After 9/11, a Focus on Results
Remarks by Susan V. Berresford at the Federation for Community Planning’s Human Services Institute. Cleveland, Ohio, April 5, 2002
It is a great pleasure to be in Cleveland. The Ford Foundation has always found Cleveland a source of innovative ideas and inspirational projects. That is why we have made grants and loans totaling close to $10 million in this region to address such issues as urban development, job creation, educational reform, and the role and growth of non-profits. National and international foundations draw on local innovation and ingenuity, and Cleveland has these qualities in abundance.
I have been asked to comment today on the Ford Foundation's perspective on post 9/11 programming and giving. So I will address that important topic. But I also want to recognize the connection between 9/11 and the urgency of our nation's unfinished domestic agenda. As we adjust to the post 9/11 world, we must not lose sight of what we need to do at home. I want to conclude with observations from program visits I made in India last month and share with you some ways in which that trip has influenced my thinking about poverty related work in the U.S.
9/11 is certainly the right place to start since the events of that day have had such a huge effect on our country's sense of identity and official priorities. The terrible loss of lives, the shock to New York City's and the nation's economy, and the global war on terrorism are now well understood and widely felt.
As the history of 9/11 events are recorded, the sudden outpouring of $1.5 billion from private sources across the nation will become a milestone in American philanthropic history. The Foundation Center is tracking the institutional donor portion of this response and some interesting headlines have emerged from that work. Foundations, corporations and trade associations provided 57 percent of the $1.5 billion. That is more than triple their usual 17 percent share of annual giving in the U.S. Corporations and corporate foundations accounted for 73 percent of all institutional donors' 9/11 funding, again a larger than usual share of philanthropic giving. Most of this money was granted to the so-called conduit funds dealing with 9/11, with only 2 percent going to direct service agencies. Those 9/11 corporate dollars drove total corporate giving for all issues last year to 6 percent of all giving, a higher percentage than in the past. That may mean lower levels of corporate funding in 2002, a development that may affect your organizations.
The most interesting and thus far neglected story involves the work of human service agencies and their staff in the New York area. They sprang into action quickly and played crucial roles in saving lives and supporting families. These unsung heroes and heroines did valiant work. But their heroism was obscured by the bright images of courageous uniformed service workers and by media coverage that often oversimplified the human service workers' enormous challenges. Those challenges included: quickly setting up shop at ground zero; providing cash, shelter, meals and comfort to hundreds of dazed individuals and families; responding to desperate men and women seeking lost relatives; and managing relations with media people who kept asking why service and help wasn't coming faster and why the agencies didn't create overnight a common database of people they were serving. Little attention was given to what was going well. I hope that when the first anniversary of 9/11 occurs this fall, the many fabulous human service agencies and their workers will get the recognition they deserve and have not yet received.
In the wake of the enormous challenges posed by the 9/11 tragedy, we must all reflect on what was done well in the crisis and what could have been done better. This means looking at individual agency performance but also, and more importantly, at a larger question—how the combination of government, business and non-profits could have done better together. All of us need to ask how our organizations would respond to a man-made or natural crisis of 9/11 proportions and how New York's experience can inform local planning elsewhere. I hope you will think about the fact that your organizations could be on the disaster front line sometime. It would be good to do advance thinking about coordination among the agencies and sectors and how you might be able to share information about people you are serving without violating privacy or legal prohibitions. It would be helpful to think about who takes leadership roles in various sectors and who could handle communications on behalf of human services groups and the non-profit sector. Early attention to these and other matters can make a big difference.
At the Ford Foundation, we tried to be helpful in a variety of ways. We were an information hub for other donors, particularly those outside New York, a sounding board and partner to people setting up conduit funds and emergency services, and a gap-filling funder in New York and in Washington, where the Pentagon attack left many in trouble. Within days we disbursed around $12 million to various organizational relief and recovery efforts. We gave to groups helping non-profits that had lost offices and equipment. We gave to groups that helped tiny businesses that fell below the S.B.A. radar. We supported the September 11th Fund's core administrative costs, since all the donations were being earmarked for needy people, and we loaned the Fund a few of our grant making and administrative staff. We also helped the local public radio system to resume broadcasting.
I believe that our initial response was helpful and necessary. But New York has a local community foundation and soon had many conduit funds with staffs more expert than Ford's in assessing and addressing local needs. So we soon turned our attention to the 9/ll-related national and international problems best suited to Ford's grantmaking operations.
