Voices from the Field III: Lessons and Challenges from Two Decades of Community Change Efforts

FROM VOICES THE FIELD III Anne C. Kubisch Patricia Auspos Prudence Brown Tom Dewar Lessons and Challenges from Two Decades of Community Change Efforts Roundtable on Community Change FROM VOICES THE FIELD III Lessons and Challenges from Two Decades of Community Change Efforts Anne C. Kubisch Patricia Auspos Prudence Brown Tom Dewar Roundtable on Community Change Copyright © 2010 by The Aspen Institute The Aspen Institute One Dupont Circle, NW Washington, DC 20036 All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-89843-527-7 Pub No.: 10/012 To purchase additional copies of this report, please contact: The Aspen Institute Fulfillment Office P.O. Box 222 109 Houghton Lab Lane Queenstown, MD 21658 Phone: (410) 820-5338 Fax: (410) 827-9174 E-mail: [email protected] Cite as: Kubisch, Anne C., Patricia Auspos, Prudence Brown, and Tom Dewar. 2010. Voices from the Field III: Lessons and Challenges from Two Decades of Community Change Efforts. Washington, D.C.: Aspen Institute. Image on cover and page 1: Stephan Daigle/The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images In Memory of Harold A. Richman Contents Executive Summary . vi Preface . 2 Part I: Overview of Community Change Efforts, 1990–2010 Chapter 1: Recent History of Community Change Efforts in the United States, by Anne C. Kubisch . 8 Chapter 2: Structures, Strategies, Actions, and Results of Community Change Efforts, by Anne C. Kubisch . 15 Part II: Examining Three Core Design and Implementation Issues Chapter 3: Internal Alignment in Community Change Efforts, by Patricia Auspos . 52 R EESPOnS ESSAyS Alan Okagaki . 63 Frank Farrow . 68 Doris Koo . 72 Chapter 4: Aligning with Outside Resources and Power, by Tom Dewar . 77 R EESPOnS ESSAyS Joel Ratner . 86 Robert J. O’Neill Jr. and Ron Carlee . 88 Elwood Hopkins . 91 Chapter 5: Evaluating and Learning from Community Change Efforts, by Prudence Brown . 95 RESPOnSE ESSAyS Hallie Preskill . 106 Katya Fels Smyth . 111 Claudia J. Coulton . 115 Part III: Moving Forward: Lessons and Challenges Chapter 6: Lessons to Improve the Design and Implementation of Community Change Efforts, by Anne C. Kubisch . 120 Chapter 7: Strengthening Future Work on Community Change, by Anne C. Kubisch . 138 R EESPOnS ESSAyS Thomas Burns . 148 Mark L. Joseph . 154 Angela Glover Blackwell. 162 Margery Austin Turner . 165 Charles Bruner . 171 Concluding Message Anne C. Kubisch, Patricia Auspos, Prudence Brown, and Tom Dewar . 178 Appendix 1: Chronological Description of Major Community Change Efforts . 185 Appendix 2: Meeting Participants and Others Interviewed . 194 Appendix 3: References and Relevant Readings . 197 Executive Summary In the 1990s, comprehensive community initiatives (CCIs) arose as an ambi- tious strategy to address the needs of residents of poor communities. They in- tended to go beyond the achievements of existing community-based organiza- tions, notably social service agencies and community development corporations (CDCs), by concentrating resources and combining the “best” of what had been learned from social, economic, physical, and civic development in order to cata- lyze transformation of distressed neighborhoods. In contrast to other community initiatives that focused on one intervention at a time—such as the production of affordable housing units or improving the quality of child care—CCIs adopted a comprehensive approach to neighborhood change and worked according to community building principles that value resident engagement and community capacity building. Over the course of the past 10–15 years, the landscape of community change work has grown and diversified in many important and welcome ways. Most sig- nificant is that new kinds of public and philanthropic funding have become available, and more institutional actors are taking on this work, including Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), banks, anchor institutions (such as hospitals or universities), and new local family and health conversion founda- tions. These institutions have expanded the range of connections, leverage, and capacity available to poor communities, and created opportunities for powerful and innovative work going forward. It is important at this point in the field’s development for practitioners, ana- lysts, policy makers, and funders to be as clear as possible about what community change efforts can and cannot accomplish, what structures and actions are most effective, and what needs to change for future place-based work to be more successful. To that end, the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change has reviewed 48 major CCIs and related community change efforts of the past two decades. By assessing the evidence about what CCIs and related community change efforts have accomplished, summarizing