Tag Archives: social services

Why do big tents so often fall down?

Posted on January 24, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Over the past several months, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some really committed advocates–super smart and dedicated people who are working extremely hard to protect their clients and the programs that serve them, in a climate of drastic budget cuts and an eroding social contract.

It’s soul-sucking work, and we’re losing many, many more battles than we win.

Lately, though, some of us have felt like we’re really fighting the wrong battle. Or, more accurately, battles.

It’s not just the old “divide and conquer” problem–the fact that social service advocates are vulnerable to intra-skirmishes that distract us from the real enemies and make it easier for those same opponents to play us against each other.

It’s also that we deliberately avoid taking on the real struggles, and even sometimes miss noticing them altogether, because we’re trying to contain debates that we can really only hope to dominate if we act collectively.

Here’s how it looks in real life:

In Kansas, advocates spent all last year fighting against budget cuts in different program areas–mental health, public education, child welfare, senior services. And all year, the Governor and some legislative leaders hinted that their sights were really set on a policy battle far larger and more fundamental to our state’s well-being: the revenue foundation that shores up (or doesn’t) all of those programs and far more. For the most part, they have not encountered much effectively organized opposition. From my conversations with at least some advocates, it seems that many hoped that not antagonizing the Administration on that issue would, somehow, preserve some access and influence that they could use to defend their work and serve their clients.

So, in essence, we’re sitting on the sidelines while our fates–for the next several years–are decided.

Because, of course, if the Governor and his allies are successful in eliminating the state income tax, they won’t need to legitimate their budget-slashing goals at all: there quite literally won’t be enough money to fund any of these programs, and so advocates will be fighting over crumbs.

If the failure to build a sustained, strategic, progressive coalition to take on these more global, structural issues was just a logistical one (getting people together across distance), or just jurisdictional (getting people to set aside their competition with each other), or even just a problem of capacity (people not having enough resources to take on a fight this big), then I feel like we’d know better how to start addressing it.

After all, those are the kinds of challenges that we overcome in our organizing every day.

But the real reason that building this kind of “big tent” is so hard, I think, is that too many awesome advocates think it’s a bad idea–that taking on these common concerns dilutes their influence and compromises their positions. And so we have to overcome not just inertia but entrenched resistance, and we’ve got to do it without being able to offer any guarantees that their concerns aren’t, in fact, totally well-founded: this Administration absolutely does box out those who oppose them.

But advocacy isn’t about tallying the numbers of wins v. losses.

It’s about how we can build movements that shape how people see themselves, and their worlds, and about how we can change even the debates about the policy challenges we confront. It’s about being in the arena, even if we emerge somewhat bloodied.

And so we can’t afford to sit out the really, really big fights, and we can’t presume that going it alone is ever safer.

There are some battlefields on which we just have to be willing to make a stand.

And there is solace in solidarity.

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A whole new world? Organizing for the 21st Century

Posted on February 24, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I’m hopeful that the folks at the Building Movement Project aren’t freaked out by my rather obvious obsession with their work.

I’m friendly, I promise.

I just really appreciate how they are trying to stimulate thinking, among social service practitioners as well as those more naturally oriented to organizing and social change work, about such questions as: how is community organizing changing in the 21st century, and how should it?

I wrote about their Alliance for Change report before, so I’m not going to restate any of it here, but I’ve been doing more thinking, and reading more examples, of efforts to combine organizing/social change and direct services, and that has led to some questions in my mind, that I hope might spark some discussion in this venue about how organizing and service work might look later in this century.

Let me say again, lest there be any doubt, that I think that models along the lines of what these organizations are building are absolutely integral to the success of both “traditional” service providers (because who can stand, for long, to solve the same problems over and over?) as well as community organizers (who find fundraising and membership-recruitment increasingly difficult in today’s climate).

My questions, then, are about how we make this work, not whether it’s worth it.

First, what do social work ethics say about the practice, among some of these entities, to require membership in order to receive services? I’m not automatically opposed to it, but I do think we must confront the specter of coercion, especially as we hope to challenge it elsewhere.

Second, how do we create programs to address real needs in our members’ lives (and, thus, demonstrate relevancy and build legitimacy with them) without taking necessary pressure off public entities, reinforcing, in a sense, the moves towards retrenchment and privatization?

