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.

Single Stop USA: Supporting Community College Persistence and Completion

Last week, the GreenLight Fund had the opportunity to attend the release of an exciting new report at the Boston Foundation.  The report, authored by Andy Sum at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University and entitled “Closer to the Finish Line: the College Enrollment and  Completion  Experiences of Graduates of the Boston Public Schools” in large part provides very good news.  Overall, it shows that over the last decade, BPS graduates are enrolling in, persisting in and completing college at higher rates.
 

However, the report also shares news that is instructive for policymakers, education leaders and funders such as the GreenLight Fund and the Boston Foundation, who seek to move the needle on closing the achievement and opportunity gap for Boston’s most vulnerable youth. One of the areas most in need of attention is completion and degree attainment for students enrolling in community college.

“Despite a growing focus on community colleges, the vast majority of degrees (89% for the Class of 2005) are being awarded by four-year institutions.  The college graduation rates of BPS graduates from the Class of 2005 who attended four year colleges tended to match (private colleges) or exceed (public colleges) those of their national counterparts, but the graduation rate of those attending two-year public colleges fell below that of their national counterparts." 

While we don't yet understand why Boston lags behind its national counterparts, this report and other research helps us to know that conditions are much less favorable for students attending community college, including: whether student attends full or part-time, financial aid, case management and academic support.  However, for many community college students, the reality is that they also face larger issues that must be dealt with before learning can take place, such as inadequate child care, food and transportation costs, housing and financial problems, immigration issues and health care access, to name a few. 

 As we consider the myriad ways we can support BPS graduates as they pursue further education at two-year institutions, it is important to highlight the work of Single Stop USA.  Founded by Elizabeth Mason in 2001 as a New York City-based antipoverty initiative of the Robin Hood Foundation, the organization expanded to Boston in 2011 with the support of the GreenLight Fund as our sixth portfolio organization.   Single Stop's Community College program provides colleges with the resources, training, technology, and technical support to facilitate comprehensive case management, benefits access, legal counseling, tax preparation and financial coaching to address issues like debt management, budgeting and credit clean-up.  All services are free to students.

In Boston, Single Stop USA operates out of Bunker Hill Community College, where counselors have supported more than 1,200 low-income students by helping them gain access to essential life-changing benefits.  While we await local results, we know from Single Stop USA's work around the country that   preliminary data indicate that those students who access Single Stop services are more likely to stay in school.

The GreenLight Fund is excited by the conversation begun by Success Boston and sustained by the Boston Foundation and other key partners and supporters.  By continuing to invest in organizations such as Single Stop USA, we can continue to invest in the future of Boston’s young people, and the future of our community.