Catalysts for Change

21st Century Philanthropy and Community Development

Maria Martinez-Cosio, Mirle Rabinowitz Bussell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134112210
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Planificación urbana y paisajismo

Winner of the Community Development Society's 2014 Current Research Award!

21st Century Philanthropy and Community fills a gap in the literature on philanthropic organizations and how they intertwine with community development. Drawing first on the history of philanthropic funding, Maria Martinez-Cosio and Mirle Bussell look at developments in the last twenty years in detail, focussing on five key case studies from across America. The authors use their own first hand experiences and research to forge a new path for academic research in an area where it has been lacking.

With the current economic climate forcing shrewd spending, foundations need all the guidance they can find on how to appropriately channel their funds in the best way. But how can these sorts of community projects be analyzed for effectiveness? Is there a quantitative rather than qualitative element which can be studied to give real feedback to those investing in projects? Arguing against a one-size-fits-all model, the authors illustrate the importance of context and relationships in the success of these projects.

Part I

The scope and scale of philanthropic investment in community development

1

The Changing Landscape of Foundation-Led Community Development

On a warm evening in 2006, hundreds of people filled a large portable tent set up in the parking lot of an old strip mall in southeastern San Diego. Men, women, and children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds eagerly awaited the start of the meeting. The excitement was palpable. Everyone was in attendance to learn about a proposal to provide this low-income community with opportunities for affordable homeownership. This was big news in a community that had not seen new housing built in many years. The meeting was not convened by a public agency, redevelopment authority, or community development corporation (CDC), the typical developers of affordable housing. Rather, a private family foundation, the Jacobs Family Foundation, was spearheading the effort as part of a larger comprehensive plan: it was preparing to catalyze comprehensive community redevelopment in this neighborhood five miles east of downtown San Diego. The foundation was driven by a clearly defined mission that emphasized resident engagement in community development and, ultimately, resident ownership of community assets. In a community known for a historical legacy of neglect, nominal public investment, and a weak infrastructure of nonprofit social service organizations, the Jacobs Family Foundation offered some a glimmer of hope that perhaps the time had finally come to elevate the quality of life for the 85,000 residents who lived in this section of southeastern San Diego. Others expressed skepticism and questioned whether or not a foundation lacking historical ties to the community could or should successfully undertake such an ambitious and potentially transformative plan.

Four miles to the north, a similar scenario was playing out. The City Heights neighborhood, often referred to as San Diego’s “Ellis Island” due to the large number of immigrants and refugees who reside there, was in the midst of its own renewal. Facing similar challenges of neglect, aging infrastructure, and low levels of public investment, City Heights was undergoing comprehensive community redevelopment spearheaded by another San Diego private family foundation, Price Charities. This plan emphasized large-scale physical renewal and economic development. Similar to the Jacobs Family Foundation, Price Charities had its detractors along with its supporters.

Fast forward six years and both City Heights and southeastern San Diego look physically different. Both communities now have urban villages that contain large grocery stores, nationally franchised restaurants, community facilities, and the ubiquitous Starbucks. These villages were completed in large measure due to the efforts of the two family foundations that worked in partnership with these neighborhoods. These physical accomplishments are only part of the story, though, and while they certainly give the neighborhoods the appearance of “successful” redevelopment, the outcomes are much more complex. The two foundations’ best intentions did not always match the needs of the low-income residents that reside in the respective communities. The reasons are complex and challenging to evaluate but are critically important in this time of continued federal retrenchment and limited local resources. The landscape of local community development is on a trajectory of change and partnerships are critical.

Three generations after urban renewal and two generations after the demise of the War on Poverty, philanthropic entities, namely public and private foundations, have increasingly taken on the continuing challenge of revitalizing poor communities in our cities. Their admirable intentions—like those of federal and local governments—have encountered division, controversy, and sometimes protest. This book traces these community development efforts from initial intent through the complex path of implementation, presenting key findings that provide important lessons through an analysis of multiple case studies reflecting the broad scope of foundational engagement in community development.

We were introduced to these two San Diego neighborhoods, these two foundations, and each other, over ten years ago. Contacts we made opened doors to local schools, community stakeholders, public sector employees, and city hall. The Spanish-speaking fluency of one of us provided an opportunity for Spanish-speaking residents in City Heights to share their hope for change as they struggled to keep their children out of gangs. Professional relationships forged with staff and board members at both foundations provided opportunities to witness first hand the challenges and rewards of this unique type of work. One of the first questions we asked of each other was whether or not what we were observing in San Diego was unique or part of a larger trend. We wanted to know how many other family foundations were engaged in this type of deeply engaged place-based community revitalization. We knew from the academic literature that large foundations such as Ford had played a pivotal role in supporting community development over the second half of the twentieth century and on into the New Millennium, but the efforts in San Diego appeared different. Price Charities and the Jacobs Family Foundation had embedded themselves in their target neighborhoods and, rather than dictating policy from afar, staff members and often board members, too, were on the ground in the community on a daily basis partnering with networks of individual and organizational stakeholders. We asked ourselves if this was a unique model and, if so, how did one go about measuring impacts. These questions were the genesis for this project.