Third, how do we promote ownership and indigenous development of programs and services without sacrificing quality? This, certainly, isn’t a dilemma unique to this blended organizing/services model, but it’s still a real one. While non-professionals can provide professional-quality services (and professionals do not always!), assuming that those who can organize can also design and administer services is a potentially dangerous leap.

Fourth, while the organizations profiled cite the use of multiple strategies as part of what sustains their members, by offering interim victories (like electoral turnout, or program development), how do we fend off potential distraction, especially away from the longer-term goals of societal transformation? Many things that nonprofit organizations can do are “shinier” than slowly changing the world.

And, finally, how do organizations become sophisticated enough to be seen as legitimate players, yet remain transparent and accountable and accessible to members? Typically, strong grassroots organizations have relied on the size of their memberships for their power, but these new hybrids have other routes to that elusive ‘seat at the table’. Can they be both things?

The questions above are in addition to those identified by the Building Movement Project and its partner organizations, around the challenges of accepting public money, avoiding turning members into clients, and building deep membership while also building alliances across divides.

Towards these ends, they’re conducting additional survey work, connecting organizations in site visits and coalitions, and seeking to advance data about this nascent field.

But I want to hear from those of you seeking to bridge the false and counterproductive divide between organizing and social services: how have you tackled any of these challenges, and which ones have you experienced that I have not even foreseen? Where do you see organizing headed in this century, and what excites and worries you about those directions? What tactics hold the most promise in this climate of new political opportunities and unheard of threats? And where are the greatest risks of failure?

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Calculated Epiphanies and Justice in Funding

Posted on June 4, 2010 by | Leave a comment

I saved my favorite of the Begging for Change posts for last; Robert Egger is one of the few nonprofit leaders I’ve ever heard be willing to speak truth to the Rockefellers of the world AND give social service organizations such a clear way to make the connection between their work and advocacy. Since justice not charity and the link between social work and social change are two of my very favorite topics, I was literally flagging almost every other page towards the end of the book.

But this will be a short post, because it’s been a long week of challenging everything we think we know about nonprofits, and it’s Friday, and, you know, there are limits. Two main takeaways:

1. Nonprofit organizations need to be consistent agitators for justice, which means not accepting funding from corporations and others who are creating a lot of the problems that these same organizations are then expected to address. Egger tells a sobering story of a graduate of the DC Central Kitchen program who gets a job in the AOL cafeteria. As the Kitchen’s Executive Director, Egger has these visions of partnerships between AOL and the Kitchen and all of the great work they can do together, until he finds out that the job only pays $8/hour despite requiring a long commute for the newly-minted graduate. It’s like Rockefeller, right? How would our society look different today if, instead of making a ton of money by exploiting natural and human resources and rewriting economic rules to enrich himself, and then donating some of the proceeds, Rockefeller had instead shaped an economy built on justice and prevention of suffering?

So here’s what I’d like to see: the next time that a social worker in a nonprofit organization is offered a grant from a corporation with a poor record of labor or human rights, instead of taking the check and serving as cover for the company’s larger misdeeds, what if the corporation was urged to set its own house in order first, as in the examples Egger provides?

2. Services aren’t enough. We need social change. Egger uses the example of Habitat for Humanity and how much more capacity the federal government, and corporate America, collectively, have to address affordable housing than the efforts of this one (even very large) nonprofit organization. He obviously gets it, that we need to cultivate our political strength and then wield it to bring about policy change. So you know I’m nodding along. And then he goes further, giving nonprofits a visual that I love–the idea of reaching decision makers’ hearts through your service work, like a Trojan Horse, and then helping them to reach the realization of their own powers to work alongside you towards a common goal. He calls this ‘calculated epiphany’, the idea of slipping into someone’s conscience to bring them along on your cause, and I think there’s a ton of truth to it.

In my own advocacy, I know that we won the most when we could first connect to lawmakers’ values around family, the story of a welcoming America, the promise of youth…and then they, often reluctantly, were forced to admit that making those values reality required policy change.

So what can be your Trojan Horses? How can you leverage your direct service work to build relationships with influential people in your community who are in a position to effect significant change? How can your organization become a place, as Egger says, where “people see the impossible made plausible”? What will you do to make lightbulbs go on…and stay on?

