This is the second installment of our podcast series.  Today, we welcome Adrian Bordone, a co-founder of Social Solutions and current Vice President. 

If you picked up a paper today, odds are you’ve seen reports of an interesting survey by Giving USA Foundation and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University that found that overall charitable donations increased by 3.9% in 2007 (or 1% after adjustments for inflation), bringing the total donations made by Americans to a record-breaking $306.39 billion.  While the news that giving in 2007 remained steady compared to previous years is reassuring to those worried about the impact of a weakening economy, the verdict isn't out yet on 2008.   

The survey found that corporate gifts and individual giving showed small declines after adjusting for inflation, but foundation grants rose 10.4% to $38.5 billion and charitable bequests were up 6.9% to $23.1 billion, contributing to the majority of the overall increase.  The survey also found strong growth in contributions to international organizations that provide relief, economic aid, exchange, and other programs. Donations rose 16.1 percent to 13.22 billion dollars and the study’s authors believe that was due to an increased awareness, especially among people born after 1981, of global issues.  Additional statistics and findings can be found here.

However, as gas prices continue to rise, the housing market remains somewhat stalemate, and job growth is minimal, the question of the impact of a poor economy on the nonprofit sector will continue to linger.  As Stephanie Strom of the New York Times points out in her story today, despite the survey's findings, there are signs of of a decline in giving. 

We’re curious to hear your thoughts—do the survey’s finding reassure you about the status of giving in a poor economy?  Or are you still concerned about this year's economic impact?

This is the first episode in a series of podcasts we will be posting to the blog. The aim of the series is to offer interesting, informal conversations with different people and personalities involved in and impacting the non-profit sector. We begin our series, with a conversation with Social Solutions founder and president, Steve Butz.

Seems like someone is running away with the fan club...literally!  A mega-fan of Dave's recently hijacked the club signage, carried it on a plane as luggage and got it home to his organization. Hartford Connects user group - what a way to show support.  Keep it coming fans, we love this stuff. 

Pictured are attendees of the Hartford Connects user group meeting. The organizations represented include: Capital Workforce Partners, Hartford Office for Youth Services, Urban League of Greater Hartford,  Hartford Public School System,  Our Piece of the Pie, Safe Schools Healthy Students,  Co-opportunity, and Hartford Jobs Funnel.

Steve Butz is a man on a mission.  Today’s official announcement of his latest endeavor, the Superstar Foundation, is proof of that.

Starting in September, the Superstar Foundation will put cash grants directly into the hands of high-performing social service workers.  What does that mean? Direct social service workers from effective organizations who are doing exceptional work will be recognized. With cash.  Cold, hard cash.  The first couple of years will consist of 5 grants at $2,000 a piece and Steve’s goal is to grow the foundation to where 30-40 recipients per year will receive $10,000 grants.  

We’ve talked about the problems young leaders in the sector feel when it comes to earning potential and other financial concerns, and now there is even more incentive to stick with the industry and improve performance.     

Visit the Superstar Foundation website for more information and check out the  announcing the foundation.  

And be sure to pass the word on to all the Superstars you know.

Dear fans,

I just wanted to thank you for your continued support. It was great to see so many of you last week at ETOlution 2008!  What did you think? Will I see you again next year?Weren't those t-shirts great?!  Check out some pics I posted from the conference.  And if you didn't get a chance to sign up, join the fan club on Facebook.

Stay cool,

Dave

This last Thursday and Friday, over 250 ETO users, funders, evaluators, and industry experts met to embark on a serious ETOlution. And it was a success.

The conference included two days filled solid with listening and learning, collaborating, and counseling – all to build upon evaluation skills.  Mark Friedman led us through the steps necessary in the development of organizational evaluation and supplied us with a cohesive language by which to move forward in our efforts.  Marty Miles put our team working skills to the test, encouraging our collaboration with other organization evaluators, in order to help us unite our common struggles and goals, and move forward more efficiently.  And David Hunter rounded out the conference not only with a panel dedicated to assessing example organization’s uses of ETO, but also by leading a track dedicated to performance management, taking us step by step through his theory of change process to show us an organizational ETOlution in real-time.

