Robin Hood Foundation and The HOPE Program - Venture ...

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Robin Hood Foundation and The HOPE Programas good a salary as men, for example.Or women got jobs but because of issueswith childcare often had to struggle muchmore with retention. Younger people didnot do as well as older people. If you wereover 29 or 30, it was a better bet thatyou were going to finish the program andget a job.Moderator: So in ‘93 Robin Hood wasdoing evaluations with HOPE. Did youwelcome that?On the RelationshipEdwards Delsman: Oh, did we ever.The evaluation process started when Icame on board. I was able to help thestaff understand the importance of outcomethinking, but we were still lookingat our results at a fairly basic level. Thingsreally changed when we had the assistanceof the professional researchers,Philliber Research Associates, an evaluationsfirm that works with Robin Hood.We never felt that they were looking overour shoulders; they sat at the table andpartnered with us. For example, if wefound that women were getting jobs butweren’t keeping them, we’d ask, “Well,why not?” With Philliber’s assistance, wewere able to delve deeper into our datato find causes. In this case, the lack ofchild care would prompt our next question,which was, “What can we do aboutthat?” It wasn’t just information forinformation’s sake. Our evaluations led usto add to our services, in this case by providingassistance with finding child care.Having professional consultants alsoenabled us to think of our program as alab in the truest sense of the word, meaningwe could test different hypotheses.For instance, we had a sense that theamount of time that our clients had beenclean and sober before they started ourtraining affected the likelihood that theywould complete our program and geta job. Our hypothesis was that oneadditional month of clean time mightmake a big difference. So we set up anexperimental group and a control group,and we did in fact find that people whowere clean for only three months did halfas well as people who were clean for fourmonths. We couldn’t have done that kindof hypothesis testing without the adviceof research professionals. Another exampleof HOPE as a lab was our testingof the vocational impact of on-sitepsychotherapy. Our findings indicatedmuch better outcomes for those clientswho opted for therapy on-site. Becauseof the high level of significance of theseresults, we now offer therapy on-site toall of our clients.Epstein: One of the things that RobinHood saw from the evaluations of all jobtraining programs, including HOPE, wasthat there were many, many people whofinished the program and whose personaldevelopment grew and improved a greatdeal and who may have gotten medicalservices, a driver’s license, their teethfixed, or reunited with their families, andcompleted the program, but that therewasn’t solid, encouraging data on gettingand keeping a job. HOPE was very, veryproud of its completion rate, and even thejob placement rate was okay. We didn’thave a lot of follow-up information, andwe didn’t have as high a job placementrate as we were hoping to see. Actually,Robin Hood had a meeting with HOPE’sexecutive director and a board memberat the time and quite vigorously revieweda lot of broad data and asked a lot ofquestions about the program’s mission.We had a number of debates about it. Isit social services? Is it education? Is it jobtraining and placement? We did thatwith a lot of groups. We had somevigorous debate about what Robin Hood’sgoal was, which was job training andplacement as opposed to personalgrowth, and what the community-basedorganization’s goals were. There were alot of struggles around that time, and itwas like a Polaroid picture going fromfuzzy to clear in terms of what directiondifferent social services groups wereheading. HOPE is definitely an exampleof that. There were a lot of people whofinished the program and who mademany, many gains, but those gains werenot necessarily around employment.“When we make a grant, we develop a contract that hashalf a dozen to a dozen goals that include the impacton clients and other things, like agency governance,board growth, fundraising.” —Epstein“We write the goals first in our year-end report.…Thegoals start with us and then they go to Robin Hood.…That’s where the dialogue begins, and usually Suzi willwant them to be tougher or more aggressive.”—Edwards Delsman“Thinking of Robin Hood not only as a funder but as apartner, as well, that’s something I would not havethought of as possible early on. And by partner I meanthat we can go to them and say, ‘Hey, this problemarose that we hadn’t anticipated. We need help or weneed your expertise.’” —Edwards Delsman“When groups meet their contract goals, they’re notgoing to be de-funded, even if 20 other new groupscome along that are absolutely stellar, because thegroup met its contract obligations.” —Epstein“What we’ve said to grant recipients is that we will notjeopardize your funding because of a managementproblem. We expect that management problems andissues are part of the territory with nonprofits, and ourjob is to help you figure out how to deal with themrather than to penalize you for them.” —Park“You have to be totally committed to this concept. Thismeans that you have to be willing to be brutally honestand understand that’s how you’re going to learn. …ifyou view the process as a burden, then it’s not a relationshipyou should get into.” —Edwards Delsman94
