Proposition for Development Workshops for Grassroots Program Leaders

The plan is to bring development skills to a wide range of grassroots organizations offering services to youth in favela communities. These are small groups working directly in the communities who generally do not have access to capacity building classes and skills development. More than 80% of these organizations are staffed by local community leaders who do not have training in areas of social work, yet whose efforts fulfill a much needed service and fill a void within their communities. Through strategic assistance we seek to build, strengthen, and scale high potential community- based organizations serving the core developmental, learning, and educational needs of at-risk children living in the poorest and most miserable conditions in Brazil’s favela communities.

These resources will be delivered through a partnership with ‘Movimentos em Rede’ (Movements in Network) {a number of former CDI -(Committee for Democracy in Information Technology) people} and other International NGO’s that seek to foster stronger organizations and with an infrastructure of peer networking aided by technology to share resources, processes and best practices aimed at a stronger more organized 3rd sector. By joining grassroots social programs from different and varied locals working in similar projects throughout Brazil with technology for remote communication we can effectively strengthen more groups with an added bonus of influencing policy and lending a stronger voice to these normally disenfranchised community leaders. This technology will also deliver to them capacity building tools, pedagogical processes, evaluation techniques, and IT skills et al.

Dreams Can Be Foundation has partnered with UNESCO to aid in the development of the workshops and to assist in the financial management of resources throughout the life of the project.

This is it in a nutshell. The way that we see it is that we cooperate with local capacity building organizations that normally work on a fee for services basis to develop the content and deliver the curriculum for a good majority of the capacity building modules with themes such as:

 Strategic Planning  Budgeting  Partnerships  Income generation and self sustaining models  Grant proposal writing  Working with volunteers  Community communications  Program registration for (NGO Status)  Simple program evaluation based on the new World Bank Model  Board development

1 ‘ Atlas da Juventude’ is already mapping community programs and have completed the Tijuca community research. Additionally, we have buy-in from several International Foundations which are peers of Dreams Can Be Foundation. We will begin capacitating a select group of projects that have already been mapped in Tijuca as our demonstration project.

We believe that all our programs are working in similar areas toward the same end and having all of us involved in a project that deals with capacity building of programs and not replicating services but actually working in partnership will give us the ability to bring more attention and resources to the project and also ensure that the project has longevity.

Collaboration An important aspect of an organization’s relationship with its community is the way it collaborates with other organizations. No single organization can effect lasting change in a community. Organizations must collaborate—by planning together, sharing resources, and using complementary strategies—to amplify their work. Organizations that do not collaborate risk working at the margins and limiting their impact. A collaborative network of organizations— working locally, statewide, regionally or nationally—increases its chances to affect public policy, influence public opinion, and make lasting change.

Collaboration takes time. People and organizations have a hard time working across differences in race, class, issues, strategies, and ideology. These differences obscure the common cause that brings organizations together in the first place. If organizations are effective at building understanding and collaboration, the prospects brighten for a broad-based and sustainable movement for change.

It is with this idea in mind that Dreams Can Be Foundation wishes to move forward in establishing this “Institute for Leadership Training in Sustainable Community Development” idea. We believe that if enough effective and well thought of organizations participate in the creation and implementation of this work, the eventual success and reward will be that much greater. Additionally, we will be able to lessen the burden of strengthening organizations that allows us to carry out our mission of helping them. Hopefully, the final outcome will be a program that funders and corporate social responsibility types cannot ignore. There is strength in numbers.

What is Organizational Development? Organizational development (OD) is the process through which an organization develops the internal capacity to be the most effective it can be in its mission work and to sustain itself over the long term. In healthy nonprofit organizations, the relevant stakeholders and staff are engaged continually in the process of analyzing and improving their effectiveness and sustainability.

Why Invest in Organizational Development? From our perspective: The Dreams Can Be Foundation invests in OD because we are deeply troubled by the debilitating impact of persistent poverty and racism on the human spirit and on community life in the region. We seek to support nonprofits that have demonstrable impact in areas where poverty prevails and race divides in an

2 effort to fulfill our mission and realize our vision of- “all children of Brazil having the means to realize their hopes and build their dreams”.

