Mary’s Center for Maternal and Child Care

• Overview: Established in 1988, Mary’s Center provides medical care as well as social and educational services to underserved and un- or underinsured residents of D.C. and its Maryland suburbs. All social and educational services are provided free of charge, and no one is turned away from medical services for lack of payment. Mary’s Center serves primarily low-income, immigrant families, with a focus on culturally competent care.
• Working Group Analysis: Mary’s Center does not limit its work to providing medical services, rather it takes a holistic approach to building community resiliency by providing social services and educational programming in addition to its medical care. For example, in working with its teen population, Mary’s Center provides an adolescent teen clinic on Saturday mornings, as well as paid internships and college preparation courses as part of the Summer Jobs Program. Mary’s Center is also the co-founders of the charter school, Education Strengthens Families Charter School. These programs distinguish Mary’s Center from other medical care providers or even social service providers. The fact that Mary Center’s can function as a one stop shop for its participants is of tremendous value to a variety of communities. Like OPF, Mary Center’s seeks to engage and empower its participants to help guide the organization. As such, more than half of its volunteer Board of Directors is comprised of Mary’s Center clients, thereby insuring that its strategy and policies directly align with the needs of its community.

Tamtam:

• Overview: TAMTAM does two things: it distributes free bed nets and conducts operational research. Its distribution activities are aimed at preventing malaria as well as achieving broader public health objectives, including increasing preventative care.  TAMTAM also conducts operational research on bed net distribution to help improve the use of bed nets worldwide and test ideas that will improve future large-scale net distributions. Recent TAMTAM research has evaluated approaches to using community health workers and behavior change messaging to boost bed net usage.
• Working Group Analysis: The 2009 World Health Organization Malaria Report estimates that half the world’s population is at risk for malaria. An estimated 243 million cases led to nearly 863,000 deaths in 2008, with 767,000 occurring in Africa. High-risk populations include pregnant women, patients with HIV/AIDS, and children under five years of age. In response, TAMTAM works to leverage its free bed net distribution for maximum impact, linking distribution to other health services, research, and policy development. Additionally, they partner with other organizations – including Partners in Health – to distribute bed nets in a cost-effective manner. Though the organization experienced a leadership transition and a resulting decline in activity in 2009, it has regained momentum and is expanding the scope of its work. Please note that TAMTAM was also voted on in the One Percent 2009 Health Cycle.

UM Healthcare Trust:

• Overview: UM Healthcare Trust provides subsidized health services to rural communities in Pakistan through operation of a small health clinic in rural Pakistan. The main objectives of UM are to provide immediate, effective medical care; to use innovative technologies and the latest tele-healthcare applications to assist the sick in seeking medical consultancy services; and to disseminate knowledge regarding preventive care, hygiene and cleanliness with particular emphasis on clean water and environment. In addition, the UM Healthcare team – composed of physicians, nurses, lady health workers, administrative staff, and the IT team – provides an ambulance service and full-scale disaster relief operations for natural and political crisis situations.
• Working Group Analysis: Working Group Analysis Pakistan is experiencing an acute shortage of qualified healthcare specialists and adequate rural health facilities. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 70 percent of Pakistanis never see a doctor and instead rely on local healthcare workers for their medical needs. UM Healthcare Trust is addressing these needs through the creation and deployment of novel tele-medicine technologies. Using mobile phones (SMS/MMS) and cloud computing, local healthcare workers register patients, track vital signs, access electronic medical records and use GIS health statistics tracking. This information can be relayed to on-call volunteer physicians located in Pakistani cities and in America for more comprehensive patient assessments and treatment, allowing patients to receive not only specialized medical consultancy services but also preventative care. UM Healthcare Trust’s organized, innovative and inexpensive model of leveraging technology to provide personalized patient care is replicable in other communities and countries, for both disaster relief efforts and for rural communities with insufficient medical facilities and personnel.

