Addressing Disparities: GreenLight Philadelphia Identifies Three High-need Issue Areas

Author: Salomon Moreno-Rosa
Program Associate, GreenLight Fund Philadelphia

As GreenLight Philadelphia embarks on its second annual selection cycle, we are working with our Selection Advisory Council to take a proactive look at the critical needs of the city and identifying national organizations that would be a strong fit in our community. After months of discussions and surveying key local leaders in the nonprofit sector, venture capital and entrepreneurial communities, local government and academic community, GreenLight is focusing on three high-need issues on which we believe we have the greatest opportunity for impact. Below I have briefly outlined these issues and potential approaches we could pursue in addressing the problems.

Youth Exiting Prisons:

Mayor Michael Nutter has made addressing crime and public safety a key focus for his administration’s second term by exploring innovative ways to curb high recidivism and reentry rates in Philadelphia. Reflecting the adage: “the best anti-crime tool is a job,” the administration’s strategy is to foster public and private partnerships that can provide this at-risk population with work opportunities and marketable skills. [1]

Every year, approximately 19,000 inmates are released from Pennsylvania state prisons. 30% of these individuals (over 6,500 people) return to Philadelphia. [2] As the average percentage of re-arrests within the first three years or release climbs to 66 percent -- and nearly 80% for young adults -- the imperative for connecting ex-offenders with stable employment and other services is a major need. [3]

High recidivism rates have immense costs for the city in terms of crime, the price of repeated and extended incarceration, and the loss of wage and sales taxes that employed, productive residents contribute. A study commissioned by the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia found that for every 100 ex-offenders connected to employment, the city generates $2.7 million in additional tax revenue over the employees’ lifetimes. The study also found more than $2 million in savings on corrections, probation, and parole. [4]

A growing body of research suggests targeted interventions in the first year after release - when ex-offenders are most motivated to turn their lives around – are most effective at cutting recidivism rates and achieving long-term behavior change and job stability.

In our search for promising approaches to lowering recidivism, GreenLight is looking at models that target ex-offenders in these early years and have results helping them get and keep jobs and resist repeat offenses.

Teacher Development & Retention:

The United States faces a teacher retention problem. Over the past 15 years, teacher attrition has risen sharply across the country, impacting student achievement and exhausting resources for our nation’s classrooms. It is no surprise that teacher effectiveness improves with experience with the steepest learning curve in teachers’ first few years in the classroom. However, due to a high rate of new teacher turnover, many teachers drop out before reaching their peak effectiveness and becoming accomplished educators. Their departure is an expensive one – costing the United States an estimated $7.3 billion annually. Even more problematic, research shows that our highest-need schools are especially prone to high turnover rates. In Philadelphia, 70 percent of new teachers leave the district in six years. [5] It is a costly problem, for both schools and families, and by allowing high teacher attrition rates to persist, the student achievement gap will continue to grow.

The number of beginning teachers in the U.S. has climbed sharply over the past several decades. As a result, improvements to new teacher induction have gained momentum across the education world as a mechanism to develop and retain strong teachers through increased mentorship and support. Studies also show that beginning teachers who participated in some kind of induction had an impact on their students’ achievement through higher test scores and improved attendance. [6]

During a period of budget shortfalls for the School District of Philadelphia and the mounting costs associated with teacher turnover, there is a great opportunity to invest in innovative models to improve new teacher induction and in the process, improve learning outcomes for Philadelphia’s students.

Early Childhood Education:

Much attention has been focused lately on access to quality early childhood education. From statehouses [7] to the White House [8], policymakers are focusing on early childhood education as a way to address the achievement gap in low-income communities. The effectiveness of high-quality pre-K in preparing students to learn, begin schools with the literacy skills they need to succeed, and lessen the need for remedial education later on is well documented. Early childhood education has also been shown to help mitigate language and behavioral development gaps that often form in students who come from poverty. [9] While social and academic benefits make strong arguments for increased investments in early education, the financial incentives are just as prudent. A study conducted by Nobel Laureate economist, John Heckman, found that for every dollar invested in early childhood education society generates as much as $7 in savings. [10]

However, in Philadelphia, access to high quality early childhood education programs remains a major hurdle for many low-income families. In southeastern Pennsylvania, approximately 60 percent of children under the age of five are in a childcare setting (fig. below). Of those, only 14 percent are considered high-quality. [11] Philadelphia’s needs are two-fold: providing more access to childcare (increasing childcare slots) for young children who receive informal care, no care, or spend months on Head Start and Early Head Start waiting lists; and increasing the overall availability of high-quality childcare services, including center- and kin-based programs.