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In search of a one-stop shop

Posted on June 2, 2010 by | Leave a comment

This post on Begging for Change is more of a request for help than anything profound to say. Egger makes a compelling case in several points throughout the book that, rather than just bringing people into the nonprofit sector (as employees) we need to ensure that we’re producing leaders in every part of our society who are committed to the values of social justice and progressive social change, and who live those values wherever they are and whatever they do for a living. Likewise, he cites evidence and anecdotes of how people who make their service fit into their lives, rather than expecting that it will stand alone, are better servants of the common good and more joyful in their service.

And I believe both of those things, not just as a social worker and volunteer and activist, but as a mom. I don’t care if my kids grow up to be social workers or not. But it matters very, very much to me that they grow up with a keen understanding of social justice, a passion for creating a better world, and a plan for how to live that commitment every day. And, in my own life today, while I find time to serve the causes most important to me, I’m limited in my off-duty time as a mommy.

That’s why I’m always looking for volunteer opportunities I can do with my kids (okay, just my almost four-year-old; the twins are still too young to be helpful; as their brother says, “they still don’t understand”). Now, I know that a preschooler is no organization’s ideal volunteer. I get that. But, come on, I’m trying to both build on his innate sense of fairness and compassion AND carve out more time that I can spend serving your organization; can anyone help me out?

He’s already collecting money to put water filtration systems in villages in Chiapas, Mexico (he takes that job very seriously, so be ready to part with your coins if you come within shouting distance!). And he ‘volunteers’ to help our elderly neighbors (with Daddy) and to visit some people from our church.

But I’m looking for an organization where we can volunteer together, ideally with some actual contact with the people the organization serves. I want to make this connection, and help him through his questions about the process of helping. I’m trying to plant seeds, here, people, and my sector isn’t helping me out too much.

Please leave comments with suggestions, especially those of you in the Kansas City metropolitan area (but even beyond; I want ideas so that I can advocate with organizations locally to build some opportunities!).

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More stories to light our path: integrating services and advocacy

Posted on April 5, 2010 by | Leave a comment

I have a new favorite quote. So the first question for this post is, who knows how to make a bumper sticker?

“To do service work without organizing for justice is a form of paternalism. To organize for justice without having a visceral connection to the people can lead to vanity,” Scott Douglass, Greater Birmingham Ministries.

Yeah, what he said.

And the second quote, when does my job at Building Movement start?

Seriously, I took so many notes when reading this (short–I promise!) report that I nearly copied the entire thing. It’s awesome. I’m so excited.

Essentially, it is an effort to profile how organizations around the country are combining direct services and organizing, mostly starting with organizing and layering on services, kind of the “opposite” of some of Building Movement’s other work. I have actually worked with some of the organizations profiled, CASA de Maryland and PCUN, and they are really, totally cool.

Some of the highlights, with my own social work-y reflections:

  • Most of these organizations are using a membership system, with some kind of dues, to establish eligibility for services and form the power base for the organizing work. I know, social workers and paying dues, but, think about it–what better way to eradicate stigma and the whole “charity” thing within our organizations than by making the people we serve full, entitled, ‘members’? Significantly, these organizations also set aside big chunks of Board membership (sometimes the entire Board) for their members, too.
  • Integrating staff who provide these direct services (which, by the way, include transportation, adult education, tutoring, case management, legal advocacy, housing, public benefit help, and job training) and those who organize is key. Um, sound familiar? Most of the organizations accomplish this by conducting joint meetings and cross-training; they emphasize the need for “shared values and critical analysis” and highlight that organizing staff need to be rooted in people’s direct experiences just as direct staff need the political consciousness. I’ve lived that particular divide, and it can be ugly and totally counterproductive. I was thrilled to see them address it, and so ably.
  • Many of these organizations, all of which are 501(c)3s, are also forming (c)4s, so that they can do more lobbying and some, targeted electoral work. This is where we all need to be moving, I believe, especially given the January Supreme Court decision that will likely greatly escalate the corporate influence in politics.
  • While I think that there is still a need for more discussion of the potential for co-optation when organizations engaged in social change work are receiving government money for their direct services, the Building Movement folks do address the issue head on. Some of the organizations are actually becoming providers within the context of privatization, and they view this as a way of asserting control and maintaining accountability to their members. The ED of Casa de Maryland states clearly that they never organize their community around the organization’s own funding, although he also acknowledges a connection that I wish more nonprofits saw: building a strong base enhances the government’s perception of an organization’s power, which can yield increased funding in the right political climate.
  • Finally, in the best endorsement of “case to cause” that I can imagine, some of the organizations discuss their processes for using individuals’ cases as the basis for collective action or even entire organizing campaigns.