Philanthropic support for underserved communities has a long history and the levels and types of involvement have evolved in reaction to prevailing societal norms and federal political, economic, and social policy. Foundations in general are known to be risk averse, but at specific moments in history they have demonstrated the ability to ignite innovative approaches to community revitalization. Whether experimenting with programs that ultimately influenced federal policy, such as the Ford Foundation’s Gray Areas program which led to federal Model Cities legislation, seeding grassroots systems change effort as exemplified by the Liberty Hill Foundation’s support for multifaceted community organizing efforts in Los Angeles, or supporting community building for disenfranchised minority groups as illustrated by the Frothingham Fund and Slater Fund’s investment in the Calhoun Industrial School for Blacks in Alabama in the nineteenth century, a small but growing number of foundations have shown the potential of the sector to challenge the status quo and strategically channel charitable giving in ways that can potentially transform business-as-usual in low income communities.

Foundation funding has catalyzed community development initiatives from Boston to San Diego, yet the role of foundations as key actors in revitalizing urban neighborhoods is largely under-theorized. The relationship between private foundations, underserved communities, public agencies, private interests, and community nonprofits gains salience as a declining economy and public sector fiscal crises have forced foundations engaged in community development to reexamine their capacity to fund scalable comprehensive community change. Significantly, this has led a cohort of foundations to reexamine their efforts in the larger context of systems change. Some foundations have assumed a more aggressive approach that has transformed their role from funder to policymaker and policy implementer. In numerous examples across the country, their efforts have sparked urban reinvestment and redevelopment. This is contributing to a proactive culture in certain segments of philanthropy that has significant implications for the future of local community development. Some of these private and public foundations are at the forefront of innovation and require further study as practitioners, academics, and public sector agencies consider new paradigms in community development.

This has been best illustrated by the increased philanthropic support for CCIs. CCIs emerged in the late 1980s as growing evidence revealed that the complex social, physical, and economic challenges of community development in low-income neighborhoods were interconnected and required a holistic response. Rather than the traditional project-oriented philanthropy, CCIs were envisioned as a new strategic approach to charitable investment by linking public and private resources along with community participation in a comprehensive manner targeted towards a specific geographic area. This ambitious approach has yielded mixed results and simultaneously points to the challenges and rewards of comprehensive community change. We situate CCIs at the center of our analysis.

We consider three key areas that arise from the role of private foundations in comprehensive community development. First, we analyze the scope and content of foundations’ community development work by considering their qualitative and quantitative impacts. From a quantitative perspective, we identify the number of foundations engaged in community development work, the type of efforts they support, and the financial scale of dollars invested and communities served. Looking at their qualitative impact, we document and compare the ways in which foundations define community development work and the impact this has on their funding priorities. We situate this analysis within theories of systems change to understand their varying motives, approaches, and goals for underserved areas.

Second, we analyze the governance structures and approaches of foundations engaged in community development work. This includes consideration of the foundations’ role in the community development plans and the varying degrees to which the foundations either lead the community development efforts or allow for the community to emerge and direct the planning process. We assess the extent to which foundations approach this work with clearly defined strategies and consideration for the sustainability of community development efforts. This raises questions about the degree to which foundations set policy and interact with the complex web of public, private, nonprofit, and community stakeholders.

Third, we consider issues of accountability. We evaluate varying degrees of transparency in philanthropic support for community development. As private entities, not elected by the populace to make policy decisions, we consider the types of checks and balances that are in place to monitor foundation accountability in community development.

Our approach is two-pronged. We surveyed the field and assembled the first comprehensive typology of foundations engaged in community development. Using the three primary criteria identified above, we were able to identify larger trends in the field. We complement the typology with the presentation of numerous case studies illustrative of the innovation occurring in foundation-driven community development. We take a closer look at two specific efforts from San Diego as a way to present and analyze the many nuances, complexities, and contradictions of CCIs.

Our analysis seeks to challenge theories of comprehensive community change that espouse a grand model for revitalizing underserved communities. While our case studies may appear narrow in their application to community development initiatives, we argue that the differing approaches to community development illustrate the importance of context in addressing the assets and needs of under-served communities; the challenge of defining and developing participation from stakeholders (including neighborhood-based nonprofits); the importance of evaluation of community development initiatives; and, most importantly, the issue of sustainability of comprehensive community change.

