest.”

That reminded me of some of my conversation with Robert Egger last fall, when he talked about the kinds of advocacy, and the kinds of sector organizing, that it will take for nonprofits to find their voices without (seriously in quotes) “becoming just another special interest.”

Does he think of everything, or what?

At the time, that statement mostly rolled right off me, in part because I don’t see anything that wrong with special interests, per se–I’m only concerned when the interests that are being represented are not aligned with my values of social work justice.

But hearing the worry echoed by this executive made me think about how, from a strategic perspective, bringing something qualitatively different to the table, beyond what an industry or trade group might do, is really essential.

Those of us working to exhort nonprofits to make a bolder play for political power have a responsibility not to screw this up big-time.

Because our greatest assets in the advocacy arena–the stories of those we serve, our reputations and public trust, and the perception that we are, in fact, somewhat above the fray–can easily be sullied the moment we enter the struggle.

That’s often used as an excuse, and it shouldn’t be. What good, after all, is having some really good ammunition if we never fire our collective weapon? Why do we care how much latent political power we potentially hold, if we never even test it?

What good is it doing anyone on the shelf?

But it is right for us to be sure, as we consider the kinds of coalitions we build and the types of battles we choose, that we’re spending our capital wisely.

We should be clear about what we want to say, as we begin to find our voices.

On the one hand, that’s pretty easy; if we’re fixated on our vision of the world as it should be and solidly rooted in our values, we should not be tempted to go for the low-hanging fruit or to seize what we can on our way out the door.

The goods for which we aim can only be secured with long and principled and careful engagement.

But it’s obviously not always so clear, what’s right and what’s best. The recent debate over tax reforms makes that clear, with most nonprofits alarmed by proposals to somewhat limit charitable deductions, as part of an overall effort to ensure that higher earners pay a greater share of a growing revenue “pie”. (It’s clear where I come out on this.) The nonprofits rushing to decry this change in the structure as a direct assault on their existence aren’t bad. Or even necessarily wrong.

They’re just operating in much the same way that other special interests do, by looking out for their own.

And, so, as we seek to have a greater impact on policymaking, and to raise our voices on the greatest issues of our day, we must do so with a constant humility, an awareness that, in many ways, we are not so different from the other contenders, and that our difference can only be preserved by a distinguishing vigilance.

Because our interests really are special, and they deserve allies equal to their task.

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The Power of One

Posted on January 30, 2012 by | Leave a comment

One fairly influential individual

There are a lot of sort of pop psychology, bumper sticker motivationals out there about the difference that one individual can make…they all sort of run together for me, but you know what I mean, right?

Probably the best known is attributed to Helen Keller, “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”

Beautiful, right? And capable of making me feel guilty when I’m, say, on my way to the fabric store instead of a rally.

The belief in the power of the individual is very much rooted in our culture, but much less frequently seen in how we build capacity for advocacy and social change.

Bet you never thought about that while stopped behind someone at a red light, hunh?

See, when it comes to how we invest in building power to make a difference, we tend to focus almost exclusively on networks of people, on the connections that bind us together, and on how we create structures that leverage those relationships for power.

Sure, it’s obvious that no social movements are the sole work of any individual, even those that are commonly associated with one. But isn’t it also just as true that single individuals do, perhaps not as often as we would wish, change the course of history in amazing ways?

So why is the organization, or the community, most often our focal unit, when we think about what we need to develop in order to reach our goals? Why do we sometimes sort of gloss over the individuals who populate those entities, as though they are somehow replaceable, even when history so clearly teaches us otherwise?

I’ve been particularly thinking about this over the past couple of weeks because of the work that I do with The Sunflower Foundation and its Advocacy Fellows initiative. The initiative is somewhat distinct, particularly in the philanthropic world, because it revolves around advocacy, specifically, rather than a more diffuse sense of nonprofit leadership, and yet, unlike many other advocacy capacity-building efforts, individual advocates are clearly the emphasis.

The theory of change animating the Advocacy Fellowship is this: “the Sunflower Foundation believes that increasing the number of nonprofit health leaders who advocate on behalf of their constituents informs public policy and leads to real solutions for those in need. By becoming involved in advocacy, nonprofit leaders are advancing their causes, building public trust, and helping the people they serve.”

Notably missing, then, is discussion about the organizations in which these individuals work (indeed, they fairly frequently move organizations during the Fellowship or quickly following it) or about the sector as a whole. Instead, the idea is to find promising people, who happen to be working in nonprofit health organizations, and to work intensively with them to develop the knowledge, skills, and, yes, relationships they need to be effective advocates themselves. They are the ones held accountable for moving their work forward, and they are seen as the keys to advancing a vision of a healthy Kansas.

We’re still very much in the early stages of evaluation, but the indications at this point are, really, that the model works–that, no, their organizations do not necessarily greatly increase their advocacy capacity, but they as individuals do, and that that makes a difference. They are quoted more frequently in media accounts of related policy debates, they engage in those debates more often and with more influence, they are more respected by a larger circle of potential targets and allies, and they are increasingly sophisticated and outspoken in their advocacy.

It’s a bit of a gamble, this business of investing in individuals. We feel safer, sometimes, with organizations, because of the law of averages, but those same “averaging” tendencies can dilute and stall the radical message we want to convey: that, in the end, justice hinges on you (and me).

Here’s to sparking movements, one soul at a time.

