Action Ideas

A number of concrete, practical, and actionable ideas, both short- and long-term were generated by workshop participants.

• Develop innovative financing and capital access instruments for the benefit of community-based organizations, e.g. EITC.
• Encourage foundations to invest their endowments into social value-creating investments and increase the use of pre-existing options like program-related investments.
• Implement a demonstration project around federal block grants managed at the local level for human services.

• Develop a continuum of resources linking research, advocacy, community organizing, and service provision through strategic partnerships.
• Identify and develop young advocates.
• Define measurable results and clear returns on investment to policy makers. Some language of the private sector does translate to strengthen a business case for social programs.

• Tap into advanced understanding and research on programs and interventions that work for children of low-income families.
• Encourage research that maps the nonprofit sector serving low-income families in the National Capital Region and compares the demographics to the geographic distribution of providers across the region.
• Surface relevant facts to drive informed debate and action, e.g., research revealed that the nonprofit sector in New York provided more jobs in the city than for-profit companies.
• Encourage research to review various structural challenges within DC and the Greater Washington Region.

• Boost CBOs’ strategic communications capacity and develop tools, stories, and partnerships to convey powerful messages about the impact and challenges facing children of low-income families.
• Create a human services-focused funding campaign, workplace or individual, to improve the conditions of the National Capital Region low-income population.
• Encourage and provide incentives for unusual collaborations that are more interrelated/comprehensive than “silo-ed” around specific programs.
• Develop expertise to assist CBOs to regionalize their services and programs.
• Create a shared pot of funds in the National Capital region to encourage collaboration among CBOs.
• Build capacity of local organizations to “regionalize.”

• Build leadership in the field through executive learning programs and other professional development and training opportunities.
• Build (or reactivate) networks of young leaders similar to Black Student Leadership Network and echoing green Fellows program.
• Involve young people in nonprofit work early through community service or other models.
• Provide incentives that increase the attractiveness and viability of nonprofit careers, e.g. opportunities for networking, improved compensation, and loan forgiveness.
• Developing training for executive management staff – COOs, CFOs, Development Directors, etc.