Leveraging Tech for Public Good

Media grantmakers gathered in Silicon Valley to talk civic tech. Here's a recap.

Originally published in Twin Cities Business Magazine, August 2015. 

It’s not often you can go to a national conference about any aspect of the nonprofit sector and find there are no Minnesotans present. Our state’s nonprofit sector is so large and engaged that someone from here is usually present at any national philanthropic gathering, and frequently there’s a large Minnesota contingent. So it was a surprise in June when I attended the Media Impact Forum, a gathering of grantmakers funding in the media sector, and I found no other Minnesotans on the attendee list. It’s too bad, because the ideas percolating at this meeting were exciting, relevant and entirely applicable to Minnesota’s civic, nonprofit and business sectors alike.

Media funding today has moved far beyond grants to documentary filmmakers or public broadcasting entities. It now spans topics such as gaming, apps, digital literacy, access to technology and tech-related public policy. As examples, here are three topics media funders were thinking about when they gathered in Silicon Valley.

Diversity in the technology workplace. Compelling presentations by Van Jones, founder of the Yes We Code initiative, and Emily White, board member of the National Center for Women in Information Technology, offered complementary perspectives on the need to diversify the tech sector workforce.

The Yes We Code initiative targets low-opportunity youth and connects them with local training resources that can help them become world-class programmers. Yes We Code estimates that U.S. businesses will face a shortage of 1 million tech workers within eight years. Yes We Code is building a training network to reach and teach 100,000 youth of color to fill these jobs. Minnesota resources named on Yes We Code’s website include the Digital Empowerment Academy in North Minneapolis, the local chapter of Girl Develop It and Code Savvy, which offers programs in multiple metro locations. These are young Minnesota nonprofits that would benefit from new connections and funding. Look them up and see how you can help.

The National Center for Women in Information Technology provides research, pilot programs and advocacy for increasing the number of women in tech professions. White presented research showing that 88 percent of software inventions were created by male-only teams, 2 percent were created by women-only teams and only 10 percent had mixed-gender teams. African-American women make up only 3 percent of the tech workforce, while 1 percent are Hispanic women and 5 percent are Asian-American women. NCWIT offers resources for employers on recruitment, placement and promotion policies designed to increase gender diversity. Information on recruitment and job descriptions seems widely applicable to our region’s businesses and nonprofits.

Ethics and data privacy. Several speakers proposed ways that journalism and media organizations, whether for-profit or nonprofit, can and should promote stronger protections for consumers by strengthening both ethical codes and data privacy.

Lucy Bernholz, a Stanford-based researcher focused on philanthropy and technology, drew connections among freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom to assemble and democratic society as a whole. She called on programmers and policymakers to “encode our values into our systems” and to advocate for citizens to be able to convene in “private space” online.

Why? Within current software systems, everything users view and click on is tracked, whether we are aware of it or not. Bernholz implored grantmakers to advance public policies that require wide adoption of opt-in consent. Arguing that citizens should own their own data, she also advocated for “don’t collect what you can’t protect” policies. She urged grantmakers and the nonprofit sector as a whole to be open and transparent in their own digital dealings with the public—including publishing their data policies—to model the behavior that should be encouraged in the tech industry. What is keeping local foundations and nonprofits from adopting this idea?

Craig Newmark of Craigslist and craigconnects spoke about his nonprofit project aimed at encouraging journalists to take “radical action to ensure trust.” Speaking as a journalism consumer, not a producer, he proposed changes in search engine functionality so that results are delivered according to trustworthiness. Newmark is himself involved as an advisor or board member for numerous nonprofit journalism organizations, and on his craigconnects website he offers a template for journalism ethics in the digital age.

New kinds of nonprofit media organizations “beyond broadcast.” Grantmakers explored ways that existing and new nonprofits are taking creative advantage of digital technology. Examples included the expansion of reach and impact within cultural organizations that increasingly are becoming media producers (this was my own session, conducted in conjunction with San Francisco’s Exploratorium); organizations offering apps and resource hubs for voter education (such as MapLight, a website that aggregates information about money in politics in the U.S., and its project, Voters’ Edge, that personalizes voter information by zip code); and new kinds of public service tech organizations such as Code for America (recruiting technologists to build open-source platforms that improve government services) and Brigade (a new social media platform on which users are encouraged to articulate their stands on political issues to debate public policy).

