It was exciting to get word of the lawsuit launched this month by former client Women’s Voices for the Earth (WVE) and a number of other environmental groups. EarthJustice launched the suit on their behalf against well known cleaning product manufacturers who have been flouting New York State’s strong labeling laws.
“The bottom line is that hazardous ingredients that have not been tested for long-term health impacts, like asthma or even birth defects, are being used in some cleaning products,” said Erin Switalski, executive director of Women’s Voices for the Earth. “Consumers have a right to know if they are spraying their kids’ high chairs with toxic chemicals. Without full ingredient disclosure from these companies, there’s simply no way to be sure.” (From SustainableBusiness.COM)
Unfortunately, you won’t find WVE listed at a big rating sight like CharityNavigator because they don’t meet its income levels (less than $500,000 in public donations, $1 million total budget). Yet. (that’s where you can help.)
Thankfully, a number of smaller private foundations understand the essential role that an organization like WVE plays in knitting together women’s health and environmental concerns.
Despite its small size, WVE has played an important role in getting manufacturers like OPI and Clorox to clean up their products.
I’ve seen this passionate band up close and can testify to its worthiness and its leanness. It could use a lot less of the lean. And more of your green.
Please don’t assume that just because an organization isn’t showing up on a rating site that it automatically should be excluded from your consideration. Dig deeper. You’ll find some real treasures out there.
Congratulations! to RI’s own Curt Spalding on his appointment as Regional Administrator for EPA New England. You can read the story here.
Curt was my boss at Save The Bay when I worked there from 1990-1995. He had just been named Executive Director and I was his first hire as Director of Development & Marketing. We were good partners and worked closely together.
Curt stepped down from Save The Bay after 20 years. He has much to be proud of during his tenure there. And Save The Bay has many decades of accomplishments in protecting, restoring and preserving Narragansett Bay and its watershed.
Yesterday, Curt and I were planning to work on a project together. Today, he finally hears about the appointment. My loss, EPA and our environment’s gain. It’s very exciting. Looks like Curt will be joining his wife Patrice on the train to Boston.
We are expecting really great things from you, Curt. I know you’ll deliver.
“The Humanities make us RICH.” Or so goes the sentiment on my morning tea mug.
October is once again National Arts and Humanities Month.It just so happens that I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of the humanities over the last few weeks.
“The term ‘humanities’ includes, but is not limited to, the study of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.”
The humanities are essential to Cause & Effect Inc.
In an evaluation of our work, we asked a colleague to interview a number of our clients. Our clients told her that one of the things that they appreciated about working with us was that we “got it.”
While clients meant our understanding of their organizational challenges, they also mentioned our ability to appreciate and comprehend the complexity of the societal issues that they faced.
In college, I was a geography major (concentration in urban social) with a strong sociology background. Jon was a history major with literature right behind. You might say we studied the humanities.
And while there are days that I long for more of an engineering or science background, I have always been grateful for the systems perspective that college studies helped me develop. I was constantly challenged to consider the interrelationships between political systems, markets, history, culture, art, climate, habitat, food production and more. To this day, we bring that approach to our work with clients – whether we are writing, facilitating strategic planning, or framing a strong fund development program.
The humanities provide the tools that help us make meaning of our world and our lives.
Just over the last few weeks, it seems that I’ve been especially reminded how the humanities manifest in our daily lives.
Last month, Lizzi Ross, the former director of adult programming at the ICA in Boston, spoke to the students in the class I teach at Brown. In describing how she went about designing programming to enable us to appreciate art that isn’t pretty pictures, Lizzi explained that contemporary art requires us to call on our knowledge of history, contemporary culture, literature, art, science and more.
“Ah, the humanities,” I thought.
Last Wednesday, I attended “What Now? 1932 – The Highlander Center Opens Its Doors,” a live taping from Action Speaks Radio. The premise of Action Speaks is to take an “under appreciated day in American History” and look at it through a contemporary lens. That show talked about the popular education approach of the Highlander Research and Education Center, which encourages activists from multiple walks of life to explore their personal experiences and connect them to larger historical and societal issues. “That’s the humanities in action,” I whispered to my neighbor. Rosa Parks, Andrew Young, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are just a few of the “graduates” of Highlander.
A love of the humanities can be demonstrated beyond textbooks and scholarly works.
Tonight I’m heading to the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities’ celebration of the humanities and their contribution to life in RI. I’m especially excited as I sat on the committee that nominated tonight’s awardees. A lifetime achievement award goes to cartoonist Don Bousquet, whose humorous cartoons have been lampooning Rhode Read More >>
Today is Blog Action Day 2009. The theme is Climate Change.
Bloggers around the world are helping to raise awareness and build support for government and personal action to significantly reduce greenhouse gasses which threaten the way humans live on this planet.