Unfortunately, the problems associated with poverty and racism are deep-rooted and will not be solved in the short term. Rio de Janeiro needs effective nonprofit organizations that will be more persistent than the difficult problems they tackle. From the nonprofits’ perspective: Organizations that work to build just and caring communities are driven by a commitment to mission—a mission to address community needs, build community assets, and ameliorate injustices. These groups value and commit to organizational development (OD) work when they can see that it directly affects their ability to make a positive difference in their communities.

• Many organizations that faced critical leadership changes or financial crises credit their OD work with their very survival. • Others believe their OD work improves the quality of their programs and allows them to reach more constituents. • Several groups see the OD “payoff” in increased access to funding sources based on more effective communications, improved visibility and strategic fundraising plans. • Others see that their work to make organizational policies (from employee benefits to stakeholders’ development) consistent with the values underlying their missions builds credibility and accountability in the eyes of constituents and supporters. • Finally, virtually every group sees increased skills among staff and stakeholder members, the most vital resources of any organization.

Lessons for Dreams Can Be Working with a few organizations in Rio on organizational development has been a rich and rewarding experience for the Dreams Can Be Foundation staff, volunteers and interns. We have learned a lot about the organizational structure or lack of it through our grantmaking work in Brazil and believe that in order for the donations that we are entrusted with to be truly useful and to meet the intention of the donors purpose, it is our responsibility to imbue these community based organizations with the values and infrastructure necessary to carry out their mission with a solid development strategy.

Together and through our organizations work we have learned some lessons about building effective, sustainable organizations and about the role foundations can play in that work:

• Organizational development grants are one way to fulfill the Foundation’s purpose and values.

Organizations that tackle persistent poverty and racism must be effective and sustainable for the long term. Organizational development is a means toward that end. By investing in organizations whose missions and impact are consistent with the Foundation’s priorities, we can further our own mission to help build just and caring communities.

• Organizational development is a wise strategic investment.

3 In studies of organizations who carry out OD work a majority of them report that they have transformed themselves to become significantly more effective. Indeed, many report they may not have survived if they had not addressed internal management, human development, program development, and funding issues through their OD work.

Of course not all organizations will benefit from OD work, for a variety of reasons, we believe that these are the organizations that at the end of the day will make poor social investments and hopefully will come to see that for themselves and act accordingly.

• The impact of organizational development work is hard to evaluate.

Ideally we would like to evaluate our OD work. We will measure OD outcomes on two levels:

1) Do organizations improve their internal effectiveness? 2) Does better organizational performance translate into greater community impact?

As we consider various approaches to evaluation, we believe that mounting a scientific evaluation to answer these questions would be both unreasonably expensive and modestly useful. Instead, we hope to rely upon external evaluation with targeted questions, grantee self-reports, first-hand conversations between staff and grantees, and observations to judge the impact of OD scholarships.

• Nonprofits need financial support to become more effective organizations.

OD work takes staff and relevant stakeholders’ time, requires investment in training and technology, and precipitates other costs that can eat into program work. For community-based groups, these resources are usually nonexistent. As a result, organizations’ effectiveness and efficiency can suffer. By excluding operating costs and organizational development work from project grants, foundations jeopardize the impact of projects and limit organizations’ long-term effectiveness. We hope that the education invested in the individuals from these organizations will lend their programs credibility to fund this aspect of their work.

• Nonprofits are skeptical and unaccustomed to foundations investing in more than their projects.

Many organizations need help translating their organizational development needs into solid outcomes, work plans, and budgets. Over the last four years, the Dreams Can Be Foundation has found that making a grant to an organization good for a one year period with a plan to become self sustainable in that time is not realistic. We believe that work should be done on the OD area of the program before they are even granting a majority of funding. This scholarship opportunity will allow us to teach, prod, and monitor nonprofits as they tread new OD ground. More importantly, we will have had to work diligently at building relationships of trust with programs to convince them that we are committed to building their effectiveness and sustainability for the long term.

4 • The time and circumstances have to be right for an organization to tackle significant OD work.