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When we fall into the same old traps…

Posted on January 10, 2012 by | Leave a comment

In this second post for Organizational Transformation week, here at Classroom to Capitol, I’m tackling an ugly reality of nonprofit social service work and, in the interest of full disclosure, my parenting, sometimes, too.

Because the truth is, sometimes the ways in which we interact with those we serve (or parent) serve to replicate the same power imbalances against which we rail, when we view them on the “outside”.

You’ve seen it, no doubt:

  • Eligibility rules that are ambiguous and seemingly arbitrary, the sort of institutional equivalent of “because I said so”
  • Organizational cultures that afford greater prestige to men, and to those higher in the hierarchy (like when we refer to the Executive Director as Mr. SoandSo but the receptionist as “Maria”)
  • Programmatic requirements that force everyone to attend the same classes, fill out the same paperwork, not because those activities actually contribute to the amelioration of the social problems that prompted a particular individual to seek services, but because that’s how people prove that they “deserve” help

    We fall into these patterns of power and oppression not because we’re bad people, of course, but because we’re people, and people tend to seek comfort in regularity and predictability and status, and those pursuits are not necessarily compatible with the promotion of maximum empowerment for those who have historically been marginalized and oppressed.

    But I promised you that this wasn’t just a post about how you should change what you do in your organizations, right? I understand that changing the way we view those with whom we work, in every way from using language like “constituents” instead of “patients” to authentically making room on decision-making bodies for the full participation of those we serve, isn’t easy.

    I understand not just because I’ve been there, as a nonprofit leader and as a consultant to the same.

    I understand because I fight the same internal battles at home, too, where parenting offers opportunities every day to choose to live power imbalances that put me purportedly on top, versus a challenge to figure out how to make our family a sort of laboratory for empowered living.
    On a daily basis, that means that I can’t change the rules without accountability, even though I’m the mom. It means that the kids’ preferences on little things matter just as much as mine, and that, even on the big stuff, I can’t disregard their views without an honest discussion and a full examination of my own rationale.

    It’s not a democracy, exactly, any more than a nonprofit organization is. That’s what people often fear when we talk about transparency and participatory governance in nonprofit organizations, but it’s more like an excuse to duck our obligations to social justice than a valid concern.

    We’re not a 1-person-1-vote family.

    We’re something more, and better, just like our organizations need to be, too.

    Because avoiding the temptation to fall into the same old bad patterns means starting from the premise that power is only as valid as the way in which we wield it, that we can’t decry the abuse of authority in others without being willing to own it in ourselves, and that our relationships will be stronger when they are based on a presumption of equity than when reinforced through hierarchy alone.

    Ultimately, turning our organizations inside out like this should make us stronger advocates externally, too, because we’ll gain an empathy for those targets against whom we’re arrayed when we understand the universality of the temptation to oppress, at least in subtle ways. It also restores some of our moral authority and reduces our vulnerability to charges that “you do it, too.”

    But, more immediately and much more importantly, it will turn our organizations into places where people learn how to relate fully and equally, as agents in their own rights.

    And that’s what I remind myself every time I so want to say, “because I’m the Mom.”

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    Root Causes: Keep Asking “Why?”

    Posted on January 9, 2012 by | Leave a comment

    It’s organizational transformation week on Classroom to Capitol! I can’t think of a better way to start the new year than sharing some of my thinking about how to help nonprofit social service organizations fully integrate social change activities into their work with the community of readers here.

    I’ve been working with several nonprofit organizations and individual leaders to assess their organizations’ capacities for transformative social change, in pursuit of their visions of social justice, relying heavily on the work of the rock stars at Building Movement Project (if you haven’t already downloaded their free Process Guide, please make that a 2012 resolution!). The Guide approaches social change work from a foundation of quality social services and helps nonprofit organizations engage in cycles of learning and strategy development and action and reflection, as they walk a continuum from status quo-reinforcing to truly revolutionary power-building.

    This process begins (and ends–it’s a cycle!) with exploration of the root causes implicated in the social problems that our social programs are designed to address. Too often, our organizations’ activities are aimed at the symptoms of those problems, rather than the structural realities that perpetuate them, despite all of our best intentions. It’s not that we don’t care about the root causes, or even always that those examinations are too controversial for us to contemplate (although that can be a factor).

    Instead, I think that one of our greatest obstacles to uncovering the root causes that demand our attention is that we…

    don’t think enough like 3-year-olds.

    Because, really, have you ever met an adult with the same “why, why, why?” stamina as a preschooler?

    I didn’t think so.

    The connection was made clear when I was reading The Little Engine That Could to my 3-year-old son.

    Twenty-seven times in one day.

    Every single time, he asked me (on the same exact page), “Why the black engines no help?”

    And it occurred to me, maybe on time 18 (slow, I know), that what he really wants to know is WHY someone (or, in this case, something) would ignore the pleas of another in need. He can’t understand that, and, of course, none of us should be able to. And he wasn’t satisfied with any answer I gave, because they all fell short of really explaining “why”.

    And that commitment to “why?” needs to underscore our organizational evolutions towards social justice orientations, too.

    WHY do racial health disparities persist? WHY are people of color more likely to be uninsured? WHY are unemployment and underemployment rates higher for some demographics? WHY are educational attainment levels different for different populations? WHY are health outcomes tied to income and other social determinants? WHY? WHY? WHY?

    It often takes peeling away many layers to see the linkages between social problems and to uncover the root social inequities that, tragically, are relatively few and achingly predictable.

    How many “whys” do you have in you?

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