I decided to add our blog to this action because I care. Maybe it’s because I live in the Ocean State of Rhode Island and care about the impact that rising sea level and warming waters will have on its coastal habitat, wildlife, fisheries, and beaches. Or because so many of our clients are working so hard on this issue. Or because I’ve been environmentally aware most of my adult life. Or just because I consider myself a global citizen, accountable to current and future generations.
Why does climate change matter to you?
I recently wrote about the small ways that our household has tried to lower its environmental footprint. See “Green Musings on a Monday.” Hopefully you’ll try some yourself.
I also want to take this occasion to highlight the amazing work of the clients we’ve had over the last 13 years. These organizations do the hard work needed to restore, protect and preserve the environment.
While it may seem daunting to try to affect climate change at the micro level, every action matters.
While a local land trust or watershed organization may not be able to stop climate change in its tracks, their work creates healthier ecosystems which may prove more resilient to climate change. Resilient ecosystems are better prepared to resist, tolerate or recover from climate change.
I hope that you’ll take seek out and support some of these critical organizations or similar organizations in your own community.
On this day to build awareness of climate change, we’d like to highlight the good work of:
Prostitution is a difficult subject to talk about. It’s even harder to do something about as the Rhode Island General Assembly has proven again this year. But as our legislators tried and failed to act, a remarkable program (and, we are proud to say, Cause & Effect client) called Project RENEW has shown that sometimes the compassionate response is also the most effective and efficient solution to our community’s problem with prostitution.
To get the quick story check out this 5-minute video:
The video was made by my colleague and friend David Goldenberg as part of our recent program assessment and planning work with RENEW .
The Pawtucket Police give Project RENEW, a program of the Pawtucket Citizens Development Corporation, most of the credit for a remarkable reduction in visible on-street prostitution, prostitution arrests and calls for service in the Barton Street neighborhood. Rethinking Arrest–Street Prostitution and Public Policy from Nick Horton at the Family Life Center identifies Project RENEW as the most promising model for diverting women from generally useless and very costly incarceration into alternative supports that help women tackle the fundamental problems that drive them into prostitution: poverty, mental illness and addiction, among others.
One lesson we learned was highlighted by the debate over prostitution laws in Rhode Island this year. No one knows a lot about this topic. A lot of people draw sweeping conclusions from brief peeks into one corner of the vast and very diverse universe of sex for pay (and sex for shelter, drugs, etc.). That’s why one major element of the new three-year program plan we helped Project RENEW create focuses on building capacity to gather and share lessons from their own program experience and from the life experience and wisdom of the women they help.
I sat with rapt attention listening her describe this extraordinary collaboration between three very different museums which are sharing a variety of back office services such as finance, human resources, retail, and information systems.
They have even collaborated on the third rail of nonprofits … you guessed it … fundraising! The three museums working together on a transformational waterfront program raised — hold onto your hats— $120 million in 90 days!
Over and over again I see opportunities for building strong partnerships like this. Joint ventures that don’t require giving up your sole through merger. Partnerships that could emerge organically and not by a forced marriage orchestrated by funders. Sharing back office functions can result in stronger and more competent operations, shared expertise, and even cost savings or revenue generation for providing that support to another.
What did Heather tell us this collaboration learned? Among other lessons:
That collaboration can work.
That good faith and trust are essential elements of strong collaboration.
That the benefits of their partnership just keep on coming… and run so much deeper than just cost savings or additional revenue. One example, the Hunter Museum of American Art and the Tennessee Aquarium jointly opened new exhibits called Jellies: Living Art. (wish I lived nearby, the photos are fabulous)
That they can no longer imagine doing this another way.
I was reluctant to write this piece as they’ve been inundated with calls for information and support since the articles came out. But you really don’t need to contact them to understand what they are doing (after all, they have museums to run rather than spending their time fielding questions). Heather’s report, A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats, provides a pretty comprehensive description of what’s involved.
Instead of calling the museums, how about calling your own colleagues in your community and asking “if they did it, why can’t we? What can we offer each other? How will this help us be better at serving our communities? What would make each of our organizations stronger and more resilient?”
Know that you know it’s possible, you don’t really need to know a lot about the Chattanooga how. What you need to know is whether this is the kind of collaboration you are willing to say yes to. And then make it happen.
Today is the anniversary of Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka, the landmark, unanimous decision of the US Supreme Court in 1954. In this ruling, the Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, decided that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
The lawyer for the plaintiffs was Thurgood Marshall, who in 1975 was the first African American appointed to the Supreme Court. The cases that led to Brown v. were sponsored by the NAACP. (underscoring the critical role of advocacy and justice organizations in sparking systems change).
My three children went to public schools in the city of Providence, RI. We live in the city and sent our kids to public schools because we believe that public education can be the great equalizer and because we want our kids to live in an inclusive society.
Out of three schools they attended, only their exam high school, Classical, came close to representing the fairly equally distributed racial and ethnic make-up of our dynamic city. The enrollment of students in the urban core are predominately children of color with large numbers of low income and first generation immigrant children who deserve more support than they are receiving.