Our findings suggest that the relationships between community engagement, capacity building, and public–private collaboration are critical indicators of private foundations’ effectiveness in catalyzing local community development. We suggest that the goal for private philanthropies is not the transfer of community development models from one underserved community to another; rather, it is a deeper understanding of different approaches to realizing significant community revitalization and the type of innovation that is possible at the local level.

Often the key questions raised in examining these types of public–private relationships are focused on results or outcomes (Kubisch, Auspos, Brown, and Dewar, 2010). Do these public–private initiatives achieve their goals of improving underserved communities and how is “improvement” defined and measured? The answer is complicated and contentious and, ultimately, it depends on whom you ask. For two of the family foundations included in our book, residents, nonprofits, foundation and city staff interviewed for this research would all agree that their respective communities have benefited in many ways from the engagement of these private foundations in community development efforts. These two foundations included in our research have raised the profile of their targeted areas, attracting new funding sources and capturing attention from city hall and the media. But clearly, as our research presents, context matters. The vision and philosophies of family foundations differ, as do the political, cultural, and demographic history of each community. These differences in approach were evident in the differing definitions of community development articulated by community stakeholders, foundations, nonprofit organizations, and city staff. Thus measuring success is difficult when a common metric has not been negotiated or agreed upon. And we must continue to ask whether success should be measured by physical outcomes alone. The process through which change occurs, and the mechanisms that are developed to support this process, are equally meaningful for certain stakeholders. Until we ascertain desired goals, it is difficult to develop theories of change for underserved communities targeted by public and private foundations.

These issues merit attention as more private foundations refocus their efforts towards a holistic place-based approach to philanthropy that may have a greater impact on underserved communities. The California Endowment’s (CalEndow) recently announced ten-year funding commitment to 14 underserved communities in California (2009); the Kellogg Foundation’s shift in philanthropic direction (Cohen, 2008); and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation’s (LISC) Building Sustainable Communities program all provide examples of this change. Furthermore, recently completed research from the Aspen Institute indicates a growing trend in foundation-supported CCIs (Kubisch et al., 2010). All of these examples are united by their objective to improve underserved communities through a variety of community development initiatives, and all are challenged to develop a common definition of community development, a vision for the future of these communities, and to develop relationships based on trust with the variety of stakeholders in each of these communities.

The book is divided into two parts. Part I reviews the historical record of private and public foundations engaged in comprehensive community revitalization initiatives, surveys the different types of foundations involved in this work, presents a typology of these efforts, and concludes with a discussion on the merits of using systems change theory to understand the structure, context, and impact of philanthropic support for comprehensive community development. We include the history of both the large, mainline foundations such as the Ford Foundation and the Sage Foundation, along with the smaller, primarily family foundations that have engaged in neighborhood-based community development partnerships in collaboration with residents, government entities, and other private sources. The research indicates that their involvement has transcended funding support and in an increasing number of cases also includes policy formulation and implementation. These action-oriented foundations are often at the forefront of innovation in local community development and serve as important catalysts for neighborhood reinvestment and redevelopment. Many of these foundations also fall under the category of social justice philanthropy. This is a branch of philanthropy that emphasizes systems change and democratic grassroots processes that empower and enfranchise traditionally marginalized subsets of the population, particularly those that live in low-income urban neighborhoods. In this section we also explain how the devolution of federal support for community development has influenced philanthropic involvement in the field.

This historical investigation begins with the precursors to formalized philanthropy in the seventeenth century including informal networks of charities and then moves on to the first generation of foundation support in the settlement houses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We then consider the impact of urban renewal and the War on Poverty, the decay of urban areas in the 1970s and 1980s, the creation of public–private partnerships that became prevalent in the 1990s, and new models that are currently emerging in the twenty-first century. Some of these newer, innovative foundations were born out of the disappointments of urban renewal and the rethinking of strategies for rebuilding urban communities that followed. Certain foundations committed to investing in under-served areas are also seeking higher returns for their philanthropic investments, narrowing their scope to specific areas or neighborhoods in a concerted effort to implement comprehensive change at a smaller scale. This new approach to community development is based on the assumption that concentrated interventions will have a greater impact than providing smaller, piecemeal support for numerous philanthropic projects in many locations.

Part I continues with an overview of the philanthropic sector and identifies the different types of foundations involved with community development efforts. Specific attention is given to CCIs and we provide an overview of the national trends and accomplishments of CCIs since they were first established in the late 1980s. Numerous case studies from across ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of abbreviations
• Preface
• Part I: The scope and scale of philanthropic investment in community development
• Part II: Lessons from the field
• Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Index