Community Assessment: Purpose and Highlights
Preface: United Way Decision Making in Marin County
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Social Change in Marin County
Chapter 3: A Closer Look at Community Needs
In the summer of 1994, the United Way in Marin designed and
began conducting Community Assessment research to help volunteers:
Some of the highlights of the data collected for this Community
Assessment include the following.
Our communities - neighborhoods, cities and counties - change
over time making the task of understanding them a continual one.
This ongoing reassessment of our communities is essential to
improving the distribution of social, economic and political resources
among communities. The 1994 Community Assessment of Marin County
was conducted by the United Way to assist its volunteers in making
decisions on how and where to invest United Way Community Fund
donations, as well as to assist agency executives in program planning.
On a larger scale, this Community Assessment will be key in helping
the United Way choose the community problems on which to focus
its resources. United Way volunteers will refer to this report
to determine indicators of need based on information from the
1990 U.S. Census and local studies of particular areas of need.
A better understanding of current needs in the county will enable
volunteers to better allocate United Way funds and to better educate
donors about those needs. In addition, this report will assist
volunteers meet the goal, set during the 1994 Annual Retreat,
of establishing a year round campaign with the following format:
Spring: Publicize how United Way donations have met critical
community needs during the past year;
Summer: Educate the public about current and continuing
community needs;
Fall: Raise funds for new and continuing needs.
In this study, the United Way was interested in documenting and
learning more about diversity in a county that is widely perceived
as being uniformly wealthy and white. What it found was diversity
on a number of measures - socioeconomic, race, ethnicity and age.
Marin County is indeed home to a very large number of wealthy,
predominantly white residents. However, it is also home to a
large and growing number of low income residents who are disproportionately
of other races and ethnic backgrounds. Contrary to the belief
that Marin County is immune from social changes occurring nationwide,
important areas of Marin County are going through a period of
marked change rivaling that found in other more highly-impacted
counties.
The United Way: Responding to Change
Several years ago, the United Way began developing a response to the tremendous demographic changes occurring in the Bay Area and their impact on human services. Central to this response was an intensive review of how United Way chapters in five Bay Area counties manage the charitable dollars entrusted to them. From this review a number of important changes were made to enhance the impact of United Way dollars on problems in our communities and to increase the United Way's fundraising ability.
A new mission statement and a set of strategic principles were
developed to unify the five Bay Area chapters behind a set of
core beliefs. Underlying and driving the mission statement and
strategic principles is the recognition that the charitable giving
environment in the United States has changed. Top-down, model-based
decision making of the past is a prescription for failure today.
Fewer funds are available to meet more complex needs and achieving
results requires a better understanding of consumers of
human services and donors to human services than ever before.
The United Way is remaking itself into the kind of responsive,
consumer-oriented, flexible organization that will succeed in
the future.
The mission of the United Way is to provide leadership in enhancing our community's capacity to
meet its health and human service needs by:
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The United Way has also developed a set of Strategic Principles
to guide how the organization will effect these changes. These
Strategic Principles reflect the three main challenges facing
the United Way and all organizations, both non-profit and for-profit,
in the 1990s:
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Much of the impetus for United Way's revision of its Mission Statement and Strategic Principles came from the decline in donations to the Community Fund in recent years. The Community Fund is a key source of support for charities throughout the Bay Area and is allocated by volunteers to agencies that help meet the greatest needs in their communities. Increasingly, donors to the United Way have designated the recipients of their donations, reducing the dollars available to the Community Fund.
The Community Fund is the heart of the United Way. It expresses
the core beliefs and competencies of this organization through
the allocation of charitable dollars to communities and organization
which have the greatest need. A central goal of the changes at
the United Way is the reaffirmation of the unique ability of the
Community Fund to address our communities' greatest needs. To
strengthen the identity and relevance of the Community Fund to
donors, its purpose has been clarified and a set of expanded goals
have been defined which more accurately represent the scope of
the fund.
The Community Fund is an undesignated pool of dollars contributed by individual and business donors to the United Way for distribution using the collective wisdom, research and analysis of local volunteers and professional staff to achieve maximum positive results toward the goal of creating healthy and safe communities. |
The Community Fund goals represent the highest aspirations of
the United Way and their fulfillment would realize the United
Way's vision for our communities. Although these goals are probably
unreachable, at least in this lifetime, the United Way chooses
to dream big. The United Way will not compromise on its vision
for our communities nor will it compromise any effort to strive
for the goals we have set.
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The United Way in Marin: Effecting Change
The Mission Statement, Strategic Principles and Community Fund Purpose and Goals form a consistent and coherent framework within which the five Bay Area chapters of the United Way operate. This framework also provides necessary flexibility for county chapters to respond to local needs. This local flexibility is not simply desirable for the United Way but is a requirement for success in order meet the needs of those diverse communities and consumers.
The United Way in Marin has moved forward in learning about the
diverse needs in its community and in establishing a responsive,
receptive identity in the county. A local Vision Statement was
adopted which expresses the philosophy and values of local volunteers,
and consideration of a new set of guidelines has begun that will
help volunteers make allocations decisions that promote the Community
Fund goals. The most significant changes that are occurring in
Community Fund allocations are
Funding a number of programs demand a new process for Community Fund allocations. The method currently in use was successful in the past but does not help the United Way make decisions today that reflect these new values.