The Media Impact Forum actively demonstrated the ways the nonprofit sector is changing as technology evolves and makes new kinds of program delivery possible. The forum offered a dizzying set of innovative nonprofits, ideas and projects that together pointed to exciting new applications of technology for the public good. The full program schedule is available at MediaImpactFunders.org, along with video and other presentation information. Check it out to see what forward-thinking grantmakers and nonprofits are doing to advance civil society in the digital age.

Originally published in Twin Cities Business Magazine

Targeting Gender Norms

This writing first appeared in the July issue of Twin Cities Business Magazine.

The philanthropic community is moving beyond simple feminism to ask fundamental questions about gender roles.

Riki Wilchins, executive director of TrueChild, is regularly in the Twin Cities to meet with philanthropy leaders and nonprofits to advance TrueChild’s advocacy for “gender transformative philanthropy.” In plain English that means asking the philanthropic sector to take a leadership role in challenging rigid masculine and feminine norms through their grantmaking programs and practices. TrueChild conducts research—and amplifies the work of other scholars—to document and highlight the damage done in areas like education, employment and interpersonal relationships. I attended a recent half-day workshop with Wilchins sponsored by the George Family Foundation, and came away with new insights.

The George Family Foundation (GFF) has a history of interest in funding for women and girls’ programming including grants for leadership development, anti-sex-trafficking efforts and reproductive rights. GFF is trying to learn from Wilchins’ work and that of other social scientists who specialize in gender norms, says executive director Gayle Ober. “As we look at two of our emerging funding areas (advancing women and girls, and youth development), we realized we wanted to learn as much as we could about these two very broad fields before we settled on our grantmaking strategies. While race, ethnicity, education level and socio-economic status get a lot of attention, the full palette of gender doesn’t. We consider women/girls or men/boys, but not always how gender in all its forms influences us as individuals and as a society.”

Advocates believe that gender must be viewed along a broad continuum, and that gender norms are as much socially constructed as biologically innate. While the feminist movement has expanded opportunities for women and girls’ empowerment, Wilchins’ advocacy for “gender transformation” goes much further. She says that when grantmakers merely “apply a gender lens” to help ensure gender equality, they are failing to address how rigid ideals of femininity and masculinity negatively impact people and society. It is not enough to promote equal opportunity or to support women’s empowerment programs. It is necessary to challenge the norms that keep women—and men—from achieving their full potential, by embracing the idea of gender as a continuum.

As background Wilchins offers the 2013 World Bank study that interviewed 4,000 people in 20 countries to identify obstacles to progress in women’s rights. The report, On Norms and Agency, was the result of what the study calls “the largest dataset ever collected on the subject of gender and development, providing an unprecedented opportunity to examine potential patterns across communities on social norms and gender roles, pathways of empowerment, and factors that drive acute inequalities.”

Its conclusions both ring true and identify challenging obstacles. “Despite diverse social and cultural settings, traits and expectations of the ideal ‘good’ woman and ‘good’ man were remarkably similar across all sample urban and rural communities. Participants acknowledged that women are actively seeking equal power and freedom, but must constantly negotiate and resist traditional expectations about what they are to do and who they are to be. When women achieve the freedom to work for pay or get more education, they must still accommodate their gains to these expectations, especially on household responsibilities.” The study further concludes that when a small number of women break with established norms, with no critical mass, traditional norms will remain uncontested and may in fact be reinforced.

The Women’s Foundation of Minnesota is one local philanthropy engine that has fully embraced Wilchins’ work and changed its grant guidelines and grantmaking as a result. In its State of the Foundation report for 2015, Lee Roper-Batker, president, says that a key question in its work is “How do concepts of masculinity and femininity serve as barriers to women and girls—and men and boys—and what will we do to change it?” She also cited a 2014 grant to Hnub Tshiab: Hmong Women Achieving Together, through which the foundation provided funds that helped this group “confront gender norms within their community.” She described Hnub Tshiab’s approach as unique: Project leaders worked with male clan elders to facilitate discussions about why gender equality is important to girls and women and benefits women and men.

TrueChild is presenting workshops at major philanthropic conferences and at smaller gatherings like the recent one in Minneapolis. At the local meeting, a particular emphasis was on programs that reach adolescents during the vulnerable early-teen years when gender identity is being established.