I will note just a few of the grant lines we pursued to give you a sense of the range of post-9/11 issues we have explored and funded. I think they are typical of large national foundations' actions. Immediately after the events, Ford and its grantees felt it was important for multiple perspectives to be heard through the media. This meant, for example, voices of people from moderate Islamic communities. It included people speaking about earlier periods when the U.S. felt at risk from foreigners and its reaction to the foreigners within our borders, some of which our country now regrets, such as the internment of Japanese individuals and families. It was important to help experts explore the issues behind the headlines and broaden understanding about the countries from which the attacks came.
So with these objectives in mind, we funded a media advisory organization to counsel grantees and others about participating in news media programming and interviews. Few people were well prepared to react to 9/11 but many wanted to participate effectively with the media in that difficult time. We also funded organizations alert to the civil liberties issues likely to arise. The A.C.L.U. was among these grantees, as were a few rights groups in countries where Ford works, particularly where the overseas war against terrorism might justify unlawful and abusive activity.
With other large foundations, notably MacArthur and Hewlett, Ford began to ask how we could help improve public understanding in the US about foreign affairs. During the post-9/11 period, people, including our nation's president, were asking why this tragedy happened. There was widespread interest in why particular countries seem to generate terrorists and the causes of terrorism, and what could be done about them. In response, several foundations now fund internationally oriented public education projects analyzing these issues, exploring varied answers on television, radio, and in educational forums.
One segment of Ford's work focuses on informing people about the many streams of Islam in the world today, including within the U.S. The grants support the work and public voices of men and women whose beliefs and studies find Islam consistent with human rights principles, the full development of women's skills and authority and other such concepts. I brought a few copies of Ford's recent magazine issue that covers one part of this work. You may want to pick up copies of this magazine or see it on our website, fordfound.org.
All of our post-9/11 grantmaking reflects our conviction that the citizenry is best served by exposure to multiple viewpoints that broaden understanding of complex issues and enable us to move beyond stereotypes that are often simplistic and misleading. It also reflects our belief that a vigorous debate about the U.S. role in the world is healthy for us and fully consistent with patriotism.
A final observation about post-9/11 funding pertains to the psychology of the grant maker. For many living and working near ground zero, the 9/11 attacks had the same effect any terrible shock. They forced us to think more deeply about what we do, how we live our lives, and whether we can do better. Grant makers comment that they feel a stronger urgency about getting their work done, making a difference, seeing results, being effective. This is a normal reaction to a terrible and frightening event. But I believe it will be felt in all our grant making for some time to come—and that is to the good, for we have important work ahead of us.
That work must include the unfinished business in poor communities in the U.S. and on matters of race, ethnicity and diversity here at home. Just as we see overseas the dangers of poverty, prejudice and limited opportunities for decent, dignified lives, we have such challenges here at home. Our country's core ideology promises equality, fairness and the pursuit of opportunity for all. But many in the U.S. still live in conditions and among people making a mockery of these promises. We who are gathered here address these problems in our work every day. But we need more support and greater public commitment to these concerns.
Much of Ford's work focuses on this area of need, such as our work on behalf of a range of minority and disadvantaged groups. At the policy level, for example, we believe it is important to support affirmative action as one tool that promotes equal opportunity and understanding of diversity. That means we fund people defending the concept of affirmative action and support research about it and about alternatives being tried in California and Texas where affirmative action can no longer be used. We support school reform designed to ensure that all students get quality schooling and, for those who want them, opportunities to go on to college or university. This work is concentrated in schools in disadvantaged communities. We fund the largest national experiment to build matched savings accounts for the poor—they are called IDAs (rather like IRAs). They help people build assets to buy a house, go to college or start a small business. And we support a large, national experiment to bring home ownership to lower income families and disadvantaged minorities. We also support challenges to predatory lending practices.
Ford's diversity work focuses strongly on race and ethnicity matters since those aspects of diversity still require attention. But we also have a decades-long program on feminist issues and a newer program to support the efforts of gays and lesbians to gain fair treatment. For example, a recent Ford grantee creates materials that help school children understand the negative effects of name calling about gays and provide guidance to teachers and administrators coping with these problems. And we support advocacy for gay and lesbian issues. We also have a large program related to immigrant and refugee matters, including the prejudice and other problems these groups encounter and what can be done about it. In our minds, diversity is a broad and inclusive word.
We want to help this country make its great diversity an asset rather than a source of tension. We believe diversity in human beings is as valuable as biological diversity and as worthy of our attention. We know that diversity is a central part of our nation's historical legacy and at the core of our values, however imperfectly we have addressed its complexities. The U.S. and the other large, pluralistic democracies of the world must continue to improve the match between aspirations and realities related to diversity. 9/11 should not distract us from this work.
