LA Philanthropy Watch

This is my final post on the 18^th annual summit of the Empowerment Congress (a program of the California Community Empowerment Foundation), which was held last Saturday at California State University at Dominguez Hills.

The program included a welcome and introductions, a year-end review of activities in the Second District by Mark Ridley-Thomas, and a keynote address by Marian Wright Edelman for everyone assembled.  The second half of the conference featured nine break-out sessions.  I attended the workshop titled ‘Accessing County Services to Enhance and Empower Communities,’ which featured a panel discussion moderated by Steven Vasquez (CEO of GoodLife with Gabby).

Panelists included:

• Val LiHang Jacobo (CEO of the Jasmar Group and managing partner of Vajon LLC), who said, in speaking about organizing within the Pacific Islander community, “Empowerment is an art form… But the word itself is disingenuous.  It presupposes that you don’t have it.”
• Mary Jones-Darks (founding member of Baldwin Village Community in Action), who related her experiences attending community meetings, sitting in the back, and finally becoming an active volunteer.  She offered an insight that will resonate with many volunteers: even if you have 20 or 25 people in your group, “it’s going to be 4 or 5 of you doing all the work ….”  Later she spoke about the diversity of ethnic and cultural groups represented in her neighborhood.  “We live in the community together and we have to learn how to do that…. It’s a work in-progress.”
• Maria Verduzco-Smith (retired from Xerox, she has served in many leadership roles in the Lennox Coordinating Council), who offered a number of insights into activism including, “Once you’re an activist, they always ask you to do something else.” and
• Grace Cainoy Weltman (founding executive director of the Child Care Alliance of Los Angeles) , who became active in the Empowerment Congress as a USC student 16 years ago.

Ms. Weltman presented an overview of strategic approach taken by Empowerment Congress to create active, engaged citizens prepared to take charge of their communities:

Educate – holding annual summits and town hall meetings; finding opportunities to train communities and constituents; disseminating information; and developing leadership within the community.
Engage – convening around specific issues; finding opportunities to get people involved; staging dialogues and community discussions; responding to issues and events in a timely way; and sustaining activities and events.
Empower: mobilizing communities and groups around specific issues to act and make changes that improve their lives – arranging meetings with decision-makers and elected officials; conducting public campaigns (phone banks, post cards, media engagement); speaking and testifying; proposing solutions; and hosting events.

This is a model that works.  Two of the panelists related their embarrassment, before becoming activists, about their neighborhoods – because of the social problems associated with them.  Mary Jones-Darks, who lives in Baldwin Village (near Crenshaw), which had transitioned from an affluent community to one with many needs, told people she lived “south of the 10 freeway.”  Mary Verduzco-Smith, born and raised in Santa Monica, moved to Lennox and told people that she lived “east of the airport.”

But once they became active – taking responsibility for their communities, organizing their neighbors, and bringing about positive changes – they experienced a pride in their neighborhoods.

(The photograph features Grace Weltman.)

This is the second post in a brief series about the 18^th annual summit of the Empowerment Congress, which was held last Saturday at CSU Dominguez Hills.  (The first post is here.)

Mark Ridley-Thomas spoke at the gathering, offering a year-end review of activities in the Second District during 2009, before introducing keynote speaker Marian Wright Edelman.    The range of activities highlighted included this handful:

• a Florencia 13 gang injunction in partnership with Sheriff Lee Baca;
• beginning a series of motions before the Board of Supervisors to end child deaths – “I am on a mission and I encourage you to join me!”;
• a congestion pricing plan for the 110 and 10 freeways;
• an environmental battle in Baldwin Hills over oil derricks; and, of course,
• the decision of the Board of Supervisors to reopen Martin Luther King, Jr. Hospital (which LA Philanthropy Watch covered in a previous post).

The brief video shown just before Mr. Ridley-Thomas’ remarks illustrated the significance of the Empowerment Congress – and the citizens who are inspired to action on behalf of their communities.  There were clips of the Supervisor imploring residents of his district to demonstrate their support for MLK hospital by attending the Board of Supervisors’ meeting when the reopening of the facility was under consideration.  And turn out, they did.  There was standing room only at the Tuesday morning meeting.

The Empowerment Congress and the citizen-activists who comprise the organization create the conditions to bring about change.  Their presence at a Board meeting bore witness to the importance of the hospital to their community in a more powerful way than Mark Ridley-Thomas could have mustered on his own.  This gets to the heart of what community organizing is all about.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the Empowerment Congress is a program of the California Community Empowerment Foundation (which is one of scores of projects of Community Partners).

My next post on the annual summit will feature Marian Wright Edelman’s keynote address.

