Save Bank on Greater Pittsburgh, or combining Save PGH and Bank on Greater Pittsburgh

What is interesting, but unsurprising, about Peduto’s 100 policies is that there is something in there for everyone. After sifting through all 100, the entire class came into agreement around one fact: there were too many initiatives! Many of the policies overlapped and some could easily be folded into others for a more focused and less overwhelming campaign. However, to my original point, Peduto’s 100 policies succeeds in creating a dialogue for a change, and that is because there is at least one policy that resonates with every reader.

 

 

Peduto’s policy #80, Bank On: Building Stronger Communities through Financial Security, focuses on financial literacy, savings, and economic empowerment, areas that the individuals in my group feel strongly about and have touched upon in their earlier work experiences. We came together eager to work on an approach that would combat the endemic cycle of poverty and attempt to break it.

 

 

So, as a group, we surveyed existing financial literacy programs and identified a need for a central managing body, which was the same conclusion Peduto arrived at. As it is, there are some community-based organizations out there, who address this issue for different niche groups, but they leave the needs of families and individuals outside of those groups unaddressed. In policy #29, Financial Empowerment Centers: Helping to Build Self-Sufficiency and Financial Literacy, Peduto spoke of creating “Financial Empowerment Centers in their neighborhoods” to “pull these resources under one roof.” It makes sense to have a consolidated center that can be accessed by all interested parties. This center, reachable in person and by phone, would be available to connect willing users to a financial expert/social worker at a satellite location in their neighborhood. These satellite locations would be accessible at times during and outside of work hours, and they would cater to the most common financial needs of that community. We were overall pleased that our model agreed with Peduto’s, despite slight disappointment among a couple of us about the similarity on the surface level.

 

 

As noted in lecture, we realized the importance of paying close attention to existing systems to identify process stopgaps and needs, not only with regards to finding a point of entry for innovation, but to acknowledge what was already working, and why. We are completely uninterested in reinventing the wheel. Ideally, we would be able to drawn upon the strengths of existing financial programs and reuse and recycle a couple of these insights (one definition of innovation). So, at this moment, we are looking at process needs as our ‘source of innovation’ and adaptation and enhancement as our method.

 

 

Adapting insights from successful programs is certainly one way Peduto has gone himself. #80, Bank on, was inspired by a program of the National League of Cities, brought to Pittsburgh by the Urban League of Pittsburgh. #28, Save PGH: Creating a Culture of Financial Literacy and Responsibility, was inspired by SaveUSA, a program initiated by NYC officials to promote the habit of saving through a matching system.

 

Our focus for the semester, then is some combination of #28, #29, and #80. We’re relying on Peduto’s current focus on the area to mean that the timing is right. This has been a recurring theme in Design & Policy for Humanitarian Change, and a central one. Every good idea, every good solution, has to wait for its moment in time. Planners, innovators have to be graced with luck from above that their ideas come at just the right time in order to succeed. The factor of timing is one thing my team kept returning to when deciding what project to pursue, and how to best explore breaking the cycle of poverty.

 

 

Good timing means available funding, in addition to attention. United Impact Fund is supplying funding to Bank on Greater Pittsburgh as one in a long list of participating community partners. As part of the program, banks in several neighborhoods have dropped the fees associated with opening basic checking and savings accounts. There is already momentum behind this initiative.

 

 

We also have some luck with timing in a complementary area: neighborhood development. Mayor Peduto created two community-based programs, Office of Community Affairs and Bureau of Neighborhood Empowerment, that would strengthen the ethnographic research behind our suggested Bank on program well. They may also provide support for it, by hosting events or spreading the word of mouth.

 

 

The Community Affairs team has visited dozens of neighborhoods already, responding to constituent needs. This would be helpful information for us to know. The Bureau of Neighborhood Empowerment focuses on non-profit and faith-based initiatives, mixed-income housing, small business and workforce development, and high-quality education. The non-profit and faith-based and small business initiatives align with the goals of our program, too, and they may already be addressing financial-based issues. A mutually-beneficial, symbiotic relationship seems natural – financial empowerment would also benefit the economic development of these neighborhoods, and our goals seem to align with theirs.

 

 

Lastly, and most broadly, another fortuitous facet about the timing is Peduto’s whole culture of change. As reflected in the decision to pursue a partnership with the Brookings Institution, Peduto has committed himself to making Pittsburgh “a model of innovative and equitable development.” We see ourselves as part of that model.

 

 

We have a number of conversations in front of us with leaders and volunteers at community centers, faith-based initiatives, and non-profits; Kevin Acklin, Peduto’s Chief of Staff; Esther Bush, CEO of the Urban League; Howard Slaughter Jr, chairman of Bank on; Manager Grant Gittlen and Deputy Manager Lex Janes of The Community Affairs Team; and Dr. Curtiss Porter and Valerie McDonald Roberts, from the Bureau of Neighborhood Empowerment.

 

 

Through these conversations, we’d like to test the idea behind our system of a central body, satellite offices in neighborhood centers, and financial meetups in the same centers. These meetups are here to signify investment in the community, to provide a face to a name, to develop relationships and trust with participants, and to build a community of individuals who share the same mutual goal of moving forward financially. The meetups are here to take the scary, impersonal part of going directly to a bank for help away.

 

 

We’ll keep you informed of our progress!

