CBO Task Force recs. & comments on specific recommendations - part four

May 18, 7:36 PMSF Bayview ExaminerJeffrey Betcher

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This is part four of a series of reflections, from a community-building perspective, on the recent report and recommendations issued by the SF CBO's Task Force about the local nonprofit sector and its interface with government.  Past posts include: Community-building lens, Role of foundations, and Call for CBO collaboration.

“The City should identify and incentivize opportunities for nonprofits to use management services organizations (MSOs) and consolidate back office functions."

This is an interesting idea well worth discussion, so long as that discussion doesn’t take the spotlight off of the City’s need to improve its own administrative functions where nonprofits are concerned.   Even folks at the management services organizations (MSOs) the report champions might be delighted if the city streamlined its own administration and dealt with the problems associated with the often cumbersome reimbursement system and contract development process that come with many local government grants.  In any case, necessitating the creation or expansion of a layer of connective tissue between the City and MSOs opens a new set of potential problems without necessarily addressing all the City’s internal systems issues.

Other options that could be discussed include strategic expansion of skills development services and technical assistance provision that strengthens community-based work at the roots, and incentivizing nonprofits capable of acting as responsible fiscal sponsors to emerging projects (a resource that is tougher for community-builders to find all the time).

“The City should play a proactive role in supporting organizations that are contemplating merging or closing.”

Yes.  Nonprofits in trouble probably have been stretched thin and sapped of the enthusiasm of all involved by the time the decision-making process associated with merging or closing up shop begins.  That process can be an emotional one for board members and staff who may be exhausted already.  Staff and volunteers with the most experience may be the first to find other places to work  or volunteer.  But the remaining assets, including constituencies of concern and any remainder of funding, are all the more important to the populations the organization had been serving.

“The City should aggressively pursue federal, state and private funding for community services.”

No.  The city should not compete with nonprofits for private funding.  Sure, go after those federal and state dollars, and enlarge the revenue pie for nonprofits in ways the local nonprofit sector can’t do itself.  But leave a dollar or two of private funding for nonprofits to scrapple over, directly, with foundations.  With all the added oversight the recommendations likely preface, CBO’s will need every dollar they can get from sources that allow expenditures that the City does not.  (For instance, purchase of food and water for volunteers is usually prohibited in City awards, even though the value of the volunteerism makes the purchase of fruit and trail mix a good investment from the community-builder’s perspective.) 

There are larger questions that come into play, too, when we talk about government vacuuming up private foundation money.  Isn’t tax revenue supposed to support government activity rather than foundation money that isn’t necessarily subject to a democratic process?  Isn’t government supposed to encourage leadership in other sectors, as it could in this case by pushing private foundations to do direct gifting as opposed to behaving like a governmental grant-making agency?  What happens to government watchdog groups and others if we continue the trend toward government re-awarding grants and contracts from private foundation gifts?  

Regarding putting the City in the role of fundraising competitor, the report notes that “…the City must centralize and increase coordination among departments in order to use local dollars strategically and to compete successfully for funding.”  That returns the report’s focus to strengthening the City’s own interdepartmental accounting, legal and other systems as the primary need, while at the same time conflicting with another recommendation to encourage CBO’s to diversify their funding bases with nongovernmental money.

"The City should develop a strategic plan for delivery of essential community-based services to the City’s neediest residents."

Maybe.  The City needs a strategic plan for internal purposes.  Also, it’s fair to require that nonprofit organizations that receive large sums of City funds fit into a comprehensive vision and strategy that the City defines.  However, the best ideas for social change seem to me to have come, not from government, but from the grassroots, small business, and science and industry.  Some ideas remain off City radar even after they are proven to others, and therefore could be left out of a strategic plan that would further marginalize those ideas for years to come.

Tying nonprofit activity to a City strategic plan risks poisoning the well of emerging ideas if nonprofits end up spending their creative time exploring how to align their programs with the City instead of how to act independently and nimbly in attending to the populations they serve.  Some nonprofit activity emanates from organizations that, while operating in San Francisco, are also regional, statewide or national in structure or reach.  The work of those nonprofits could be unnecessarily complicated; or that work could undermine the City’s strategy.

Tomorrow: “Dear task force: Please consider the value of grassroots community-building strategies, and the impact proposed changes might have on them.”