As we work to combat poverty and marginalization here at home, we should be attuned to lessons we might learn from abroad. I recently visited India, as I have done regularly over recent decades. Like us, India is a vast democratic nation with a diverse population. I came away with some insights from a very interesting program I observed in Bombay, which I believe holds lessons for us all.
As Bombay's poor population expanded, some of the most disadvantaged families built shacks beside the railroad tracks on which thousands commute to work each day. These humble shacks extended to the very edge of the main track. Sometimes they allowed only a quarter inch clearance from the moving trains. Every so often, a dwelling slipped a bit and a train would crush it or babies would crawl on the tracks, with tragic results. Ultimately, the horrors became so frequent that trains slowed to a crawl and often trains were cancelled, causing all kinds of delays and disruptions. Efforts to move the thousands of people from these dangerous locations were made but many refused to go. When some did move, more families flowed in to replace them so there was little hope for real change.
Then two very skillful community organizing groups entered the picture. One is a national association of pavement dwellers—very poor people who live and work on public spaces like pavements. The association gives its members protection and strength in negotiating with police and other local authorities so they can live and work on the pavement safely. The other group is an association of women's micro-businesses, also involving the very poor of Bombay. The two groups joined in an alliance. They contracted with the city of Bombay to relocate the 30,000 or so individuals living along the tracks, restore and protect the space next to the train tracks and help the relocated families improve their lot. This was a highly unusual contract for the city authorities. It is rare for city officials to turn matters like this over to non-profit groups. Now several years later, the successful program has spread to other cities with similar problems.
The Bombay program first offers families a safe place to live in a "transition" location near the markets and economic activities they rely upon. In simple but clean and stable housing, people can live, work, sleep, cook and gather safely in transition.
Later they are moved to permanent housing created for them by the federation with governmental support, much like housing created by community development groups in the U.S. The federation, not the government, plans and designs this housing. These permanent communities also have space for small businesses and participation in federation activities. The original trackside shack sites are turned into cultivated land where the community people grow basic crops for consumption and sale. Amazingly, this whole process takes place peacefully, steadily and with minimal staff structure.
It is hard to imagine relocating tens of thousands of people without a huge staff infrastructure, turmoil and protests. Think about whether any of our own agencies could do this alone or in combination. But this is what happened.
The Bombay story has much to teach us. I see five factors as important in its success. First, the local organizing groups of pavement dwellers and micro-business people are trusted by their constituents because they protect and assist them in very tangible ways, from preventing bodily harm to helping them earn livelihoods. Second, the program's work is based on the priorities of the associations' members, not the views of professionals, about what would be good for the poor. And its operations are transparent—every move, decision and plan is revealed to the membership as a matter of accountability to those who have set the agenda. This minimizes fears about favoritism in the process of moving, relocating, getting new space and more. Third, the alliance organization invests heavily in research. Thus, its senior staff know which government programs they can tap into, what government-owned land can be used for relocation or new construction, which bureaucrats are flexible and approachable, and what compromises might be possible. In other words, the work is explored as a potential partnership between government and the poor, departing from the social protest model. Fourth, because this approach makes government and railroad officials look like heroes, not villains, the government has been flexible. For example, it waives building code rules so that the new housing, while far from ideal, represents a huge improvement in living conditions for the very poor. Fifth, the federation built a program model that can be expanded through local action without a growing program staff and infrastructure.
We can learn from this example by asking ourselves several questions as we work on the unfinished national anti-poverty and asset-building agenda. First, do the projects we engage in have clear, immediate and tangible benefits for those we seek to help? Second, do those we are supposed to be helping really understand and agree with what is being done for and with them? Are they setting or helping to set the agenda in ways that build their confidence and decision-making capacities? Third, are the successes clear enough to gain public officials' support and a willingness to be flexible about rules that impede rather than speed progress? And finally, have we created a self-generating process that can go on and on with modest, rather than deep, support from professionals?
India's issues and conditions are different from ours but the value of a comparative perspective is that it makes you stop and think. You cannot reproduce the same program in many locations foreign to each other. But you can ask about the underlying principles that account for success and adapt those applicable to your situation.
I suspect we can do better on the questions I noted, and hope we will work to address those gaps. Asking the kinds of questions prompted by that program in Bombay can help us do better. We have to do better and reaffirm our role in helping to make our country fair, prosperous and safe for all our people.
Such broadened thinking and flexible perspective is more important than ever as we face the post-9/11 world. For even as we work with heightened urgency on the immediate legacy of emergency and international implications of that tragedy, we must also work with urgency on the unfinished agenda of relieving poverty and suffering in our communities. That challenge lies before us. We have the capacity to take it on and we should do so. Thank you.