Everyone walked away super-charged – ready to take what they’ve learned back to their organizations and manage their performance day in and day out.  Ready to implement new ideas and take that extra step in working toward cultural change – all to strengthen their programs and impact the people they serve just a little bit more.  We’re even pretty sure Data and Donuts Friday will make an appearance at a number of organizations in the near future.

It’s been a long time coming.  The IRS is giving charities’ annual tax form, Form 990, a makeover—its first in 20 years.  

Starting next year, the new forms, which charities must make available to donors and other interested parties, includes a summary page that will spell out comparative financial information—both revenues and expenses—over a two-year timeframe, gives a synopsis of the charity’s mission and accomplishments, as well as outline the organization’s governance and operations, compensation for top executies and trustees, an details fundraising efforts.  While some of this information was included in previous versions of the form, the new format puts all of this information up front.  Donors who have questions where their money is going will have a better sense as to where their money is going with the pertinent information available to them right on the Form 990.

Another new item to the form is that if a charity reports more thank $15K in gross income from fundraising or spends more than that amount soliciting donations, the organization will have to answer a slew of questions and disclosures about its activities, including methods and compensation for fundraisers.

The IRS' goal seems to be an attempt to raise the stakes of accountability.  For that, we think change is good.

Social Solutions Founder and Vice President Adrian Bordone took some time out of his busy workday this week to talk about why he initially entered the social services sector and what keeps him going.

Adrian is one of three founders – all of whom left the human services industry to start Social Solutions. Almost a decade since he launched the company, today Adrian spends most of his time working with customers, helping them prepare and implement Social Solutions performance management software, Efforts-to-Outcomes (ETO).

He kids that his days consist of three-martini lunches. The reality is that he works 10-12 hour days on average and travels two to three times a month meeting with current and prospective clients and community groups to learn about their needs and help them understand how to take a performance oriented approach to service delivery. The time and energy he dedicates to his job comes with a high price –less time with his wife and three children.  But at the end of the day, the message he wants to relay to others in the nonprofit sector is, “…It’s worth it.”

Following are excerpts taken from my conversation with Adrian – offering a window into why he’s so passionate about what he does and where he sees the nonprofit sector 10 years from now.

The ETOlutionist: You’ve been involved in the nonprofit sector since the start of your career – what was the initial motivation to work in social services?

AB: Moral obligation - I felt a very strong need to dedicate my time and energy to invest in, support and strengthen the citizens and community of Baltimore.

The ETOlutionist: In an interview five years ago you said the typical nonprofit organization relies heavily on paper records stored in file cabinets as their primary means of auditing work and progress. Have things changed since then and if so how?

AB: I think things have changed – those file cabinets still exist but they now contain much more archived data that is not believed to be sufficient moving forward. More organizations are realizing the concept of a database as a tool. Whether or not they are doing it well is open for discussion.  A big challenge is that most depend on the undying efforts of front-line staff to sustain their mission.  Historically, case managers have always excelled and been more comfortable in developing interpersonal relationships than being disciplined around data management.  The human service sector has also been underserved by technology.  Therefore, by and large, the community of service professionals has not looked at technology and data as assets that help them do their work better.  That is definitely changing.  Companies like ours are improving the way we meet the community’s needs by making the technology more intuitive, seamless and transparent.  Also, users are coming to the table with a broader variety of experience using technology as part of their everyday lives – so it is a lot less foreign.  Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I believe the industry as a whole is evolving and asking more of itself and its data to look toward a performance management and evidenced based model of understanding its impact.  

The ETOlutionist: What are some of the contributing factors to this evolution and what are some obstacles?

AB: Younger service professionals entering the industry have an expectation that technology will be readily available to simplify their work.

There continues to be a good amount of insecurity throughout organizations about risks of investing time and energy in technology (even when there is a very low risk of failure), which is one obstacle. The bigger challenge is the culture shock – organizations deciding to take more evidenced based approaches have to be prepared to revisit and re-examine many of the tools and core assumptions that they have been using in the past – the stories they have been telling for years to get funding need to be evolve into data-based service models. They have to be ready to say ‘We are not sure the work that we do actually has any positive impact on the lives of the people we serve,’ then work to demonstrate their relevance and value in the community.  

