Vision, Mission, & Responsibility

The posts over the past few days looked at the giving patterns of people in America and what is implicit in the revelation that the religious and the conservative give more, turns on their vision of responsibility; both to the God who created them and to their neighbor—which the religious see as everyone—and in this vision we find the support for that work which stabilizes and informs our communities.

I’ve written about this on the Lukenbill & Associates website.

In government sponsored social programs, the vision of responsibility is too often replaced by coercion and the results too often typify that root, added to the fact that government rarely funds social programs that actually work.

This article from Governing examines that tendency via a new funding policy directed to evidence-based programs, and offers suggestions.

An excerpt.

“On the surface, expanding successful evidence-based programs is compelling. Many of the nation's expenditures aimed at addressing persistent social ills, after all, fund programs which have not been evaluated for their benefits and long term cost-effectiveness. The numbers suggest we have yet to find reliable combinations of services to stem or reverse the socio-economic problems plaguing low-wealth communities. Given the leverage that experimental money and federal attention may provide, what could have greater appeal than directing scarce public or private dollars with greater confidence that they will achieve what is intended?

“Of course, it's not that simple. Public managers intrigued by the possibilities of new program models should start with some critical thinking about how to judge the results of pilot demonstrations and to assess the implications of expansion. Philanthropic and non-profit advocates should anticipate and support the perspectives that public managers bring to these initiatives.

“Here's a simple framework that may help.

“Results. Is there quantifiable evidence that an approach or program has produced results? Is the program cost-effective? For example, does the front-end investment have pay-off in reduced public downstream costs? If cost-effectiveness is established in terms of, for example, improved health or school performance, how durable is the improvement? How rigorous is the evaluation? Was the evaluation conducted or supervised by an independent analyst? If the evaluation does not meet the gold standard of control group comparison, is there other evidence to suggest the positive results can really be tied to the investment?

“Replicability. Often, as programs expand to new sites, administrators change the intervention, dilute the resources or skip important program "glue," such as program monitoring, quality assurance or staff training. Strong results arise from a combination of features in a pilot, relating to both content and style, and understanding which factors are most critical is essential to replication. How much did the program's success depend, for example, on a charismatic leader who was able to align diverse interests into a cohesive program operation?”