    Can you imagine if we had tons of these organizations, scaled to really move on some of the terrible injustices that our clients present to us everyday? And clients who viewed that they have a right to such action because, after all, they’re members of this place,? And organizing staff who spent the morning talking with social workers providing direct services, and social workers who won’t be in the office tomorrow because they’ll be at a mass rally with their organizer colleagues (and some of their clients)?

    Alliance for Change ends with a series of questions to guide our organizations’ evolution towards these goals, and I would LOVE to hear where any of your organizations are along this continuum, and how I can help you as you figure out how and where to move.

    With a nod to my friends at PCUN (They have their own radio station! They’re rock stars!), Sí se puede!

    Alliances For Change Report

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    Civic Engagement in Social Services

    Posted on February 22, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    In pulling together materials that highlight the integration of social services and advocacy/civic engagement, it occurred to me that I have never shared an analysis of El Centro, Inc’s work in this area through the New Voices at the Civic Table project. I found the report in my files and wanted to share it.

    I take some issue with how our work is characterized, but, in the whole, I think that this provides some good additional inspirations for social service organizations seeking to layer organizing and advocacy work into their direct practice. Our work is described as mobilization, which they define as bringing large numbers of constituents together around specific policy priorities or shared interests, which they further contrast with organizing efforts, somewhat puzzlingly defined as including the use of a structured curriculum. I obviously don’t agree that organizing = leadership training, and I further believe that some of the work was organizing; a pure mobilization effort would not have yielded the core group of leaders that animated much of our subsequent mobilization work. In the whole, I remember that the discussion revolved too much around the idea of leadership curricula for my comfort. It makes me wonder if that’s still a focus of their work.

    Still, the process of having our leaders interviewed by New Voices staff, receiving a small ($10,000, if I remember correctly–I can’t find the exact dollar amount in my files) grant to build our capacity in this area (it paid for transporting people to rallies, conducting skills trainings with leaders, hosting large community town halls, and other tangible advocacy and organizing costs), and connecting with other organizations engaged in similar work was very valuable. I wish that all social service organizations seeking to make this same ‘leap’ had that kind of support from external bodies.

    The report has some very valuable content, too, which makes me sorry that it hasn’t occurred to me to share it earlier! I like the way that they include many voices from participants (here mostly called ‘constituents’) and that they work to give shape to a sort of theory of civic engagement within the social service context. And, perhaps most valuable of all, the New Voices project was one of the first voices calling for attention to this idea that social service organizations can and should play a leading role in engaging marginalized communities in their democracy, in altering political conversations about the issues that most affect those communities, and, in the process, in reshaping the relationship between ‘server’ and ‘served’ within nonprofit human services.

    I am proud to have been a part of that effort, and it’s also instructive to look back at the report today, thinking about how El Centro’s work changed even in the several months between the publication of this report and my leaving, and also in light of what I now study and know about this larger movement towards integrating services and organizing, towards seeing that point of service as a catalyst for transformation of a more political, collective sort, and towards viewing that process as an opportunity to transform our sector at the same time.

    I’d love to hear what you think, and I’d especially appreciate hearing from anyone who’s involved in this kind of work now, regarding the state of the field today and how case studies like this are helpful (or not!).

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    Integrating Services and Organizing: A Roadmap

    Posted on August 13, 2009 by | Leave a comment

    I just finished reading this process guide for nonprofit social service organizations interested in integrating advocacy and community organizing for social change into their work. There are some weaknesses to the report that disappointed me (more to come on that), but, overall, I think it’s a helpful way of framing the idea of this transformation so as to be very accessible even to agencies that have not really begun this journey.