While this takes a significant amount of leadership, risk management and communication skills, the best news is that it doesn’t (it can’t) happen over night.  Organizations and leaders who embark on this transition can mitigate the risk and avoid the culture shock by making slow, steady and methodical progress toward the goal.  There are very clear paths to success and very clear paths to failure.  It certainly doesn’t just happen overnight or all of a sudden. 

The ETOlutionist: Have you seen any signs to indicate that there is movement in this direction?

AB: There is a lot of discussion on the topic of data and measurement in the service community – it’s definitely a hot topic now, more so than in the past – which is great.  The discussion has also broadened beyond academic circles and into the community of service.  This is a very good sign.  I trust it will continue to grow as the funding community and service community recognize the value that data offers to improve decision-making in many phases of their lives.  We see this happening at the most fundamental level as consumers – we now have exponentially more data available to drive our purchase decisions than our parents ever did.  We take this expectation into other phases of our lives.  The workplace is a natural extension of this.

However there is still a lot of hesitation. The industry has been built on certain habits and conventions.  It has been fueled by passion for more than 100 years and that passion has often been used as the moral equivalent of performance. Old habits die hard.
 
The ETOlutionist: How can people start to think about this differently and ‘break the habit,’ if that’s what you are suggesting?

AB: One of the habits we want to break is that the momentum can be reversed all at once – that we can (or should) go from passion without evidence to evidence without passion.   Aspiring to or achieving either of these extremes would represent failure.  As I mentioned earlier, the key is providing and managing a framework of incremental changes. Make a decision to do things differently and then create a one to two year plan so that the change will not be a culture shock to the organization. Move at a pace that is reasonable so that you bring everyone along in the process.  Move, measure, modify, move, measure, modify, rinse and repeat…

The ETOlutionist: Adrian, thank you for taking time for this interview – any final thoughts?

AB: I think the big call to action for the industry is this: “If we can’t prove that we are providing some benefit to the people we serve, then we can’t be sure that we are not working to their detriment.”  There is a big, fat swath in the middle of these two extremes.  I’d like to make sure that we are all taking time to candidly assess where we and our organizations fall within this continuum and acting with some sense of urgency, discipline and diligence toward the benefit side of the equation.

I hope that sentiment will help people see that it is not measurement for the sake of measurement – it is about whether we are really saving lives or just burning resources.  It’s not someone else’s job to tell us what we are worth, it is our job to demonstrate the undeniable value of our work, so that we can continue to attract and deploy the very best resources for the individuals and communities we serve.

Check out an interview of Adrian, further discussin Social Solution here.

Joining other cities like Denver, Baltimore and Chattanooga in their request to reduce the number of panhandlers on the street, San Francisco recently began implementing what they call “homeless meters.”  Rather than throw your spare change in a cup or an outstretched hand, the city is asking you to insert that money into one of many designated meters around the city.  Designed to stop the chain of panhandling by taking away the source and  to educate the public about better ways to help the homeless population, the money in the meters will then be given to several nonprofit organizations in the city.  

While many cities have collected only a minimal amount of money when looking at the overall budgets spent on homeless-related services and programs, what has changed, however, is that many cities have cited a decrease in the number of panhandlers on the street—one of the main goals of the programs.   In fact, Denver’s Department of Human Services claim that they have seen a 92% reduction in panhandling in the downtown district since the meters were installed.  Advocates believe these programs can really make a difference in the way homeless people are served in their communities.

Slogans on meters include “Be a part of change.  Don’t give change“ and “Give your change to make a change for homeless people.”  Drop a quarter in a homeless meter in Baltimore, and see the needle move from “despair” to “hope.”  It appears as though a significant emphasis is being placed on educating people about more thoughtful giving.  

We hope organizers put the money where the slogan is. 

If the goal is to make a real change and educate the community about giving, the money has to go to effective and accountable organizations.  Otherwise, the true value of such programs is wasted.

We’re curious to hear your thoughts.  Will homeless meters and other similar programs really “change”  the way people think about charity?