Women of Means:

• Overview: Women of Means, Inc. (WoM) is a physician-led organization with a mission “to improve the lives of women who are homeless or marginally housed by providing accessible and compassionate health care, education and advocacy.” Since its inception in 1999, WoM has sent teams of volunteer physicians and paid nursing staff into shelters in the greater Boston area to provide free and compassionate health care to homeless women and their children.
• Working Group Analysis: Dr. Rosanna Means, the founder of Women of Means,  started the organization with a vision of creating an organization that provided free access to healthcare for women in homlessness shelters in the Greater Boston area. Out of the six primary homelessness shelters in Boston, WoM is the only primary healthcare presence for four of them. With a team of both volunteer doctors and part-time nursing staff members, the WoM team dedicates their time and energy to educate, advocate and provide quality healthcare to women who recieve shelter services. The organization does not recieve any funding from government sources and it’s primary revenue is supplied by donations from individuals and corporate businessess. As a result, Women of Means is a non-traditional health organization who has chosen to exclude red-tape from individuals recieving access to care. With no physical health center, the staff visits shelters daily and does not exclude services to anyone. Women of Means is now operating in it’s tenth year and has scaled to provide nearly 10,000 clinical visits to 2,500 homeless and precariously housed women and children each year.

I am so grateful for your support of the Women’s Community Clinic in 2010.  As a result of your grant, the Clinic has been able to continue its mission of improving the health and well-being of all women. Below, I have highlighted some of the Clinic’s important work made possible through your support this past year.

In gratitude,

Carlina Hansen                                                                                                                                                                         Executive Director, Women’s Community Clinic

Sexual and Reproductive Health Services:  Our Core Services

The Women’s Community Clinic provides free sexual and reproductive health care services to thousands of Bay Area women who lack access to care.  Our clients are from all walks of life—the majority of whom have no, or inadequate, health insurance and make less than 100% of Federal Poverty Level.  Our services include:

• annual physical exams, including breast exams and pap smears
• colposcopies (a follow-up diagnostic procedure for abnormal pap smears)
• care for gynecological concerns such as urinary tract infections and missed or irregular periods
• testing, treatment, and counseling for sexually transmitted infections such as HIV and Hepatitis C
• birth control and emergency contraception
• pregnancy testing and options counseling
• mental health counseling, and
• direct referrals for more specialized care of health conditions

By the end of 2010, we will have provided more than 5,400 clinical health care appointments to over 3,200 women. We strive to bring our clients free, high quality, health care in a supportive environment, and they agree: over 97% of our clients stated that were ‘very satisfied’ or ‘extremely satisfied’ with their overall experience, 100% felt encouraged to participate in the care that they received; and 100% were satisfied with the amount of respect that Clinic health care providers showed them. (source: Spring 2010 Client Survey)

Volunteer Program: Women Helping Women

The Clinic is able to serve thousands of clients with only a few paid clinical staff by harnessing the knowledge, enthusiasm, and dedication of a large corps of volunteers.  This enables us to turn every $1 donated into $3 worth of services. We have over 100 active volunteers who have donated over $350,000 in services in 2010 alone.

Outreach Program: Meeting Women Where They Are

The Women’s Community Clinic’s Outreach Program extends the Clinic’s work into the community of San Francisco by helping homeless and marginally housed women who live and work on the streets in the Mission District. Using a harm reduction-based approach, Health Workers provide food, hygiene, safer sex supplies, referrals, and social support.  The Clinic’s Volunteer Health Workers have more than 2,600 encounters with approximately 350 homeless or marginally housed women each year.

Western Addition Health Training (WAHT) Program:  Diversifying Healthcare

The Western Addition Health Training (WAHT) Program is a two year health career learning program for African-American women from San Francisco. WAHT staff facilitate community-based health education, provide clinic shift coordination and supervision support, and partner with the Outreach Program to provide street outreach and health education programming.   We are especially proud to announce that both of our inaugural WAHT graduates are currently in nursing school.

Community Advocacy: Giving Women a Voice

The Clinic believes that work on systems and policy level issues are an essential approach for strengthening the community and improving the health and well-being of all women.  An important part of our work is to train women how to effectively advocate for causes that affect their lives and families. This year, we:

• Helped to successfully advocate to maintain state funding for an important family planning program in the 2010 state budget
• Held three “Policy and Advocacy 101” trainings teach women how to advocate effectively, and
• Participated in the California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom’s advocacy day in which 15 Clinic staff and volunteers participated.