Ensuring school readiness and healthy physical and cognitive development for Philadelphia’s 100,000 children under the age of five is critical to the long-term vitality of the city and its residents. It is concerning that out of 2,052 early childhood education programs, over half (58%) have no quality rating at all. Bolstering the prevalence of accreditation services and helping the slew of programs without quality ratings to become accredited is a key strategy to improving quality of childcare programs.

GreenLight is exploring models that work to ensure family-based childcare programs create learning environments for children and their caretakers to excel in school and beyond.

GreenLight Philadelphia has begun intensive, early-stage conversations with the city, local nonprofits and proven models across the country about addressing some of the major issues confronting our region. GreenLight sees great opportunity to make a long-term impact in Philadelphia by focusing on those issues where there is public awareness and demand to take action. Right now, three major issues we believe are most ripe with innovative approaches: expanding early childhood education, increasing teacher effectiveness, and connecting youth exiting the prison system with sustainable employment. Through an emphasis on these issue areas, we are excited to continue our pursuit of a concerted and collective effort to improve the opportunities and outcomes for all Philadelphia residents.

Sources Referenced:
[1] http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/cityhall/Ex-Offenders_Protest_Nutters_Speech_To_Chamber.html
[2] http://www.phillytrib.com/component/k2/item/493-phila-recidivism-rate-proves-costly.html
[3]http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/document/1324154/2013_pa_doc_recidivism_report_pdf
[4] http://economyleague.org/files/Ex-Offenders_Exec_Summ_for_web.pdf
[5] http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED498001.pdf
[6] http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/16/kappan_ingersoll.h31.html
[7] http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pennsylvania-governor-corbetts-budget-increases-funding-for-education-by-387-million-new-initiatives-to-raise-student-achievement-243542871.html
[8] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/03/04/obamas-2015-budget-more-early-education-funds-new-race-to-the-top
[9] The Long Reach of Early Childhood Poverty: Pathways and Impacts
[10] https://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/spring2011/Heckman.pdf
[11] http://www.dvaeyc.org/about/press-releases/city-maps-detail-child-care

Family Independence Initiative: Turning Communities into Families

Our GreenLight SpotLight series shares stories of impact from our portfolio organizations, clients and social entrepreneurs.

Author: Rebecca Simon

GreenLight Fund Development Intern

We recently met with one of the family members participating in the Family Independence Initiative (FII) at their office in Jamaica Plain. FII, GreenLight Boston’s fifth portfolio organization, empowers low-income families to move out of poverty through access to connections, choice and capital. Since 2001, FII has innovated and tested new approaches to economic and social mobility that demonstrate that low-income families have the initiative and capacity to move themselves and their communities out of poverty.

Families organize themselves in groups that meet monthly to share their goals and plans for improving their circumstances. At each meeting, the members report on their progress, help each other overcome barriers, identify resources they need to move forward and encourage each other. FII provides each household participating in the groups with a computer to provide data on what they’re doing.

As families set and work toward their goals, FII collects this data to understand the steps they’re taking, the barriers that hold them back, and the resources that will best support their efforts. FII is then able to invest resources based on the strengths and initiative families demonstrate towards improving their lives. These resources range from microloans to start businesses to technology-based services like Hello Wallet and Rental Karma to manage their finances and improve their credit. It is an incredibly innovative approach to poverty alleviation and the results are promising. In the first two years in Boston, families saw an average 20% increase in income. Savings went up 259% on average, and indicators on housing situations, health and well-being all rose significantly.

However, the most compelling illustration of FII’s success is best reflected in the stories of family members like Jo Ann.

Photo credit: Carl Mastandrea

Jo Ann, born in Puerto Rico, moved first to New York as a child and then to Boston where she bounced around from aunt to aunt. Today, Jo Ann lives in Jamaica Plain and has three children and five grandchildren. She was first introduced to FII through a family member who asked her to join one of the meetings.

