Nonprofits and Government

The ideal relationship is that program innovation, development, and management comes from the nonprofit; and base funding and technical support comes from government, which appears to be the case with two programs (YouthBuild & College Summit) in this article by their respective founders in Governing.

An excerpt.

“Harlem Children's Zone and its founder Geoffrey Canada are famous.

“Many know Harlem Children's Zone from Waiting for Superman, a recently released documentary which focuses on Canada's efforts to transform a failing public education system.

“The same week of the film's release, the White House announced $10 million in planning grants under Promise Neighborhoods, a new Department of Education initiative based on the Harlem Children's Zone model.

“Praise for Harlem Children's Zone is well deserved. But the temptation to attribute superhuman qualities to Geoffrey Canada and other social innovators who have been blazing new approaches to the hard task of rebuilding broken communities is dangerous. Cities may fall into the mistake of waiting for their own "superman" to fix their problems, or they might set themselves up for disappointment if the results are not as otherworldly as expected.

“The real lesson of the Harlem Children's Zone is that government should be looking outside its own bureaucracy for determined, albeit human, innovators who will thrive with government support and partnership.

“YouthBuild and College Summit

“One of us started an organization that also works with young people in Harlem. For over 30 years, Dorothy has infused YouthBuild with important values such as taking personal responsibility for our lives and community; treating everyone with profound respect; and, as intangible as it may sound, believing in the power of love.

“YouthBuild programs not only build about 1,000 units of affordable housing each year, they also engage about 10,000 students (40 percent are court-involved) in the process of completing their GED or high school diploma through a full-time, 10-month program. YouthBuild USA turned over its program model to the federal government, and now serves in a training and technical assistance role to charter schools and community-based nonprofits that receive federal grants from the U.S. Department of Labor to implement local YouthBuild programs.

“I founded College Summit, which like YouthBuild, knits a positive peer and adult mentor culture together with a focus on leadership development. Designed to help high schools in low-income communities shift from being destinations to being launch pads for college and career success, College Summit works on two assumptions. First, young people are motivated to work hard in high school not by a diploma, but by a chance to create a brighter future -- better job, more money, better college and better life. Second, young people themselves are best situated to create a college-going culture at their high school.”