Here Kathryn talks about what she sees as major trends in medical care today. Please note that Kathryn is speaking for herself , not on behalf of current or past programs that she has directed or otherwise been involved with.

10.26 Working Group Call

Kathyrn Saenz Duke Biography

Kathryn came to the Public Health Trust almost one year ago, following work as an independent consultant on prescription drug access and cost issues for safety net providers.  Previously, she served eight years as director of the Public Health Institute’s Medicine for People in Need (Medpin) program, whose initial funding came from cy pres settlement of a class action suit involving drug pricing in California.

Prior to Medpin, she served as a research faculty member of the University of California at San Francisco Institute for Health Policy Studies, Manager of Scientific Affairs and Public Health at the California Medical Association, Senior Staff to the California Senate Select Committee on AIDS and the Select Committee on Nuclear Emergencies, and Senior Health Policy Staff Consultant at the California Senate Office of Research.  She worked briefly at Public Advocates, and later at Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe, both in San Francisco.  Her pro bono legal work has included involvement with the AIDS Legal Referral Panel in Sacramento and the San Francisco Lawyers’ Committee on Urban Affairs Political Asylum Project.  This past summer she spent a month teaching English at an orphanage in Mexico.

Ms. Duke graduated with highest honors from University of Texas at Austin, and subsequently attended Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She earned three graduate degrees from the University of California at Berkeley: Linguistic Anthropology, Public Health, and Law.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are asking all billionaires to commit to give 50% of their net wealth to philanthropy.  OPF believes that you don’t need to be a billionaire to make a difference.  We’re encouraging people to sign  the 1% Giving Pledge and commit to give at least 1% of your annual income to philanthropic causes.

Here you can listen to the complete call:

Social Investing 101

More resources can be found at the Social Investment Forum, which includes a database of institutions and organizations engaged in socially responsible and sustainable investing

*Julie Johnson, CFA, is a co-founder and the managing director of Fresh Pond Capital, a socially responsible investment firm. Julie has had a particular interest in sustainable agriculture, financial literacy, and social justice.  Julie is active supporting local agriculture and children through her work with Waltham Fields Community Farm and The Food Project. She has collaborated with Resource Generation, a progressive organization working with young people to create social change.

So I’ve started to wonder…could the social sector take over some of this responsibility from the government? I should clarify two things: one is that by the social sector, I mean both for- and non-profit enterprises working to create some social or environmental good. The second is that I think about the social sector, and philanthropy, broadly: I’m not just talking about service-based “charity,” but about the wide range of organizations working to make the world a better place.

Social sector organizations already play a significant role in a wide range of fields: they build new schools and create new approaches to education; they develop cures for diseases; they advance democracy at home and abroad; they promote green energy and land conservation; they provide job training; they feed the hungry and house the homeless.

But could the social sector’s role be expanded in a major way by dramatically increasing the scale, innovation, and effectiveness of this work? Could non-profits (which already account for 10% of all jobs) and socially-oriented for-profits play a role in job creation? (Wouldn’t it be great if new jobs were created in fields that actually benefit humanity?) Could the social sector help build public infrastructure? Could it help develop a sustainable form of retirement savings? Could it help figure out what a good, purposeful and affordable undergraduate education looks like in the future?

Can the social sector unite us in common purpose, where government has not? What is the social sector, after all, if not a manifestation of our collective aspirations for our communities? In this sense, it has as much authority to act in the public interest as the government does.

I’m not really suggesting that the social sector will ever be able to replace government in all of these areas. Nor, of course, do I think that government will be totally absent from them. But in the coming age of austerity (and continued political gridlock), perhaps we need new models for how we care for our communities, invest in the future, and advance the common good. And perhaps the social sector can lead the way. And just maybe government will follow.

What would need to happen in order for such a shift to take place? Dan Pallotta, writing about how the social sector could expand dramatically, offers some extremely exciting and relevant ideas. As does David Brooks in an Op-Ed piece about how we conduct our own lives. Because at the end of the day, a change this dramatic would require us each to make the decision not to let a bad economy and political stalemate ruin our future. It would require hard work and sacrifice. I think we’re ready. Do you?