(Photo of Mark Ridley-Thomas holding up his iPhone as he urged the audience, at the beginning of his remarks, to text donations in support of aid efforts in  Haiti.)

Sixteen hundred people attended the 18th annual summit of the Empowerment Congress on Saturday at CSU Dominguez Hills.  The theme was “We Are the Second District: Educated, Engaged, and Empowered for Action.”

The Second District, of course, is the area represented by Mark Ridley-Thomas, who was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in November 2008.  More than 2.3 million people reside in this huge, sprawling district – one of five in the nation’s most populous county – which includes “Carson, Compton, Culver City, Gardena, Hawthorne, Inglewood and Lynwood, portions or all of ten out of fifteen Los Angeles City Council Districts and the unincorporated communities, of Alondra Park, Athens, Del Aire, Dominguez, East Compton, El Camino Village, Florence, Ladera Heights, Lennox, View Park, West Athens, West Carson, West Compton and Willowbrook.”

Supervisor Ridley-Thomas launched the Empowerment Congress in the early ’90s after his election to the Los Angeles City Council and continued to nurture the organization during his tenure in the California State Senate and, now, as County Supervisor.  Initially, the Empowerment Congress was one of many citizen-activist groups without a formal tax designation, but four years ago it became a program of the California Community Empowerment Foundation, which is a project of Community Partners, the LA 501(c)(3) that serves as an incubator – offering support and infrastructure – for fledgling organizations.

What’s the role of the Empowerment Congress?  As near as I can tell: to train the constituents of Mark Ridley-Thomas to become community organizers – to learn, first-hand, how to organize their neighbors and enlist local government in their efforts to solve neighborhood problems.

What a great idea!  This is hands-on democracy that’s straight out of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and an ideal role for the nonprofit and voluntary sector.  And, obviously, based on the enthusiastic crowd that turned out on a Saturday morning and the stories that local activists told, the Empowerment Congress has been highly successful.

In the next few days, I will offer a series of posts on this summit.

A December 3 News Update in the Chronicle of Philanthropy features the results of a national survey on volunteering.  Some of the results:

Americans who volunteered their time and skills in the past year donated an average of 10 times more to charity than folks who don’t volunteer – $2,593 vs. $230 annually.

Two-thirds (67%) of volunteers say they generally make financial contributions to the same organizations where they volunteer.

Almost half (47%) surveyed volunteers are more motivated by what they get from their experience than by what they can do for others.

Half (51%) are more likely to volunteer for an organization that has other volunteers in their age group – especially volunteers under 35 years old (59%).  A third (33%) of this under-35 group volunteer in order to network professionally (vs. 14% of volunteers over 55).  Volunteer rates increase with educational level: 61% of Americans with post-graduate degrees volunteer; 56%, with college degrees; and 36% of high school graduates.

Top reasons to volunteer:

• Supporting a cause they care about – 72%
• Because it is the right thing to do - 69%
• To fill an unmet need in the community – 54%
• To set an example for family and children – 53%

Almost a third (31%) of volunteers say they are more likely to volunteer because of the economic slowdown.  Middle aged adults (35-54) were more likely to volunteer (56%), than those older (38%) or younger (33%).  More than half (54%) of women volunteered at least monthly vs. 43% of men.

A Fund Raising Tip: The link between volunteering and giving is well-established.  This is at the center of basic fund raising strategy.  People are more likely to give – and to give progressively larger gifts – if they are involved with your nonprofit.  Volunteering is among the best ways to increase their involvement.  If they care enough to volunteer, and have an opportunity to see up close the difference your organization makes, their commitment will increase – and their willingness to give dollars (not just time).

Skilled Volunteer Roles: Finding meaningful roles and assignments for volunteers can be challenging for nonprofits.  The October 15 Chronicle of Philanthropy featured an article [subscription required] by Ben Gose, “Can the Nonprofit World Handle a Flood of Helpers,” which discussed the disappointing experiences – such as not getting their phone calls returned – prospective volunteers had when they contacted a charity they wished to help.   An April 2009 survey by Deloitte found that 95% of nonprofits want and need pro bono assistance and skilled volunteers, yet 35% do not have sufficient infrastructure to train and manage volunteers and 24% have no plans to deploy skilled volunteers or pro bono support in 2009.

As Karen Baker, California Secretary of Service and Volunteering, told the Chronicle, most nonprofits don’t even have a system for handling phone inquiries from volunteers, and while volunteers might bring enthusiasm to their role, “most nonprofits aren’t as prepared as they would like to be to take good advantage of that energy.”

The survey of 1,005 respondents from October 21-25 was conducted by Harris Interactive for the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund and VolunteerMatch.

