I’m here at day two of the CBAIS conference sitting in on the Sustainability Through Community Engagement session. Bill Callahan from OneCommunity introduced the session by proposing two questions to all the panelists:
1. What does sustainability mean?
Callahan said that we use the term vaguely, like community. In this context it’s clear what it means, i.e. where are you going to get more money? When you are done spending money, where are you going to get more?
He continued by saying that we all know that very few organizations become permanent stewards of any funders. Or we hope to get on the United Way list, and it’s hard to stay on the list once you’re there. There is pressure for United Ways to support everything.
2. Where are we all trying to get to?
We’re trying to get to a status somewhere in our realm where we have the stature and the sense of necessity and the relationships so that instead of going back to the same funders every year, you are in ongoing relationship – seen as an integrated part of the community – that people feel that they need to talk to you.
We’re all trying to figure out how to make ourselves sufficiently useful so that local governments, funders, and feds are saying “of course we have to keep these people going”. How do you get closer to that? How do you build the right partnerships and stature in the community so that it becomes easier?
New Routes to Community Heath
Cecilia Garcia, Executive Director from the Benton Foundation began the presentation by talking about “Authentic Community Engagement: Lessons from New Routes to Community Heath”.
New Routes is not a BTOP project. It’s a project that the Benton Foundation administers and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation supported. The Benton Foundation began the project “Sound Partners for Community Health”. Benton has been looking at lessons learned from the project. Over time, it developed a complex community collaboration model that can be applied to other areas beyond health care. The report also on the wiki.
New Routes is a three year project funded by Robert Wood Johnson located in 8 sites across the country. Sites in LA, Chicago, St. Paul, Atlanta, Oakland, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco.
It’s comprised of immigrant led organizations, health care, and a media outlet (community media, etc.) The goal is to create programming that speaks specifically to the needs of the population in that area.
In LA, the program created Chinese language programming that helped to provide health care information to that community. In St. Paul, there is a project that works with the Somali community.
The report puts a high premium on community and community engagement. The Benton Foundation believes there is a correlation between community engagement and sustainability. It will continue because the communities are so invested that they will not be able to afford to let it go.
Lessons Learned
Engage community member in all aspects of the process:
- Generating priorities for the project
- Offering opportunities for leadership and risk taking
- Envisioning a different future
- Participating in evaluation of the project
Build on existing community strengths:
- Organizations working in community gain power when they connect themselves to existing assets
- Youth, especially immigrant communities, often act as brokers among language, cultures and service systems.
- Active engagement often occurs on those places where community members feel most comfortable and sage.
Leave communities better equipped when the project started:
- Foster collaborative leadership within the community
- Bridge divides and help build social capital in the community
- Urge others to speak
- Enhance the capacity of community organizations
Resources
New Routes of Comnunity Heath: http://newroutes.org
Benton Foundation: www.benton.org
Cecilia Garcia: cgarcia(at)benton(dot).org
Technologyforall
Will Reed of Technologyforall explained that the organization began in 1997 focused on using technology as a tool to empower low-income communities. They started with an “Idea, Donor, Partnership” model with one community partner, the M.D. Anderson YMCA, which continues to be a key partner that they work with today.
They were the first organization serving as an umbrella organization working in Houston. They developed a relationship with Enron and had a wonderful relationship with them. Enron poured in a lot of money and people capacity. The relationship was that they were going to bring broadband connections to community tech centers across the nations.
Enron withdrew their funding and Technologyforall had to lay off nine people. Lesson is that you don’t always know your partners.
Technologyforall also discovered a myth and a reality. One myth among non-profits is that if they partner with organizations then their pie will get smaller. The reality is that when you share expertise across orgs then the pie, in fact, gets bigger. But so often we get stuck in the idea that the pie gets smaller when we collaborate.
Technologyforall has partners with SBC, BP, COMPAQ, ENRON, TOP, Microsoft, and SmartForce in the past. Reed says that they continued the model with the YMCA, they have worked with multiple partners in multiple cities. The bottom line is that there was deep relationships with partners in the community.
It was key that they developed partnerships with organizations who are embedded in their communities.
For example, they worked on a project with Rice University to provide Internet access through the white spaces that were opened up in the digital television transition. There are 9,000 users who use the network in the neighborhood.
The Texas Connect Coalition BTOP grant serves a portion of Texas. Free Net is a key partner in this work. Austin Free Net brings their community relationships and also does training very well. They brought a key asset to the BTOP grant.
Continued deep relationships in the community are going to be key moving forward.
Technologyforall approach is about “WE” – What can we do together that is mutually beneficial and how can we get something out of the situation together by working together.
One Community & CYC
Lynda Goff, OneCommunity used to work for Wake Forest as the IT Director. WinstonNet was hoping to pay low cost fee access to technology in Winston-Salem. There was a membership fee for board members involved in the project and they used this as operating capital to pay for digital inclusion efforts in the city.
Their first goal was to set up community tech centers. They now have 44 centers located in city rec centers, libraries, community faith based organizations, and the YMCA. They received donated computers. They hired a community tech firm to manage the computers in the labs.
They used a thin client to manage the desktop centrally. They have worked with CIOs at each city, county, and colleges. They approached their project by asking the question “What are we going to do in our community? How do we sustain it with no money?”
The project influenced policy in the city and it influenced corporations.
They have very strong community based organizations that are thinking about digital inclusion and have a sustainable model.
Time Warner / Cleveland City Council Neighborhoods Technology Fund
Bill Gruber of the Time Warner / Cleveland City Council Neighborhoods Technology Fund began his talk by explaining that he used a combination of regulation and deregulation to find funding for digital inclusion. They went to the State Utilities Commission to leverage telephone funds for community tech centers. Those funds dried up and other funds kicked in for other groups. There was not a lot of sustainability.
They next thing that people in Cleveland did, when Adelphia bought out Cablevision, was to approach the cable provider to leverage local franchise fees to leverage funds for community tech centers. This was in 1999-2000.
The cable company agreed and they used the funds to fund community technology centers. They formed a board made up of community organizations, city council members, and others to create a grant fund.
The initial funding was 3.5 million. They started with the Cleveland Foundation, focused the money on neighborhood tech centers across Cleveland.
Over nine years the funds were used up to create sustainable computer centers. The tech fund has given out 159 grants over 9 years. Roughly 19 grants a year. 270 million
The funding went to fund summer programs, some were used for job training centers, senior centers, connecting children to do homework or performance art projects. In a deal with Adelphia, they provided free Internet connections to all neighborhood tech centers and provide at cost connections to other centers across the city.
This also helped them because it was free advertising and to get more customers.
Towards the end of the session, Bill Callahan said that all of the discussions that people are talking about in terms of building strategic partnerships are key in moving things forward towards sustainable models for community engagement.