Jo Ann was at first skeptical about FII. She wondered if it was a scam that would take money and time from the members and give nothing in return. Though it sounded too good to be true, Jo Ann decided to give it a try. After learning more and meeting other families in FII, Jo Ann took a leap of faith and signed on as one of the original 35 members of FII in Boston.

In joining FII, Jo Ann had a number of goals she wanted to achieve, primarily to go back to school. With the encouragement of her FII group, she joined her 22-year old son at Bunker Hill Community College to get a degree in human resources. She also took courses in information technology – skills she brought back to her FII group. FII gave Jo Ann not only the springboard she needed to achieve her goals, but also the confidence to be a leader in a group. When she was asked to lead a group meeting she was hesitant at first: “I had never led anything in my life and I had no knowledge of what I was going to do, but I said all right, I am going to try it.”

Now as an FII Fellow, Jo Ann takes her role seriously. The job of an FII Fellow is to lead projects and initiatives within the FII community, encourage families to work together and to create and offer resources to achieve goals. From the start, Jo Ann encouraged her group to rely on each other, share ideas and meet more often. Everyone participates in her group, and when one person wants to quit, it becomes a team effort to make sure that person knows they have many shoulders to lean on. Jo Ann’s enthusiasm is contagious and her group has come to know and love her signature drum roll. “We’re the loudest group…when someone achieves a goal or does something positive, drum roll!” 

Photo credit: Carl Mastandrea

Within just a few months of being at FII, Jo Ann saw a lot of changes in herself. She became more extroverted, social and open to hearing other people’s advice and opinions. Most surprisingly to herself, Jo Ann noticed that she started to turn to the other members of her FII group for help and advice, whereas before she would have asked one of her numerous relatives. Said Jo Ann, “on top of all of the resources, you get a family. I have a lot of family and so many cousins, but when I need something, I turn to my FII family first because I know there’s real sisterhood support there.”

One of Jo Ann’s main goals these days is to recruit new members to FII. She told us that when things fall apart, FII provides a sense of determination, perseverance and hope. She explains to the people in her community that “FII gives us a support network. You bring information to the group and you get information in return. It isn’t a place where it’s all ‘give me, give me’ and you get nothing in return. Everyone has something to give and something to offer.”

5 Reasons to Consider Applying to the Social Innovation Fund

Author: Margaret Hall

GreenLight Fund National Executive Director

A couple of weeks ago, the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) announced its fourth, and largest, funding round. Since 2010, the SIF, a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, has funded 20 intermediary organizations to select and support subgrantees, nonprofits that have innovative approaches to social change and potential to make a significant, measurable difference across the country. The GreenLight Fund received a SIF award in 2012.

As with the past three funding rounds, the application period is short, with applications due on April 22. So organizations considering applying must decide quickly. As you weigh the pros and cons, here are five reasons to apply, based on GreenLight’s experience.

1. Getting a SIF award could be a game changer

For the GreenLight Fund, receiving the SIF award gave us a national platform and spotlight we didn't have and couldn't have built nearly as quickly. Though we had recently expanded GreenLight from Boston, where we started it in 2004, to Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area, we were hardly known outside our home city. The award gave us important credibility in these new sites as we were building our networks there.

2. Not getting it could be a game changer

2012 was not the first time GreenLight applied to the Social Innovation Fund. In SIF’s first round in 2010, we applied to operate the GreenLight model in eight communities around the country in partnership with community foundations. We didn’t get it, in large part because at the time GreenLight was just in Boston and we hadn’t yet built the capacity to operate in or support multiple sites. As we learned, the SIF’s interest was in growing great nonprofits with proven results, not in building the intermediary organizations it funds to find and support these great organizations.

Though we weren’t successful on that first try, the application process itself catalyzed major change and growth for GreenLight. We built relationships all over the country that have been helpful to us in many ways since then. We envisioned GreenLight in eight other communities and pushed our thinking on what this could look like and how we would implement and support such a network.

Most significantly, as it turned out, the application process created the springboard for expanding GreenLight to other cities, always part of our greater vision for GreenLight. The Bank of America Charitable Foundation, which had committed matching funds if we had won a SIF award, allowed us to use those funds to grow GreenLight to two new sites. Two years later, we launched GreenLight Philadelphia and GreenLight Bay Area in early 2012. We applied again to SIF later that year and this time were one of four organizations nationally to receive a SIF award.