Nearly four thousand people gathered in Exposition Park on Saturday to participate in HomeWalk 2009 – a walk to end homelessness.

Los Angeles is the homeless capital of the United States – with more homeless individuals and families than any other city in the country.  United Way of Greater Los Angeles, with several partners, is focused on finding long-term permanent solutions through two models: providing rapid re-housing for families in need – with help for them as they transition back into permanent affordable housing; and offering supportive housing – that is, subsidized housing with on-site health care, mental health care, and case management services – for chronically homeless individuals with disabilities.

Stewart Kwoh, President and Executive Director of Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California and United Way Board member, spoke at the beginning of HomeWalk.  Other speakers included City Councilman Bernard Parks and County Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Mark Ridley-Thomas.

Greg Baldwin at VolunteerMatch was disappointed with the results of the Entertainment Industry Foundation’s iParticipate campaign to write volunteering themes into TV programs (which I mentioned in an October 25 post).  “But despite the best of intentions and millions of dollars worth of promotion and PSAs yesterday’s star-studded TV event didn’t work as planned,”  writes Mr. Baldwin; he reports that his organization received more hits on its website as a result of Google searches than TV shows.

Allison Fine offers sensible comments with some perspective in response.  She suggests, for instance, that we don’t live in an either/or world and that the messages may move people eventually (even if they didn’t click on VolunteerMatch’s website last Thursday).  She also writes, “This is an opportunity  for volunteer matching websites and organizations, and the nonprofit organizations that use volunteers, to engage with EIF to develop a longer-term strategy of how to continue to raise the importance and opportunities of volunteerism.”

Here is a free link (no subscription required) to a September Chronicle of Philanthropy article on the TV campaign.

Editor’s note: On October 22 I reported on the Reimagining Service initiative and suggested that I would explore issues related to it in future posts.  This is an installment in that series.

Have you noticed Volunteer Week – October 19 through October 25 – on TV?  Today was the last day.  The Chronicle of Philanthropy described the themed programming last month (no subscription required for this link), “In an unprecedented effort coordinated by the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a leading Hollywood charity, more than 60 national TV programs have agreed to incorporate story lines about volunteers into their scripts, highlight real-life volunteers, air public-service announcements, or ask cast members to create a ‘tag’ at the end of their show encouraging people to volunteer.”  ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC (as well as several cable networks) took part.

The Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) has also launched the iParticipate initiative, complete with website that boasts a blog, Facebook links, and a widget to search for volunteer opportunities, to encourage volunteerism and service.  (EIF was also involved in UCLA’s Day of Community Service, which I reported on in a September 23 post.)

Heather Carpenter, who blogs at Nonprofit Leadership 601, was distressed to find scathing criticism of these do-good initiatives – from Glenn Beck (with whom Ms. Carpenter is unfamiliar).  Here’s the YouTube link, titled – Glenn Beck: Obama’s Call for Volunteerism = “Communism”.

In brief, Beck objects because he sees a sinister hand in EIF’s initiatives, each of which “falls into line with President Obama’s Corporation for National and Community Service and a call for more service and volunteerism …”

“Well, this is fantastic,” he exclaims. “It’s almost like we’re living in Mao’s China right now!”

He proceeds to mock, in turn, Michelle Obama, Ashton Kucher, NBC, and Disney.   Why Disney (apart from the fact, as Beck notes in passing, that they’re “the owners of ABC Television”)?  Because beginning in January, Disney will offer a free day at Disney World or Disneyland to folks who volunteer for a day at a nonprofit.  This exchange – a free day at a theme park for voluntary service (”Isn’t it working for free?”) – concerns Mr. Beck.

“Celebrities are coming together to make it cool to volunteer.  Disney gives you a free day at the park.  This is all fine, but doesn’t it seem a little bit convenient that all of this comes out now at the same time the Obama Administration is calling for it?  Mmm.  Obama controls the message through the media he holds in his pocket.  Or in his little hand – that soon, if you disobey, he’ll just go–” And here Beck, holding one palm up, forcefully smacks the other hand down on it – as if crushing a small, pitiful creature.

While the unpolitical Ms. Carpenter isn’t familiar with Beck, John C. Ronquillo is; he begins his post by saying, “…I view Mr. Beck first and foremost as an entertainer.”  Nonetheless, Mr. Ronquillo is unprepared for this bit of performance art.  “Upon my first viewing of the video, I was angry, but also perplexed. Is it really conceivable that Beck is truly that anti-volunteerism?”

Apparently so.  In an era when a major television news network is virtually indistinguishable from talk radio, and when Barack Obama is associated with service and volunteerism, it may be difficult to find consensus on their value or on the value of promoting them.