For some groups, urgency of mission work does not allow time for major OD work. For others, stakeholders and staff are so mission-driven that they constitutionally have little patience or interest in building an organization. For still others, the staff is too weak to engage deeply in the organization’s mission or OD work. We have learned that small-scale OD projects can spur modest improvement, but the kind of OD work that builds organizational competency and furthers program effectiveness requires the buy-in and commitment of all relevant stakeholders and staff.

• There is power in convening grantees for peer learning and support. At our annual gathering of grantees and in smaller learning clusters, relevant stakeholders and staff of participating groups share lessons from their struggles to improve their impact and strengthen their organizations. Such opportunities offer moral support and create formal and informal alliances among peers to support program and OD work.

Anecdotal evidence tells us that some of these peer relationships will outlast formal participation in our OD Workshops. This is something that we seek to help us, to help them to help themselves.

• The Partners and programs will learn to be flexible and accountable to each other.

At the beginning of the workshops, we will negotiate specific OD outcomes and determine what evidence will be collected to assess progress. Since organizational development work does not always proceed as planned, we will reevaluate activities and fine tune our support offerings as necessary, according to what the programs are learning and achieving. Feedback from these exchanges and through the external evaluation will improve and shape the direction of the OD Program.

• Deeper relationships between the Partners and projects will result from our longer-term investment, shared learning, and mutual accountability.

Dreams, The Partners and the program participants will know and trust each other enough to serve as mutual resources for advice. Our shared journey will inform our respective work and expand our collective understanding of OD and mission work. Just as important, our relationships link us as people who share similar values and offer us unique networks for moral support and spiritual connection.

• Dreams Can Be Foundation believes in the effectiveness of OD work because we are committed to our own ongoing OD work.

We have learned first hand the payoff, the struggles, and the practicalities of doing OD work. By being deeply engaged in our own clarification of purpose and values, strategic planning, relevant Board development, staff restructuring, policy development, and evaluation, we have learned along with grantees as OD practitioners. As a matter of fact, it is our own organizational development work that has brought us to the point that we will begin offering these workshops.

5 Project start date:

Mid March (After Carnaval 2006)

Budget

All Money for DCBF expressed in Reais with exchange rate of 2.3 (Sept. 2005)

DreamsBrasil DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS SUMMARY BUDGET 2006 Budget BR Real USD (exchange rate of 2.3Reais) Indirect costs Salaries & Wages $ 5,200.00 $ 2,260.87 Stipends $ 2,600.00 $ 1,130.43 Benefits & Payroll Taxes $ 1,900.00 $ 826.09 Office space $ 1,200.00 $ 521.74 Telephone $ 500.00 $ 217.39 Total Indirect Costs $ 11,400.00 $ 4,956.52

Non-Personnel Course materials $ 12,000.00 $ 5,217.39 Transportation (participants) $ 3,500.00 $ 1,521.74 Misc. Fundraising Expenses $ 100.00 $ 43.48 Space Rental $ 6,000.00 $ 2,608.70 Office Supplies $ 300.00 $ 130.43 Art & Graphics $ 1,000.00 $ 434.78 Audio- Visual Equipment $ 200.00 $ 86.96 Postage $ 1,000.00 $ 434.78 Printing & Copying $ 6,000.00 $ 2,608.70 Advertising / Marketing $ 1,000.00 $ 434.78 Bank Fees $ 60.00 $ 26.09 Website Page Creation $ 250.00 $ 108.70 Food & Beverage $ 9,000.00 $ 3,913.04 Translations $ 1,000.00 $ 434.78 Professor/Speaker Fees & Expenses $ 12,000.00 $ 5,217.39 Internet Access For Groups $ 12,000.00 $ 5,217.39 Computers $ - $ - Travel $ - $ - Movimentos em Rede Technology $ 5,000.00 $ 2,173.91 Board of Director Expenses $ 1,000.00 $ 434.78 Misc.Expenses $ 500.00 $ 217.39 Total Non-Personnel $ 71,910.00 $ 31,265.22 TOTAL $ 83,310.00 $ 36,221.74