A few things struck me about the dialogue at Wilchin’s local workshop. First is that a broader definition of gender equity seems like a needed evolution in our thinking about personal freedom and the empowerment of individuals. Second, the conversation about gender transformation brings into focus the many ways gender stereotypes are constantly reinforced in media and communications. Finally, gender stereotyping is not a cycle that will be easy to break; religious, cultural and family traditions, ideals and norms around gender are a defining part of our social fabric. But must it be so? That’s the question Wilchins asks us to consider.

Sarah Lutman is a St. Paul-based independent consultant and writer for clients in the cultural, media and philanthropic sectors.

Centennials Abound

The Minneapolis Foundation is just one of Minnesota's prominent non-profit organizations to turn 100 this year.

Initially published in Twin Cities Business Magazine, June 2015 edition

It’s not your imagination. There really are a gaggle of nonprofits celebrating their centenary year.

• Greater Twin Cities United Way partied with thousands at the Minneapolis Convention Center in February to celebrate its centennial and launch an effort to recruit 100,000 volunteers for its Next 100 campaign.
• In January, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts kicked off a yearlong 100th birthday celebration that includes mystery masterpieces on loan to the museum, pop-up artworks placed around the Cities and other birthday surprises.
• The spring edition of the journal Minnesota History is the centennial for this magazine published by the Minnesota Historical Society. Its readers get a view into the year 1915.

It was the aim of the Minneapolis Foundation’s five businessmen-organizers to build “a wisely planned and enduring fabric” to benefit the community for years to come. In that first year, the grants budget was $25,000 ($580,000 in today’s dollars). In 2014, the foundation granted $47 million to its many causes.

Community foundations are a unique type of philanthropic organization, operating under specific tax codes and regulations. They provide a vehicle for multiple donors to pool individual investments within a single efficient, permanent infrastructure. Community foundation leaders help introduce these individual donors to funding causes that meet priority community needs. They generally are governed by a cross-sector group of leaders that offer diverse perspectives on funding priorities, and often are focused on a specific geography where they can develop deep expertise over time.

The Minneapolis Foundation is the second-oldest community foundation in the U.S. (The Cleveland Foundation was formed a year earlier.) It is the investment home for more than 1,200 charitable funds, representing individuals, families and businesses. In March 2014 the foundation’s assets totaled $753 million; its donors provided $46.6 million in grant support to nonprofits the same year. In a national ranking by asset size, the Minneapolis Foundation is 20th (the Saint Paul Foundation, formed in 1940, is 19th.).

Working with foundation staff called philanthropic advisors, donors can exercise a variety of options and maintain flexibility over how their money is both managed and given away. Donors create funds within the foundation, which can be named (as in the Robins, Kaplan, Miller and Ciresi Foundation for Children) and unnamed (as in the many anonymous funds the foundation manages). Donors may make single or multiyear gifts from their funds, spend them in one fell swoop, plan giving in increments over several years or invest their principal as endowment, in perpetuity.

Community foundations play an important role in the larger nonprofit landscape by broadly encouraging philanthropy among the public, and providing a wide range of investment and grantmaking instruments as philanthropic vehicles. Because a community foundation’s grantmaking staff is directed to investigate the work of local nonprofit organizations, donors can tap expertise and research to inform their philanthropy and ensure its relevance over time. Minneapolis nonprofits benefit from the foundation’s long history of advocacy for key community causes like arts, education, and human service programs. Also, nonprofits that don’t have relationships with individual donors can foster such connections through the foundation’s intermediary role.

The early years of the 20th century were important for Minnesota’s nonprofits. A search shows that many organizations formed in and around that year, such as St. Paul’s East Side Neighborhood Services (1915) and Dunwoody Institute (1914). Some of the state’s nonprofits are far older, such as the University of Minnesota (1851), the Minnesota Orchestra (1903), and the state’s oldest nonprofit, the Christian Aid Society of Minnesota (1866), which continues to make grants to support vulnerable families in the metro region.

Yet what the Minneapolis Foundation has chosen to celebrate this year is our region’s future, not its past. The foundation has organized a conference, slated for Sept. 18 at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Participants can engage with leading thinkers in education, medicine, arts and the environment to help launch the foundation’s second century. A series of community conversations planned for the weeks and months after will help the foundation imagine its future efforts. Tickets are $39 and go on sale June 15. I think I’ll go.