• Improved Content: The working group had a call with Elana Karopkin, the Assistant Superintendent at Achievement First. Prior to that, she was the founding principal for the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice (SLJ). Elana talked with the working group about charter and public schools, the context and history of the education sector at large, and current policy issues. In addition to this, the working group also had an improved “assessment basics” training, which included a finance and 990 how-to worksheet, improved clarity about theory of change, and a stronger facilitated discussion about organizational effectiveness and how One Percent measures it.
• Organizational Profiles: In our effort to have as efficient a process as possible, we started utilizing Organizational Profiles. These are brief documents nominees fill out to provide us with basic information about a nominee: their theory of change, financial and staffing information, and organizational history (you can see a sample Profile here). We received 15 this cycle, marking a step forward in the quality of information working groups use to assess nominees.
• Reading Period:  Working group members had a one-week reading period to go through the Profiles. At the same time, each working group member submitted (online) the questions they had about each nominee. This ensured that the entire working group understood each nominee while deepening our level of interaction with the organizations, as we were able to bring the thoughts and comments of five people to the conversations with the nominees.
• Two Voting Rounds: Due to the increased number of nominees, the working group voted twice – once to narrow the pool to a manageable number for in-depth assessment and once to determine the final five nominees for voting.
• Improved Assessments: By now, you’ve hopefully seen the assessment summaries we have online. These include both a nominator endorsement and working group analysis. In addition, you can access the nominee’s Organizational Profile and most recent 990, in case you want more detail. As we know that Partners are busy, we are providing levels of information for their various needs and wants: a snapshot overview paragraph, our full summary, the full Profile, and a bit of financial detail.

So what did we learn along the way? Well, we still have a ways to go—while the added content was a huge improvement, we need to provide more detailed, relevant content, at appropriate times, to working group members. For instance, we are looking to add a speaker with a grantmaking/funder background who can speak about the challenges of comparing diverse organizations. We will also add concise readings and resource lists (like, WAY concise) to provide additional background and context for working group members. The Organizational Profile is also undergoing a brief revision, as there are some questions to be clarified and others that ultimately weren’t that relevant.

Lastly, as we refine our own position on assessing impact | effectiveness, we will be retooling the working group analyses. Our goal is for these to be sharp, concise statements that summarize both the awesomeness and challenge areas of each nominee, thereby helping Partners to deepen their own understanding of philanthropy of giving.

The above changes mark a (giant) leap forward for One Percent, and we look forward to improving our work even further. The Assessment Committee welcomes any and all suggestions – please email dulcie (at) onepercentfoundation (dot) org with comments and/or questions.

The following are short excerpts from the working group’s  full organizational assessments of the nominees, which are in turn based on the Organizational Profiles submitted by the organizations. These assessments are designed as a tool to help our Partners make informed decisions about the organizations they are voting on to receive a grant from the One Percent Foundation. If you have any questions, contact Dulcie Madden at dulcie (at) onepercentfoundation (dot) org.

Bay Area Urban Debate League

• Overview: The Bay Area Urban Debate League (BAUDL) transforms the lives of at-risk young people by involving them in competitive policy debate. Since August 2008, BAUDL has leveraged thousands of person-hours and substantial public and private investments to foster a program with multiple ambitions: to improve the lives of individual students by involving them in a rigorous intellectual activity and helping them carve paths towards college graduation and responsible citizenship, but also to shift the culture of schools and communities, making intellectual achievement rewarding and attractive for young people to pursue by making smart cool. Pursuing these goals, the BAUDL implements a program model that engages teachers, parents, volunteers, and administrators in supporting student investment and success.
• Working Group Analysis:  BAUDL teaches intercity high school students to think critically and speak their mind eloquently. Participating students are learning the essential skills to present themselves well in every aspect of their lives, which makes them more capable, confident, and competent as young leaders in their communities. Hearing student accounts of the realization of their ability to make a difference in the world by sharing their voice and political vision is truly inspiring. On a civic engagement level, “debate will nurture a group of politically engaged young people with both the critical consciousness to analyze the problems of the current system and the rare skills to find new ways forward.” The compelling network of support for the program is exceptional: from school districts, district liaisons, teacher coaches, parents associations, judges, board members, volunteers, institute staff, alumni, and the students themselves. BAUDL’s goals of multiplying program capacity, fostering debate across the curriculum, and spreading a culture of debate, and their present realization, demonstrates the systematic and real change of the organization’s vision. This program stands out as an innovative and seamless approach to creating new personal, social, academic, and professional opportunities at intercity high schools.