Robin Hood Foundation and The HOPE ProgramModerator: Did Robin Hood changewhere HOPE was aiming or did RobinHood help it clarify its aim?Epstein: I would like to say we helpedclarify and help sharpen the focus.Edwards Delsman: Definitely. Althoughthere’s always—I guess I would call it—atension around this. For example, wemight be working with a woman whocomes to us with no teeth, who’s living ina shelter, and who does not have custodyof her child. If, at the end of our trainingshe has teeth, has an apartment, and hascustody of her child, then we believe thatshe has made significant progress.The difference is that Robin Hood—if Ican speak for you—would say, “Yes, butthat’s not what we’re funding you for.She still doesn’t have a job.” Most of theHOPE staff are trained in social work andpsychology and are frustrated when theyfeel that we are evaluated by hard outcomesonly. As the executive director, Ihave to find a way to acknowledge andaffirm all of the work that they put intogetting this woman to where she is andmake it clear that because of them shehas moved much closer to her ultimategoal, economic self-sufficiency, but she isnot there yet.Moderator: When you started helpingthem clarify their objectives, was it aprocess that Robin Hood focused on ordid it just come about through discussion?Epstein: I think it was a little bit of both.One of the ways that we took care of itwas to start making more targeted grantsallocated toward particular functions withinan organization. So, as opposed togiving general operating support, wewould give money for the follow-upcounseling or remedial instructors, orskills trainers. In the group currentlyenrolled, we’re funding case managementand post-placement support. With HOPE,you can see an evolution of the purposeof the money of each grant from year toyear. We gave general operating supportfrom ‘88 to ‘95, and, then after two yearsof looking at that, we started targetingthe money toward the training itself andthe post-placement support.Moderator: Michael, could you talkabout how Robin Hood is structured?Park: We have a programs group chargedprimarily with grantmaking functions.They own the relationship with grantrecipients, conduct the primary duediligence on grants, and are the linkwith monitoring and evaluation. They’reinvolved in questions of programmaticdevelopment of the organization, andhow the relationship or the group getspromoted with other funders. On themanagement assistance side, we havea group of people whose professionalbackgrounds are more in managementconsulting and some in direct operationsof nonprofits. So the way we divide thework internally is that the ongoingrelationship, the grantmaking relationship,and consideration of high-level issuestend to be more on the program side.Specific projects or advice often comes tothe management assistance side. One ofthe reasons we want to talk about theHOPE program is that it shows that if wehelp organizations not only get the moneyto operate their programs but also fundevaluation, they can use evaluation as atool for program improvement and forgrowth of the organization.Moderator: There can be funder outcomesand expectations, and then thereare the nonprofit’s outcomes and expectations.Hopefully they align, but sometimesthey don’t. How do you get to where youknow what you’re even measuring?Epstein: There’s a dialogue on what wemeasure in terms of the impact of directservices on clients. Now, many, manyresults that are captured by the evaluationmay be valued more or less by groups andmore or less by the foundation. When wemake a grant, we develop a contractthat has half a dozen to a dozen goalsthat include the impact on clients andother things like agency governance,board growth, fundraising. These thingsare not part of the independent thirdpartyevaluation, which is only lookingat direct services for clients, but areevaluated by foundation staff members.Park: Over the years we’ve become betterat putting the capacity-building goals in aspart of the contract goals, which may notbe the focus of the evaluation but part ofour overall evaluation for renewal grants.Moderator: Barbara, with mostfoundations you write an applicationand then you get funded and you don’thave a contract and you don’t have theseboard-building goals. How does HOPEdeal with that?Edwards Delsman: Our experience hasbeen that we write the goals first in ouryear-end report—we put down what wewould like to accomplish the next year.The goals start with us and then they goto Robin Hood. Then Robin Hood—in ourcase, Suzi—will look at them and then westart talking. That’s where the dialoguebegins, and usually Suzi will want themto be tougher or more aggressive. Thekey point is that the goals start with us.I never feel that any of them have beenimposed on me.For example, one of our goals is toincrease revenues to better secure ourfinancial stability. We negotiated a goalto add two people to our board whocan help us by increasing our individualdonor base and help us increasecorporate giving.Moderator: Let’s jump back a bit to1993 and ’94. How else did Robin Hoodget involved?Epstein: We started looking at boarddevelopment at that time because that’sbeen key for many groups in terms offundraising and in terms of having boardsfunction appropriately. Our early boardwork in management assistance at thattime was to get the board to form severalcommittees that met regularly so that thewhole board didn’t have to meet, andthere would be different representativeswithin the board to push internal governanceforward. I believe we also lookedat financial systems, whether a group’sbookkeeping and fiscal procedures wouldpass muster.Park: We got folks in law firms to comein and help us, pro bono, look throughthe organizational documents, lookthrough some of the fiscal controls.95
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