3. It will likely deepen your knowledge of rigorous evaluation

The Social Innovation Fund takes evidence and evaluation seriously. Though the GreenLight Fund has always required results from our portfolio organizations, the SIF is giving us the opportunity to go deeper with organizations and build our own knowledge about effective, rigorous evaluation. Because of our participation in the SIF, we will be better able to support all of our portfolio organizations – not just our SIF subgrantees – as they evaluate their programs in our cities.

4. It models some of the best philanthropic practices

I just attended the biennial conference of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. I was struck by how many times key practices of the SIF came up in sessions – not in discussions about the SIF, but in discussions about what nonprofits need from funders to be effective.

For example, nonprofits need multi-year funding to provide more stability and predictability as they make long-term commitments to their clients. SIF funds for five years allowing GreenLight and other intermediaries to fund their subgrantees for five years.

Nonprofits need funders who know them well, are willing to engage with them to address organizational challenges, and champion them to others. The SIF staff engages regularly with GreenLight’s staff. I’ve been impressed with the quality of their engagement with us and their flexibility. And I’ll take passionate SIF Director Michael Smith cheerleading for GreenLight any day. Likewise, the nature of the SIF requires deep engagement between GreenLight and our SIF subgrantees. High engagement is business-as-usual for GreenLight, which works closely with all of our portfolio organizations, taking a seat on local Boards, and partnering with the local leadership to launch their programs in our cities and address challenges that arise. For organizations that have not had such high engagement with their grantees, the SIF is a chance to work with nonprofits in a deeper way.

Nonprofits need flexible funding that supports the whole organization to achieve results. This one may surprise you and, depending on your organization, SIF funds may seem more or less flexible. For foundations that have never had to report to a funder, I’m sure the Federal compliance requirements feel burdensome and limiting. But for GreenLight, which imports high-performing nonprofits into our cities, SIF has allowed us to fund comprehensive costs of our subgrantees’ expansions, while reporting on the overall results they are achieving.

5. You will be able to make a significant, measurable difference for thousands of children and young people in communities you care about

At GreenLight, we spend our days working with the staff and boards of nonprofit organizations, but we never forget the real purpose of our work – to transform the lives of children, youth and families living in high poverty areas of our cities. With our SIF grant, we will be reaching at least 10,000 children and youth every year in Boston, Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area by 2018 through our subgrantees. In Boston, that’s College Advising Corps and Blueprint Schools Network. In Philadelphia, that’s Year Up and Single Stop USA. In the Bay Area, that’s Genesys Works and uAspire.

The SIF is not your father’s Federal grant program, to be sure. Adhering to the administrative and financial compliance requirements takes resources and patience. Raising the 1:1 match for SIF dollars can be a challenge. But for the GreenLight Fund, the SIF has been a booster rocket for expanding our reach and impact, improving our evaluation knowledge and skills and introducing us to an incredible community of peers, who collectively are making a powerful difference across the country.

Importing Innovation for Big Community Impact

The following post by GreenLight Bay Area executive director Casey Johnson appeared on Opportunity for All on Wednesday, March 14, 2014.

At GreenLight Fund, importing is at the very core of what we do — Boston, Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area on an annual basis. We import proven nonprofit models into our communities when we know that they will address a critical gap in services for low-income children, youth and families and achieve measurable results.

To achieve our mission of changing the life trajectories of children and families in GreenLight’s three communities, we must do this importing well, with significant work on the front-end – selecting organizations to join our portfolio – AND on the back-end – launching and supporting those organizations in our GreenLight communities.

Front-end: Selection
GreenLight first spends a tremendous amount of time identifying and understanding the most critical needs facing low-income children, youth and families in our communities. We lean on community leaders, philanthropic leaders, recent data and policy reports, as well as our local Selection Advisory Council, to help us identify urgent needs in the community. We hone in on the gaps where services are not being provided by the existing nonprofit and public sectors, and then search the country to find models that have a proven track record of meeting these needs in other cities. We look for program innovation and results, past experience with scaling and growth, adaptability, as well as strong leadership and operational excellence. Our diligence is a rigorous process, designed to ask the tough questions and get the right answers from potential organizations, and ensure a strong fit within the local community. This deep due diligence takes between 9-12 months. Once selected by GreenLight, the work does not end there – we then partner with the selected organization to build a strong foundation locally.

Click here to read the rest of this post on Opportunity for All.