The long road toward redesign

There is much discussion around our state about government restructuring and the very idea seems to be revolutionary. In my world - the United Way system - restructuring has been the theme (and often the bane) of our existence for the past decade, an indication that the task has been just as difficult for us as it is likely to be for the government.

Like the government, and unlike business, non profit organizations are "owned" by large and diverse stakeholders, thus consensus is much more difficult to obtain. Also, both entities have a more difficult time measuring their successes.

One advantage to living near a major metropolitan area is that once in awhile a major conference takes place in that city. That was the case last week when a regional United Way conference was hosted by our state association in downtown Indianapolis, giving two staff and our board chair an opportunity to look at the United Way movement beyond our county lines.

This week my office is messier than usual because I have piles of information about early childhood education, financial stability, organizational excellence, design of community initiatives, community assessments, and more. My primary task from the conference is to ferret out as much material as possible that can be put to use in our community because just about every issue we are trying to address has been addressed somehow somewhere else.

Perhaps the best lessons that any of us can bring back are that we are doing the right things, and we are not alone with our issues. Our focus on early childhood development and self-sufficiency is mirrored in United Way work across the country. We are also not alone in attempting to address these issues in the face of diminishing economic support. One session focused on things that we can do that don't cost money and every session had an element of fitting the work into the economic realities.

The "new" structure of United Way, defined as "community impact" is based on mobilizing all available stakeholders to focus on community wide issues to create sustainable changes in conditions to improve lives. We still struggle to explain to people how that is different than raising money and distributing it to a set of non profit service providers. Our own volunteers struggle with the concept because it is so fundamentally different than our long established operational model. The idea threatens individuals and entities who believe their livelihoods depends on the status quo.

Even after 10 years of work we have a long way to go toward the true model of a community impact United Way, but we have made much more progress than the majority of United Ways. Our two Vision Councils met this week to refocus their efforts in support of our initiatives of Born Learning ^TM and the Community Access Network (CAN). For the past six months workgroups have been meeting to structure these efforts and the actual services are beginning over the next few weeks.

Born Learning ^TM is progressing with a number of activities: playgroups, new parent outreach, kindergarten readiness activities and more. The workgroup has approved a three-year plan to develop activities to include children from birth to kindergarten, partnering with the schools, libraries, child care providers, health care providers and others.

CAN partners have completed training on use of the database and will begin training for certification in the Family Development Matrix in a couple of weeks. The partners will begin to input client data on March 10. These organizations represent government, non profit and faith based services. In addition, the four Indiana United Ways that are using CAN are in discussions to pursue collaborative efforts for further support and development of this system.

I often have a difficult time being patient with our progress. When I come back from a conference, I am ready to charge forward. Then I get a reality check once I begin sharing information with others and realize how difficult this new paradigm is for many to grasp. I guess that gives me more tolerance for government leaders who find it so easy to talk about change and so difficult to deliver it.