    It starts with their assertion, which I find very compelling, that nonprofit social service organizations are uniquely situated to promote social change: they are organized around a change mission (albeit normally on an individual, family, or group level); they have daily contact with their constituents (although usually framed as ‘clients’); and they are part of a vast social service infrastructure that, if properly mobilized, could be a major force for social change. Social workers, we need to claim those advantages and use them for justice!

    The authors lay out a six-step process–this is where I take some issue with their framework, because it lays this out fairly linearly, when I just don’t think it really happens that way, but I think that they do have, at least, the most significant phases represented (the stuff in parentheses is my interpretation): learning (issue analysis); awareness (power analysis); vision (articulating your ‘the world as it could be’ statement); strategy (building power and influence of your constituents); action (building capacity and increasing your social change work while maintaining quality service); and reflection (evaluation–I think they’re a little weak here, too, because it seems to mostly include service evaluation, instead of a radical analysis of the social change process).

    They never use the word ‘radical’ in the entire guide, but I see a lot of connection to radical social work practice: time and space to reflect on the root causes of social problems, challenging staff’s own world view; using transformative direct practice to give constituents a ‘laboratory’ for learning advocacy and organizing. The authors are explicit that the transformation from exclusively providing social services to being a force for progressive social change can be challenging, even threatening, to professional staff. They suggest that organizations analyze how staff have power over clients, a topic that I know from teaching social workers (and students) are pretty uncomfortable with, but it’s very real.

    A couple of the nuggets that I found particularly insightful were really questions the authors outlined, rather than steps in the process or advice they were giving. For example, how can organizational leaders stress root causes, and the need to work on them, without making staff feel that their work, which often revolves around the consequences of problems, is unimportant? I struggle with that some as an instructor; I never want to seem to be trivializing or dismissing micro practice, even that which lacks a radical power analysis, but I have to challenge students to think beyond that work. A piece of their discussion of evaluation was great too–we are used to asking about client satisfaction, but how often do we ask clients how important the services are to them and/or attempt to gauge their worldviews and the extent to which our analysis of the root causes of the problems they face aligns with theirs? I wonder what we’d do with that information if we collected it. There is also (in Appendix C) an assessment for organizations about where they are in this process. I’d love to hear back from some of you about where your organization falls on that continuum.

    I’ve contacted the authors because their (very) brief discussion of legislative advocacy is extremely weak. They suggest state and local colleges and OMB (Office of Management and Budget) Watch as the resources for organizations beginning to get involved in this work, and I hate to think what most nonprofit leaders, and their grassroots constituencies, would find if they really turned to those sources for this help. I’m hoping that they’ll signifcantly enhance that section of their discussion.

    I have attached the document below, and I’d love to hear from anyone who works their way through it. What would you include in a ‘how-to’ guide for organizations working their way from 100% social services to an integration of service and social change work? Where are you in this process, and what help do you need to navigate it?

    Materials:Integrating Advocacy and Social Services: A Process Guide

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    I’ve found my people–Building Movement

    Posted on July 22, 2009 by | 2 Comments

    All last week, I spent most of my children’s sleeping moments devouring these case studies of social service organizations’ efforts to integrate direct practice and community-building/advocacy/organizing/civic engagement, in pursuit of a seamless, dynamic, progressive organization that both attends to people’s concrete and immediate needs and engages them as actors in pursuit of greater community power. The report is very clear that the organizations selected are not ‘done’ in terms of resolving the myriad issues that arise in this transformation process, nor are they ‘perfect’ examples of how to negotiate these questions. They are, however, really honest and tremendously inspiring glimpses of how weaving advocacy and organizing into social service work can result in a hybrid that is a much stronger force for community/systems change and individual liberation than either a “purely” macro-level approach or an exclusively clinical/individual methodology. Building Movement, and several of the profiled organizations, see advocacy and client involvement as a continuum for organizations, with each social service agency striking its own best balance of these not-so-disparate elements.

    I want to go to work for all of them (of course!) and for the Building Movement project that profiled them, but, considering that I don’t think we’re relocating the kids anytime soon, I’ll content myself for now with delighting in this new resource (check out the materials you can download, directly from the organizations–and I’ll be uploading some more of Building Movement’s materials in the weeks to come) and communicating back and forth with these folks as I continue to explore how I can help nonprofit organizations in this area navigate these journeys.