 

– Jennifer, Team 5

Offices of Strategic Partnerships: Emerging government models for facilitating cross-sectoral social change

by Julia Pellicciaro

It is now recognized that bright ideas and their translation into transformative and meaningful change is not the sole province of any particular sector, underscoring the importance of new models for collaborative problem solving.

Overview

This post (and the one to follow) stems from my current exploration of the question What is the role of Design in changemaking efforts that occur at the intersection of the public and social sectors?

This past summer, during an internship with the Denver Office of Sustainability, I had the opportunity to interview officials in seven different city agencies as well as with over a dozen organizations (both local businesses and local nonprofits) that are active in Denver’s local food network. What I discovered overall was that while city officials seem to be sensitive to the needs of local organizations (funding, capacity, infrastructure), those organizations that don’t have an established relationship with the City tend to be unaware of either the existence of city support opportunities or don’t know how to tap into them.

This lack of awareness coupled with the lack of a mechanism to keep track of who’s doing what, where and how (and why) make it difficult for local organizations to maximize existing resources and access further resources that could help advance their cause. Additionally, there’s often a sense among nonprofit organizations that they are competing for the same funding.

As a response to these challenges, new models for cross-sectoral problem solving and changemaking have been emerging at every societal level in the commercial, social, and public sectors.

In this post, I take a look at a noteworthy new model that’s emerged in the public sector in just the past decade, Offices of Strategic Partnerships (OSPs). I’ll give an overview of a report on OSPs published in December 2012 by the Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California (PDF here). Ferris and Williams’ report covers historical context, organizational disposition, impetus for formal partnership, and challenges of such partnerships. Finally, I’ll propose some areas of opportunity for Design to mitigate these challenges.

Context

Historically, joint efforts between philanthropic organizations (foundations) and government have could be characterized as informal, episodic and happenstance. (p. 4) In the past decade, formal government organizations have arisen as a result of foundations’ and governments’ mutual goal of increasing capacity for making social change.

In their report, Ferris and Williams focus on partnerships characterized by “a shared commitment between philanthropy and government to work together to solve public problems.”

Characteristics of each sector

Foundations

Ferris and Williams characterize foundations as typically having a permanent endowment of funds that perpetuates their existence. They are neither loyal to certain nonprofits nor are subject to extensive government regulation. As a result, foundations have flexibility to craft strategies for grantmaking pursuant to their specific goals for creating impact. This ability to focus on and prioritize certain initiatives is a key differentiator from government.

Government

The authors describe government bodies as having the capacity to generate revenue (through taxation and regulation) and to “shape behavior through an array of incentives and constraints.” (p. 7) Because the purpose of government is to serve the public and its interests, government agencies have a laundry list of responsibilities, all of virtually equal importance.

Impetuses

As with many other societal phenomenon in the past five or so years, we can blame credit “the economy” for being a primary force for the emergence of new models of public problem solving in the past decade. Fiscal scarcity has bred resourcefulness in a place where those disenchanted by the powers-that-be would least expect to find it.

Another primary force is the belief that foundations are positioned to act as ‘venture capitalists’ in the realm of public problem solving.

Key sectoral differences

While there is interest in and momentum for foundations and governments to form partnerships, there are functional differences that make it difficult to give them traction. This table from page 6 of the report summarizes the differing dispositions of foundations and government agencies:

Mitigating these differences is where the Office of Strategic Partnerships model comes in.

The role and function of OSPs

Offices of Strategic Partnerships, whether at the city, state or federal level, essentially act as facilitators of collaboration between foundations and governments. This facilitation typically takes the form of translating, mediating, convening, and leveraging resources (p. 11). As put by Ferris and Williams, OSPs translate and mediate by helping “to educate government about philanthropy and philanthropy about government. ” OSPs convene by initiating and fostering “conversations among diverse stakeholders…with the purpose of having them understand their mutual interests, exchange information, and recognize the opportunities for partnership.” Finally, OSPs leverage resources by helping “to create the conditions under which such resources”—both financial and human—”can be identified, matched and leveraged more easily.”

Challenges & design opportunities

As framed by Ferris and Williams, challenges—and hence, design opportnities—lie in 3 key areas:

1. Catalyzing a shared vision

What we found time and time again is: if you don’t have this extremely highly-energized go-getter, eyes-on-fire—‘wow, this is the coolest thing ever’—person, stuff doesn’t seem to really go anywhere. It’s not enough to sort of broker the interest in this at the very highest level, but you really need… the social entrepreneur inside government who really wants to make this happen. And, if not, there’s a real challenge to kind of keep this alive.

2. Creating evidence-based, scalable solutions

Not all foundations produce evidence that can be translated into large scale solutions and few governments have resources to scale up the solutions that are incubated in the philanthropic and nonprofit sector.

3. Documenting processes to ensure clarity, transparency and accountability

I think accountability is one of the most complicated pieces of being a good partner in these kinds of relationships. People come to the table with the best of intentions to be a partner and put out what they think is right for that collaborative, but there is a rigidity within government that calls people back based on a changing political context. There is also the fact that I have a boss, the mayor is his boss, and that—ultimately,
is where the pragmatic accountability comes in…

 

So the question then is, how do these design opportunities take form? And how can design get a foot in the door to support these new models of governance that have really good intentions embedded in an ambitious, and perhaps unwieldy, undertaking?