Good News for North Minneapolis

Originally published in Twin Cities Business Magazine, April 2015 issue

People describe Sondra Samuels as a force of nature. She’s the visionary president and CEO of NAZ—the Northside Achievement Zone. NAZ has a straightforward but challenging mission: to end multi- generational poverty in North Minneapolis using education as the lever. NAZ is working to create a culture of achievement among families on the North Side, with the goal that all students in the zone will graduate from high school, college-ready.

By working within a designated 255-block neighborhood that has one of the state’s largest concentrations of poverty and lowest measures of success for youth achievement and opportunity, NAZ aims to lift the entire area economically.

Here’s the good news: It was named nonprofit of the year for 2015 by the Minneapolis Regional Chamber, in no small measure because NAZ’s 2014 annual report shows the organization’s efforts are working for the children and families involved. That’s because Samuels, whose husband is Minneapolis school board member Don Samuels, has enrolled an entire community of collaborators in the work.

What does NAZ do, exactly? The organization’s philosophy is that all parents want the best for their children and that community organizations can help actualize that desire if parents have partners providing consistent and coordinated support. Starting with the assumption that all parents want their children—NAZ calls them “scholars”—to go to college, NAZ works through “connectors” who can provide coaching, connections and coordination of resources that families need to succeed. Connectors come from the North Side or similar circumstances, and help families enroll in NAZ. They stay connected with that family until the child or children graduate from high school. Connectors help parents create achievement plans and work with NAZ “navigators” at schools and community organizations to help families reach their goals.

NAZ acts as convener and clearinghouse to provide families with everything from mentoring, parent education, quality day care, after-school programs, academic tutoring, physical and mental health counseling, and housing, job training, and career and financial planning services. NAZ’s roster of coordinated service providers includes child care centers, neighborhood schools and health care providers, as well as a long list of nonprofits such as Boys and Girls Clubs, Big Brothers Big Sisters, College Possible, Project Success and dozens of others that have agreed to coordinate services and share data.

NAZ monitors the effectiveness of the services, sharing results data among its collaborators and developing data on best practices. The “NAZ Seal of Effectiveness” is a results- and evidence-based measure of how well programs are working. The entire NAZ collaborative is focused on specific, measurable results for its scholars, families and the entire zone, all leading to college readiness.

In 2014, NAZ had 740 families enrolled and served a total of 1,735 scholars. The goal is to reach the entire youth population of the zone, some 3,000 children and 1,200 families. Data show that youth enrolled in NAZ have consistently higher results for kindergarten readiness and third-grade reading scores than does the zone at large. The longer children are enrolled in NAZ, the greater the difference. For example, youth enrolled in NAZ for 18 months are scoring even higher in third-grade math and reading than youth enrolled for six months. (NAZ’s complete results report is on their website: northsideachievement.org.)

Samuels cites two sources of inspiration for NAZ, which was founded in 2003 and had, in her words, “a significant reboot” in 2008. First is the documented success of the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), formed in 1970, which in 2014 served more than 13,000 Harlem youth from infancy to age 23. HCZ focused first on a single city block; its geography now encompasses 97 blocks. Last year, 100 percent of children in Harlem Gems, HCZ’s pre-kindergarten program, were tested as “ready for kindergarten.” A whopping 95 percent of HCZ youth were accepted to college in 2013, receiving over $20 million in scholarship support.

The second inspiration is Mark Friedman’s 2009 book, Trying Hard Is Not Good Enough, which Samuels recommends as a good introduction to the “results-based accountability” that’s needed for adults to change outcomes for vulnerable children. “What we have at NAZ,” she says, “is adult-based outcome accountability. We have formed deep relationships between people and among groups involved, and we are responsible to each other for outcomes and accountable to each other for results.”

Pessimism often permeates conversations about changing academic outcomes for poor urban children; blame is assigned to schools, service organizations, parents or the youth themselves. Yet Samuels won’t settle for anything short of success. “I don’t care where the child is from,” Samuels says, “we can have objective and positive conversations about what’s needed for that child to succeed. And they can succeed.”

A Wilder Foundation study recently calculated the return on every $1 investment in NAZ as $6.18 in “societal gain” through increased lifetime earnings and higher tax revenues, health care cost savings, and savings in the criminal justice system and public assistance payments. That’s a return we can all afford to invest in.