Investing in What Works for Kids: Shifting Resources for Civic Infrastructure
In an ideal community, resources would flow to support kids. Public and private funders would invest in what’s working to get better and more equitable outcomes. Instead of competing for dollars, organizations could work together to make sure that each has what they need to fulfill their mission and contribute to the community’s shared vision.
Across the country, members of the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network are building the civic infrastructure needed to make that a reality. Civic infrastructure joins leaders and community members so they work collaboratively, using data, to improve outcomes. It makes it possible to shift resources to where they’re needed most and supports community members to make decisions about how resources are used.
Shifting resources makes it possible to transform systems, and transformed systems mean that kids and families can thrive. But how can communities get past scarcity, inflexibility and competition? The lessons of civic infrastructure are a good place to start.
By learning from Cradle to Career Network communities and through work with Nonprofit Finance Fund, we’ve seen how resources can be allocated and used effectively and equitably through focusing on outcomes, collaborating across sectors and following the lead of the community.
Focus on outcomes, not outputs.
Civic infrastructure isn’t something we can see or touch. It takes tangible work to build civic infrastructure, including connecting people and organizations, creating and maintaining data systems, advocating for policy changes and more. But it can be harder to measure and less appealing to funders when compared with traditional direct service work. Often, the work of building civic infrastructure gets classified as “overhead,” which is systematically underfunded.
To support the strong civic infrastructure that communities need, funders need to focus on outcomes — like student success measures — rather than outputs, like the number of students served by a program.
Programming is frequently tied to funding. But what happens when the grant runs out? Often, progress is lost, with no lasting difference made for youth. The efforts of a community should instead be tied to the community’s shared vision, and funding should support this shift. When a group is committed to improving outcomes for kids and families — and when funding supports that commitment — the work gains the continuity it needs to make a true impact.
To get better outcomes, public and private funders need to uncouple their funding from outputs. Funders should instead make unrestricted investments in the organizations that are building civic infrastructure, so that the community can respond to the evolving needs of youth and families.
Funding focused only on measuring outputs tied to individual programs or services narrows the perspective of the work. One organization alone isn’t responsible for reaching a community’s goals. Flexible, unrestricted investments into communitywide efforts give communities what they need to support the success of every child.
Eliminate silos and collaborate across communities.
Organizations can’t solve community-level challenges alone. Civic infrastructures calls on leaders from government, health care and business to faith-based organizations, education, philanthropy and more. Real change is possible when people work across silos.
In Washington state, Cradle to Career Network member Graduate Tacoma brings together more than 350 organizations, unified in efforts to increase graduation and college completion rates and close racial equity gaps. The Graduate Tacoma movement is led by the Foundation for Tacoma Students, which facilitates communitywide commitment and action. The Foundation also manages the movement’s strategic data use, including maintaining a central database of partners’ data and analyzing data to uncover insights. After a decade of collaboration, graduation rates in Tacoma increased from 55% to 89%, with the gap narrowing between students of color and white students.
This work takes effort from all areas of the Tacoma community, so it doesn’t fit neatly into a funder’s health portfolio, housing initiative or other categorization. Funders need to invest in work like this, which spans the community for a deep and lasting impact.
A unified community also allows for a comprehensive view of where funding is allocated. In San Antonio, Texas, Cradle to Career Network member UP Partnership collaborated with the Children’s Funding Project to develop a fiscal map. The map identifies, tracks and analyzes all funding sources for programs and services supporting children and youth across Bexar County. The effort became a starting point for the team’s work to identify what funding was likely to be impacted by COVID-19, and this foresight helped the community prevent, lessen or recover from these impacts.
Let the community lead.
In work across the community, we need to look first to youth, families and community members for their expertise around the challenges they’re facing — and we need to fund their solutions. Cradle to Career Network members nationwide are shifting decision-making power to make sure that kids and families are put first.
In Bridgeport, Connecticut, Bridgeport Prospers advocated for the community and received the only community-based COVID-19 4-CT grant. This grant was directly invested into PT Barnum, the largest low-income public housing community in the region. PT Partners, a group of 12 leaders from the PT Barnum community, guided fellow residents in deciding the best use of those funds. As a result, residents accessed internet connectivity in the housing complex for the first time, along with STEM tutoring, fresh food deliveries and more.
In South King County, Washington, the Road Map Project’s Community Leadership Table created guidelines to inform the use of Rapid Resource Funds that directly funded grassroots organizations supporting youth and families. The Youth Healing Project, a youth-led community funding effort, is providing resources to organizations and young leaders advancing youth-led solutions that improve the mental health and well-being of young people.
These communities and more show how shifting resources is critical to creating change. Read more about how Cradle to Career Network members are aligning resources toward shared goals here.
Now is the time for philanthropy to reimagine funding to support the civic infrastructure that’s making a lasting impact in communities. Intentionally investing in this cross-community work will allow philanthropy, business and government to accelerate positive social change. And allocating funding and other resources based on the interests and priorities of youth and families of color and those experiencing poverty will make sure that change is rooted in equity.
For information about investing in this work at a national level, visit StriveTogether.org. Follow us here on Medium for more on the impact of civic infrastructure.