For this reason, United Way in Marin volunteers have initiated
a review of its allocations process. This review is a comprehensive,
multi-faceted effort that together will result in an effective
and solidly supported allocations process. The main strands of
this process include the 1994 Annual Retreat, Community Assessment
report, Latino Services Project, and Marin Agency Relations Committee
(MARC) Review. Progress on these elements and how they all fit
together are reviewed below.
1994 Annual Retreat
A key and initial component of the allocations review was ensuring
that volunteers on all United Way in Marin committees understood
the magnitude of the changes the organization is undergoing.
To do this, a retreat was held on August 16, 1994 to
The retreat was successful on several levels. Volunteers identified numerous critical communications gaps volunteers on the allocations committee and those on the campaign committee. For the first time in many years, communication occurred among all United Way in Marin committees which formed a solid basis for improved collaboration and cooperation. Most importantly, much of the discussion at the retreat revolved around how to implement the United Way's Strategic Principles and improve the Community Fund and thus was directly relevant to the allocations review.
The United Way in Marin volunteers considered how each of the
Strategic Principles might be put into practice. The following
main points were suggested.
1. Provide leadership on community needs
2. Be easy to do business with
3. Support self-sufficiency/Empower people through knowledge
4. Build coalitions/Explore new forms of relationships
5. Provide donor choice
6. Promote excellence
7. Embrace diversity
Regarding the Community Fund, discussion at the retreat focused
on how to link allocations with the campaign in a compelling and
public manner. Volunteers suggested that the United Way should
establish which needs exist in the community, educate the public
about those needs, take seriously what donor choice giving tells
us about donor interests and show how their money makes an impact.
Discussion of the Community Fund culminated in the suggestion
that a year-round campaign be initiated that
A draft set of guidelines for the Community Fund were also briefly
presented at the retreat. Along with the feedback on how to implement
the Strategic Principles, these guidelines will be a starting
point for revising the allocations process. One of the primary
changes these guidelines require is that the allocations process
consider in much more depth how services are delivered.
Research has shown that the following principles are key to effective programs and should be a
central part of program design, delivery and evaluation. The relative importance of each principle
varies according to the population and need being served. Refer to Building Healthy and Safe
Communities: Principles for Designing and Delivering Successful Community Programs for
more information. Effective Service System
Client-Driven, Community-Based Programs
Outcome-Oriented Program Management
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Source: Northern California Community Services Council, Inc., Building Healthy and
Safe Communities: Principles for Effective Program Design and Delivery,
December 1994.
Community Assessment
The Community Assessment report, which is the main body of this document, was conducted in the summer of 1994 to assist volunteers in making Community Fund decisions. This report reflects a new way of doing business by the United Way in Marin. In prior years, United Way decision making involved establishing a set of goals, conducting a community assessment, establishing baselines for outcomes from community assessment data and measuring the success of agencies against these baselines. This process was highly successful when the demographic composition of our communities evolved more slowly and when money for social services was more readily available. Today's environment of intense demographic change and limited resources demands a new way not only of making allocations decisions but examining and interpreting community needs. This new process will be designed by United Way volunteers over the next several months.
A primary goal of the 1994 Community Assessment was to highlight
pockets of high need amidst Marin County wealth. To do this,
four geographic areas -- Marin City, Novato, San Rafael and West
Marin -- and a number of key social service issues were explored
in depth. A complete description of how the report was developed
and its main findings can be found in Chapter 2.
Two Models of United Way's Responsiveness to Community Needs
One of the results of the strategic changes at the United Way
was to give equal importance to community problem solving efforts
along with the traditional task of raising and allocating donations.
The Latino Services Project and the MARC Allocations Review represent
two community problem solving efforts recently undertaken by the
United Way in Marin.
Latino Services Project
In 1994, the United Way in Marin took on its first major community
problem solving, the Latino Services Project. This project was
initiated in April by the Latino Services Provider Group which
highlighted a series of problems experienced by human service
providers in Marin County's growing Latino communities. As a
first step in addressing these problems, the Latino Services Project
was formed with the goal of developing ways to improve accessibility
and quality of service delivery to Marin's Latino communities.
The United Way arranged a series of public fora in which service
providers, agencies, policy makers and other funders explored
problems and possible solutions for human service delivery changes
in Marin County. The United Way also encouraged the formation
of a Task Force of Latino service providers to carry on the work
of the project and to consult with the United Way on how it can
incorporate project findings into its funding decision making
process.
MARC Process Review
The strategic changes at the United Way have important implications for the allocation process. A full evaluation of how the allocations process should be altered will be conducted by the Marin Agency Relations Committee (MARC), which makes Community Fund decisions, and the Campaign Committee, whose efforts are directly affected by those decisions. The new allocations process will be implemented in 1995.
One of the first steps in conducting this review will be to sketch
out how decisions are currently made for comparison with the new
goals and principles of the United Way and the Community Fund.
This will highlight key areas where the current allocations process
is inadequate to the new goals of the United Way and will help
focus the energies of the MARC committee in its review of the
allocations process. A plan for creating an allocations process
that is fully based on the goals and principles of the organization
will be developed. This plan will incorporate input from local
agencies, policy makers and other funders in Marin on the most
effective ways of delivering social services and how the United
Way in Marin might improve its allocations process. Additional
information will be available in the published findings of the
Northern California Community Services Council's (NCCSC, Inc.)
national research on effective programs, the "What Works"
conferences scheduled for November which will explore effective
programs in the Bay Area and a service capacity study for each
county to be conducted in early 1995.
In preparing for the allocations review, a number of process-related
questions have already arisen for the MARC committee. The allocations
process being developed will address these and many more questions:
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