Daraja Academy

• Overview: A project of the Carr Educational Foundation, Daraja Academy’s mission is to provide a quality secondary education to exceptional Kenyan girls because educated girls can transcend poverty and change the world. Daraja is an example of a sustainable school system in Kenya that the Carr Foundation wants to continue creating across East Africa. It started its first school year in February 2009. The Academy is one of the only free secondary schools for girls in Kenya. Access to this type of quality education is virtually non-existent for the extremely destitute and rural population; many students are orphans, victims of AIDS, domestic abuse and sexual abuse. The Academy is a boarding school, providing education as well as shelter, food, healthcare and counseling. 100% of the staff is Kenyan. Many come from the local community and live with their families on campus, making the academy a local employment provider.
• Working Group Analysis: The Daraja Academy, serving high school age girls in Kenya, is a young educational model with big potential. The Academy teaches the basic educational curriculum to the students while working to develop opportunities post-graduation. Currently, they are in the process of developing partnerships with higher education and employment opportunities so that when the first group of students graduate, they will have future opportunities. The Daraja Academy promotes holistic engagement – whether as a student, volunteer, or donor, enabling their network to engage in the process. They believe that through this individual empowerment, they will improve the long-term situation of their beneficiaries and their families while educating people on the situation in Kenya.

Rocking the Boat

• Overview: Rocking the Boat uses boats to help young people challenged by severe economic, educational, and social disadvantage develop into empowered and responsible adults. Participating during the school-day, after-school, and summer in hands-on wooden boatbuilding and environmental education programs, young people in the South Bronx develop the self-confidence to set ambitious goals and the skills needed to achieve them. Whether they are in the shop building a traditional wooden boat from scratch or out on the Bronx River monitoring water and plant conditions and working to improve them, students accomplish something real and beneficial for their community, and in turn grow to believe in their own possibilities.
• Working Group Analysis: Rocking the Boat has an unusual and curiosity-inspiring premise, and they work to back that up with serious tracking of outcomes and results. They have thought out a great complement of programs that build on and expand their educational reach starting with boats and boat building, and expanding into environmental education. They reach out to the community they serve at many different levels, from one-day educational programs to ongoing multi-year commitments to individual students, and partnerships with local museums and scientists.

Spark

• Overview: Established in 2004, Spark addresses the dropout crisis by re-engaging at-risk middle school students through hands-on, individualized apprenticeships. These workplace-based apprenticeships—in professions each student has identified as a “dream job”—are implemented in partnership with schools and complemented by a Leadership Class. Workshops on topics such as networking and financial literacy provide students with skills critical for success in school and in life. As students explore the school-to-career connection, they build skills critical for academic success, gain a strong appreciation for the relevance of their education, and are motivated to work hard to achieve their dreams. Students are placed in apprenticeships in fields from architecture to veterinary medicine, law to culinary arts, among many others. The Spark experience creates a sense of relevance for students, while providing the skills and confidence necessary for them to find success in high school, college, and beyond.
• Working Group Analysis: Spark, the one nominee to work with middle school youth, is an organization that uses an innovative way to approach the high school drop-out crisis in our nation. Spark asks at-risk youth in 7th and 8th grade, “What is your dream job?” and then pairs the youth with professionals in the community. Reaching out to troubled kids before they are beyond reach allows the kids to re-connect with why school is important and relevant to them in a very personal way. Moreover, it allows the kids to experience a real-world application of education and discover that something they desire is within reach if they stay in school and work hard for it. Spark addresses the drop-out crisis through an inventive prevention model, while engaging working professionals from the community in volunteer work, usually for the first time, making a lasting impact on both the kids and professionals involved.