A new volunteer initiative and website, Reimagining Service, has been launched by a task force of twenty-four community leaders (led by five conveners) from the government, nonprofit and corporate sectors. The initiative (with an accompanying report, “Reimagining Service: Converting Good Intentions into Greater Impact”) proposes a number of ideas focused on managing volunteers and increasing their effectiveness to take on “our communities’ toughest problems.”

The conveners (including two Californians) are Karen Baker, California Secretary of Service and Volunteering; Bill McClements, Acting President of ServiceNation/Be the Change, Inc.; Evan Hochberg, National Director of Community Involvement, Deloitte; Michelle Nunn, CEO, Points of Light Institute and Co-Founder, Hands On Network; and Bobbi Silten, Chief Foundation Officer, Gap Inc.

At this stage, “To move the conversation forward and help implement these strategies, the Reimagining Service movement asks for your insights via www.ReimaginingService.org and your support in making these changes that have the potential for significant, transformational impact.”

As I drafted this post last night near midnight, I was not sure what to say about this initiative.  Finally – this morning -I decided to post the link without comment on the substance of the report or the prospects for the success of the initiative.

Instead, I intend to use this initiative as a touchstone or point of reference for future links and comments about volunteerism and service.   There has been much national discussion of this topic, which deserves careful, critical attention.  After two decades of experience managing volunteers – in the context of political campaigns, annual fund drives and capital campaigns, executive committees and boards of directors – I am interested in looking at these issues in a considered way.

H/t: Amy Potthast at Idealist.  ServiceNation announced the initiative earlier this week.  This afternoon Philanthropy Today highlighted Suzanne Perry’s report on the initiative in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

About 4,300 UCLA first-year students along with 300 staff, faculty, alumni and returning students rode in 100 yellow school buses to eight sites across the city (as reported by Larry Gordon in today’s LA Times).  Among their activities: repairing hiking trails at Griffith Park, cleaning up  the beach at Point Dume, and maintaining graves at the Veteran’s cemetery.  At five public schools – Gompers Middle School in South LA, University High in West LA, Contreras High and Gratts Elementary in downtown, and Kester Elementary in Sherman Oaks – volunteers swept, weeded, planted groundcover, and painted classrooms and murals.

Yesterday’s day of service, the first UCLA Volunteer Day, was organized by UCLA’s new Volunteer Center.  L.A. Works was a partner in the effort, while the Entertainment Industry Foundation provided funding with a $250,000 grant.

Chancellor Gene Block, joined by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at Gompers Middle School, said the day represented, “an affirmation of UCLA’s obligation, as a public university, t0 serve the community.”

“When you’re daydreaming about a trip to the shore this summer – I’m guessing human or animal waste in the waves that can send you running to the bathroom, doctor’s office – or worse – the emergency room, isn’t part of the picture. Am I right?

Unfortunately – that is reality, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council’s 19th annual Testing the Waters report ….”  — Nancy Stoner, Co-Director, NRDC Water Program

The Natural Resources Defense Council released its report on the nation’s beaches yesterday – and there was mostly bad news for California’s 426 coastal beaches (though results reported for the year 2008 were slightly better than the previous year).  More than 70% of California’s beaches were monitored in 2008; 10 percent of the samples collected “exceeded the state’s daily maximum bacterial standards.”  Of the nine worst beaches in California, four were in Los Angeles County: Avalon Beach-North of GP Pier, Cabrillo Beach, Santa Monica Beach, and Malibu Beach-Paradise Cove.

In May (as noted in this morning’s LA Times article on the NRDC report),  Heal the Bay offered its 19^th annual Beach Report Card ,which has grown to include beaches throughout California, not just those in LA County.  Its report included 6 (of 10) LA County beaches on its California “Beach Bummer” list: each of the beaches listed above, plus the Colorado Lagoon and the City of Long Beach LA River outlet.

Stormwater runoff and overflowing sewers, both prevalent during rainy months, are the two largest known sources of polluted beaches.  Drier conditions were credited for the improvement California beaches experienced in 2008 (compared with 2007).

But don’t despair!  On a more upbeat note, Nancy Stoner (quoted at the beginning of this post) offers a number of proposed solutions to bring us cleaner, safer beaches, including: “upgrading sewage treatment facilities and using low impact development techniques that retain and filter rainwater where it falls and let it soak back into the ground, rather than runoff it into waterways”; climate legislation that just passed the House of Representatives; better testing; and simple steps to follow in daily life.

Heal the Bay has ample volunteer opportunities “in every shape and size” for anyone who wants to get involved and NRDC invites volunteers to join its Activist Network.