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The Cleveland Foundation Youth Preparation Project
Challenge
While The Cleveland Foundation’s staff had spent considerable time researching, planning, and launching an innovative, faith-based Youth Preparation Program (YPP), uncertainties remained after nine months. The concern was less about results – it was too early to measure – and more about the translation of the concept into effective implementation. Was the bold idea workable on the streets? What benchmarks could be set against which YPP could eventually be measured? To find out, the Foundation retained community development consultants MTEC and MTEC associate Richard Skaare to undertake a formative evaluation.
Background
The Cleveland Foundation (TCF) evolved into one of the country’s oldest, largest, and respected community foundations by consistently and programmatically converting investment dividends into social dividends. Likewise, Cleveland’s churches and other faith-based groups had long built local credibility by doing whatever it took to heal hurting people one at a time. TCF leaders realized that funding such bootstrap groups could open a new avenue of effectiveness, even if doing so meant tossing out traditional funding guidelines. Out of this mind-change emerged the Youth Preparation Program (YPP). Funding was divided into two categories. Category I offered grants up to $10,000 for generally small, faith-based organizations (Fobs) groups that relied primarily on volunteers and needed to build capacity for serving youth. Category 2, which funded up to $75,000, targeted programs run by 501(c)(3) organizations and that addressed literacy skills, job training, readiness, and placement.
Strategy/Tactics
The MTEC team set out to determine why and how TCF shifted its approach to community support by including a broad sweep of faith-based groups. We explored the trail from the original intent of YPP, through the perceptions of implementers, and finally to how YPP was translated and used by youth. Our evaluation relied on document review, site visits, in-depth interviews, focus groups sessions, and surveys with those who created YPP, those who led faith-based and related community organizations, and those who actually executed the program, as well as discussions with youth who experience the program and a survey of YPP-funded groups. We listened closely for both information and implications, probed areas of inconsistency, identified expectations, and unraveled frustrations – all focused on knowing how well YPP is working but also where and why it is not working.
Results
Our top-down/bottom-up study concluded that The Cleveland Foundation’s courage in launching the Youth Preparation Program was not only applauded by faith-based community leaders but viewed, albeit with some wait-and-see, as a significant start of a long-term change in Cleveland’s communities. Amidst a range of strategic and practical recommendations, MTEC encouraged the TCF leadership to remain honest in their objectives, diligent in two-way communication with community leaders, and continuously open to change. The TCF Board and staff have been implementing those recommendations.
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