key lessons, and providing commentary from a variety of practitioners and observers, this volume offers a framework for thinking about place-based investing in the future. vi Executive Summary What’s Been Accomplished Investments to Improve Human, Physical, and Economic Development Accomplishments in the programmatic arena—that is, activities focusing on human, physical, and economic development—have been mixed. On the positive side, the quantity and quality of programs to support low-income families increased in most of the target neighborhoods. In turn, many of the initiatives showed improvements in the well-being of individual residents who participated in programs in their target neighborhoods; but those programs did not produce population-level changes. Some community change efforts can demonstrate physical improvements in their neighborhoods as a result of housing production and rehabilitation and have been able to show related positive outcomes, such as increased property values and reduced crime. Community-based actors, often working in partnership with local government and developers, have also succeeded in sparking commercial development. By and large, however, place- based efforts have had difficulty stimulating broader economic development, as too many of the forces that drive economic activity are outside of the control of neighborhood actors. Investments to Strengthen Community Capacity Community change efforts also aim to create stronger and more resilient communities through “community building” strategies that mobilize citizens and their connections to one another, foster their ownership of the work, identify and build on their assets, and strengthen their civic capacity. Virtually all of the efforts reviewed by the Aspen Roundtable can point to accomplishments on the community building front in the form of stronger leadership, networks or orga- nizations, and/or improved connections between the neighborhood and external entities in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. There is still no empirical evidence demonstrating that increases in community capacity lead to improved outcomes at the individual, family, or community level, however. Such evidence would require sophisticated demonstration research and evaluation, which to date has not been a priority for funders and other leaders in the field. Investments to Generate Policy and Systems Change In addition to their direct interventions at the neighborhood level, community change efforts aim to spark policy and systems reform in ways that could yield positive returns for their neighborhood over the long term. Experience to date shows that community-based efforts can partially compensate for, but not solve, the problems of siloed public and private funding. Nevertheless, community change efforts have succeeded in changing policies or systems in two ways. One indicator is funding levels. The presence of an organized, legitimate, and effec- vii Voices from the Field III tive community intervention in a neighborhood increases its visibility and influence, helping to leverage new public, private, and philanthropic resources. Other examples of policy and systems change come from partnerships between communities and actors who are successful advocates and have access, leverage, and influence in the public sector. Lessons and Implications for Moving Forward: Progress Requires Better Alignment of Mission, Action, Capacity, Collaboration, and Learning Recent community change efforts have applied best practices from social servic- es and human development programs; they have taken advantage of government incentives and private sector development expertise to undertake housing and other kinds of physical development; they have been both pragmatic and creative as they seek strategies to increase assets, income, employment, and economic activity; and they have benefited from decades of experience in effective community building, organizing, and engagement. Despite these accomplishments at the programmatic, community, and sys- tem levels, most CCIs and related community change efforts have not produced the degree of community transformation envisioned by their designers. For ex- ample, few, if any, have been able to demonstrate widespread changes in child and family well-being or reductions in the neighborhood poverty rate. The efforts that stand out as exemplary have been the ones that managed to align all pieces of their work and ensure that they reinforce each other. This re- view suggests five dimensions of alignment associated with success. Clarity about mission, desired outcomes, and operating principles Ensuring that all actors are in agreement about the core purpose of the work is critical to creating and maintaining focus. Too often, the goals sought by community

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