    Here are some of my reflections on these five organizations’ stories, some of which represent some new thinking on my part and some of which reinforce my convictions, forged in several years of trying to fit advocacy and organizing into a primarily direct service organization myself.

  • Social workers and other professionals have to confront, and resolve, our discomfort with lay personnel and professional turf, given that authentic constituent engagement is an essential element in initial organizing.
  • Organizations are most successful when they can move beyond only talking about systemic issues within the context of specific action projects; service and justice work should be mutually-reinforcing, and this kind of radical micro practice connects best with where clients’ realities are.
  • Related to this, we can’t wait until people are “better” to organize. The most vibrant constituent organizing efforts alternate between direct service and grassroots leadership development, incorporating support into the work of the core organizing team, and recognizing people’s complexities and layers of strength and need. Minnesota Family and Children Services frames it this way–helping people solve their problems, helping people prevent problems (for themselves and others), and helping people change community conditions. This work happens fluidly.
  • One of the most thought-provoking quotes in the document, for me, came from a neighborhood organization in Queens whose mission statement is to “cultivate the dreams and power of the people.” Staff from that organization articulated a core challenge in this work: how can we be sure that our work does both–helps people to meet their dreams through processes that place the power firmly within their grasp? In our eagerness to help, how often do we sacrifice progress for ownership, and what are the long-term costs in how people see themselves in their communities? How do we increase our comfort with ambiguity and develop structures that not only solicit leadership but institutionalize our willingness to be driven by it?
  • On a less profound but perhaps more urgent matter, many of the organizations reflected some angst around the question, “to what extent should advocacy focus on policies that impact the agency’s bottom line, rather than those more broadly related to the social justice goals of clients?” This is something that I struggled with somewhat at El Centro, Inc., where most of my work did not impact our financial status at all (except negatively, when donors were angered by our controversial stance), but where, with our growing success and reputation, some stakeholders wanted us to leverage those relationships with power players for more help to the agency’s bottom line. What does this do your credibility with allies and targets? If your organization does, in fact, serve justice, is the community not better served as you thrive?
  • Perhaps seen as opposite to this, the Minnesota Children and Families organization profiled stated that they specifically fundraise based on the community’s priorities–basically, they let the organizing work drive the programming work and, therefore, the fundraising for that programming work. Seemingly a dramatic departure, I guess, but wouldn’t it be exciting to a donor to know that an agency was so in touch with its constituents that they were originating all of its substantive work?
  • One of the themes that I have often raised with organizations I have helped to think through an advocacy and organizing practice relates to the structures needed to channel direct staff’s roles in this macro work–advisory committees with real authority, job descriptions and evaluations that include justice goals, a case-to-cause process that funnels client concerns into organizing work, and cross-program organizing that links issues from different areas. Basically, if you only do lip service to direct service staff’s involvement in advocacy, don’t be surprised if they only give you superficial commitment back.
  • The need to root organizing and advocacy efforts in core values was reiterated in several ways, although the organizations certainly do not share a common definition of the value of ‘justice’. But, as some of the executives pointed out, if organizing, advocacy, and community-building are not rooted in this core understanding, they are really just additional programs or methodologies of ‘service’, rather than tools that have the power to fundamentally restructure our society. We need a policy agenda and a new way of thinking about our clients, not just improvement projects that give clients work to do.

    I would encourage you to read the case studies, or at least a couple of them. Building Movement has also created a discussion guide at the end that asks critical questions: what do social service organizations stand to gain from really engaging their constituents? What skills do staff need to acquire to succeed in this work, and this new way of framing their work? What do organizations need in terms of funding to support the integration of services and organizing? Around what values will you shape your advocacy?

    All of these profiled organizations indicated a willingness to help other agencies in their walk towards a fuller engagement of their constituents, and most are actively sharing their progress with their coalitions and other allies–again, not as a model, but as hope and inspiration and a call to action. We can’t look at these examples as “how nice that they’re doing that;” we have to immediately ask what it means for us and for our work and for how we are called to engage the people with whom we have the honor to work.

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    Posted in Inspiration and Examples, My New Favorite Thing

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