Get outside the urban core and it’s much harder to find children of color. We’re not a lot different here than schools in many parts of the country.
I have seen first hand the struggles of schools trying to make do with few resources, too many kids per teacher, widely divergent student needs, uninspired leadership, too much bad or poor teaching and ever changing mandates. At times I’ve been jealous of the countless resources and one-on-one attention that our private school friends have attested to.
Yet I have to say, there is nothing more powerful than showing up at awards night at the high school and looking out on a stage filled with kids of every color and from every side of town. Than standing shoulder to shoulder with parents from many lands for whom the belief in the American dream where education is the path to a brighter future is a powerful to them as it was for me.
I’ve been fortunate to consult with charter schools (and some small independents that serve low income kids) that are trying to remodel urban education. But even they are faced by huge financial and educational struggles. Luckily we are seeing small, but bright experiments across the US. While it will be extremely costly to roll these models out across all schools across the US, it is too costly not to.
Even Senator John McCain has called access to quality education “THE civil rights issue of the 21st century.”
There is much work to be done. If we truly aspire to achieve what we profess, it will require our resolve as a society to not just talk a good game, but to put our money where our ideals are. There is no better investment in our future, whether that is in our health, our wealth or our quality of life, than an educated populace. All kids deserve high quality public education.
Which brings me to the Supreme Court. As we’ve witnessed over the many decades, the court has enormous power to bring forth a more just society, or to allow power to remain entrenched. Who is selected matters. A lot. We hope President Obama chooses wisely.
“Can design save the newspaper?” We’re happy to share this inspiring presentation for TED conference by Jacek Utko, Polish newspaper designer and executive board member of our client the Society for News Design.
CDCs rock! Many of these community benefit nonprofits take big risks to create healthy, safe, affordable homes and rebuild neighborhoods. You can read more about the history and work of CDCs in Comeback Cities, by Paul Grogan now the CEO of The Boston Foundation.
When CDCs work well, they demonstrate what is right with this sector. They are embedded in community, asking questions, responding to need, engaging residents. They exemplify the word partnership, making change happen through a complicated set of relationships and interactions with national powerhouses like Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and NeighborWorks(R) America, local for-profit lenders, public planning departments, sister organizations, community members, local public servants like the police, and more.
I’m in awe of their knowledge, commitment and ability to make big change happen.
I’m singing the praises of CDCs coming off five hours yesterday facilitating a strategic planning retreat with the Board and staff of Community Works Rhode Island, an affiliate of NeighborWorks America.
Staff and board committees have been meeting and thinking over the last few months and this was an opportunity to come together and synthesize the work that has been done to date. For me, it is always a pleasure to work with caring, really smart, fun and engaged boards and staff, so thank you.
And WOW for their commitment — meeting together on a Friday afternoon till 8:00 in the evening. (I don’t know about you, but I do my best to avoid work on Friday nights).
There are a still a few more details before the plan is finished, but this organization already knows how to think and act strategically which is what ultimately matters.
Did I mention Community Work’s commitment to change that transforms communities? That word, transform, is in their mission statement and they take it seriously.
What’s as impressive is that this organization is the child of a recent merger between the Elmwood Foundation and Greater Elmwood Neighborhood Services. Based in the Elmwood neighborhood of Providence, both CDCs have worked in Providence’s Southside for more than 30 years, creating close to 1,000 units of affordable housing and investing more than $60 million in the community. Kudos once again to my friend and colleague MJ Kaplan of Kaplan Consulting LLC for guiding these groups through the merger and for lining up a really stellar board.
Next for me, typing up those flip charts (not my favorite task) and merging all the details on paper into a written framework that reflects all the smart and truly strategic thinking that went on last night. Then guiding this phase of planning to its conclusion.
I went back to www.GivingMarketPlaces.org today to see if they had answered my question about the data used in the report I mentioned a few days ago The Nonprofit Marketplace: Bridging the Information Gap in Philanthropy. In the way that the web works, I found myself on the TacticalPhilanthropy Blog which mentioned that the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which partnered with McKinsey & Co to produce this report had funded an organization called GiveWell.
From what they say on their web site, GiveWell was founded and is staffed by some former hedge fund managers. They have set themselves up as an “independent evaluator” to do “detailed analysis” of nonprofit organizations and then to recommend to donors whether to give to those organizations or not.
GiveWell says they reviewed 136 nonprofits and only 4 came highly recommended! I was absolutely amazed by the list of organizations that were “Not Recommended” for donor giving including the American Red Cross, UNICEF, Technoserve, and the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York.
It appears that the primary reason most organizations were “Not Recommended” was because they didn’t give GIveWell the right kind of information. I doesn’t surprise me that such an internationally respected Read More >>
and interactions with national powerhouses like