Strive for College

• Overview: Strive for College, established in 2007, is building a nationwide movement of undergraduate student mentors trained to help low-income students apply to and enroll in colleges and universities where they have the highest chances of graduating. By partnering with technology companies, Strive is developing systems to collect information about the operations and successes of its chapters. These systems will also disseminate information about college applications and financial aid, making college recommendations for all students, not just those enrolled in the Strive program. This ‘high-tech/high-touch’ approach will enable Strive to build upon its growing movement of college students committed to boosting the college attendance rate of low-income students while maintaining the highest quality standards and drastically reducing cost per student. Strive provides current undergraduates the opportunity to take an active role in correcting the inequalities of college access, instilling a sense of giving back in both the mentors and mentees.
• Working Group Analysis: Did you know that just 3% of students at the nation’s top 146 colleges are drawn from the lowest income quartile, while the top half of the income distribution contributes 90 percent of students at top colleges? To combat this inequity, Strive for College pairs college students with underprivileged high school students to provide guidance, assistance, and encouragement throughout the application and financial aid process. In just three years, they have established chapters on campuses in seven states with plans for 250 groups across the country over the next few years. Their results are impressive and the matriculation rate to 4-year colleges amongst students in the program is often double that of their peers. In exchange for the mentoring they receive, it is expected that the high school participants will either join or start a Strive chapter once they matriculate to a college campus, thus perpetuating the cycle of service and civic responsibility. With their visionary young leadership and innovative approach to college counseling, Strive for College is filling a critical need in a meaningful and low-cost way.

In order to aid the working group in the sometimes seemingly impossible task of narrowing down 15 great organizations to just 5, a couple of new tools were implemented, including a conference call with a professional from the field to provide some insight about the challenges faced in Education today and sending out a new document called Organizational Profiles to all the organizations prior to the working group starting their work.  These documents included information about what the organization does, their history, theory of change and financial details. More information on these and other changes can be found here.

Providing the working group with these new and improved ways of collecting information about each organization and comparing that information to one another allowed the working group to focus on some important issues while narrowing down the field of nominees.  The following themes are what emerged as most important throughout our discussions:

Innovation

The working group wanted to focus on organizations that were approaching the many education issues through new and innovative ways.

Population Served

1. Age Group – We wanted the final organizations to serve a variety of age groups
2. Demographics – It was important to us that different demographics were represented including, local, national, and international

Community Involvement/Impact

We wanted organizations that not only had increased community involvement, but had a plan for lasting impact in those communities.

The following table summarizes the final five organizations in terms of the key themes mentioned above:

Thanks to all the working group members, Marissa Lifshen, Rachel Shamash, Natalia Marek, Abby Rose, and Laura Daddow who contributed to the great work summarized above.

- Laura Daddow

There were two things which stood out in our conversation.

First, since receiving the grant award, Agora has launched The Accelerator, a program which packages a suite of services the organization has developed for promising early-stage businesses, and rolls them all up into a highly structured, integrated delivery.  Previously, the services delivered by Agora – such as training seminars, consulting from teams of MBA candidates, and linkages to networks and finance – were offered a la carte.  The Accelerator will deliver a suite services through a 6-9 month program, providing a larger window for Agora to work with entrepreneurs and a stronger pipeline to find and prepare promising small business for investment and growth.

Second, Agora’s mission of aiding small businesses to grow and create jobs and income, highly depends on connecting these companies with finance.  To that end, Agora’s strategy includes raising for-profit investment funds, which provide capital to the most promising entrepreneurs that the organization works with and mentors.  Agora raised its initial fund, the Agora Venture Fund – which was discussed in the Working Group’s assessment – and currently makes small investments ($25,000+).  Recognizing the growing need for finance, and hoping to capitalize on the new investment pipeline created by The Accelerator, Agora is embarking on raising a new $10-12 million fund, the  Prometeo Fund.  With Prometeo, Agora will have the ability to invest up to $500,000 in a single company.  The organization has a number of firm commitments in the capital raising process, and is hoping to close the fund later this year.

Lastly, Liz passed along word about a NYC Agora event for young professionals on August 25.  Details for the event are available here.

Marc Bush is an OPF Partner and was Chair of the 2010 International Aid Working Group.