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Two things stand out to me that allowed DSNI to recognize so many of its goals. First, it had a steady reliable base of funding from the get go. Most neighborhood initiatives do not have the pledged continued support of an organization capable of making donations as large as those received by the Riley Foundation. It is very significant to DSNI’s success that they did not have to spend a lot of time and effort, relatively, on securing funding during their first year starting out. Many organizations have to spend so much effort fundraising that they do not have sufficient time and energy left over to get the organization off the ground.
ReplyDeleteIt would be wrong though to attribute all of DSNI’s success to the donors. The second thing that struck me was their persistence to “let the people decide.” They even had the gumption to exclude Riley staff and trustees from Board membership, as they were not neighborhood people that understood fully neighborhood concerns. Their commitment to solely, and even stubbornly, act based upon the stated needs of neighborhood people was probably the most distinguishing factor when considering all they were able to accomplish.
Dudley Street had many things working against them, but they were able to have a collective vision for success. The Riley Foundation and other donors helped for the financial backing, but the citizens had the innovative ideas first. DSNI success came from the level of citizen partcipation. Their most abundant resource was their people. The neighborhood took ownwership of their community and the future of the community. They allowed lots to sit vacate and the city allowed property to become insurance money for property owners turned arsonist. Those inside the community took control of these vacate lots and thought of ways to use this property to their liking. Building hundreds of new homes, parks and urban gardens. Again, I think the reason that the DSNI was successful because the citizens within the community became owners of that community.
ReplyDeleteI have taken on some increasingly expanding projects before. You think, "I'll put these DVDs away." When you get to the cabinet, you decide to arrange them in alphabetical order. But, there's VHSs mixed in with the movies. So, you decide you should go buy a new cabinet for cassettes. And so on and so forth until you buy a new house and start plans to use eminent domain to evict your messy neighbors. I believe this is how Roxbury went from needing new carpet to rebuilding the whole neighborhood, and one of its greatest strengths. That it grew organically. The meeting at St. Patrick's Church set the tone for internally motivated, organic growth when the people balked at the idea of outsiders making plans for their community. Along the way, the continued monetary support - Riley grants, $134 million from Boston, and loans from the Ford Foundation - nourished the growth. However, the right climate also had a lot to do with it. For instance, having so many vacant lots gave plenty of room for redevelopment, the power of eminent domain helped to expand that area, and the particular political climate involving Mayor Flynn came together with citizen participation into a perfect storm for rapid improvement. Finding the right people to lead the organization was also a key factor. Hiring Eugene Newport, former mayor of Berkley, was a great move. Plus, promoting people within the community to leadership positions helped to assure continued support and involvement allowing it to adapt to new challenges by acquiring "fresh blood." Their willingness to adapt and change their role in the community was evident when they decided to be their own developer. Finally, the addition of youth programs and youth leadership helped to assure that the organization would not just fall apart with the passing of one generation. So, just like any organism, DSNI flourished due to resources, climate, adaptation, and new growth.
ReplyDeleteMedoff and Sklar introduce us to the Dudley Street community by detailing its rich cultural history. It was primarily English in the 1630s, Irish in the 1880s, Black American in the 1970s, and Latino in the 1980s; by 1990 the ethnic diversity of Dudley Street represented 93% of the population.
ReplyDeleteLike Alinsky and The New Left, the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative sought first to bring the people representing the community together to collectively make decisions that best represented their circumstance. This is clearly demonstrated in the reformation of the Board of Directors in 1985. It was changed from a 21 member board to a 31 member board. The key component and the anchor for the success of DSNI was the minimum requirement of 12 community residents separated equally amongst the Black, White, Latino and Cape Verdean ethnic groups. As early as the second DSNI meeting it was known that strength and longevity was hinged on the ability of “letting the people decide”.
Katie I fundamentally agree with your point on fiscal stability; however it should be noted that DSNI did have financial struggles. Even though they had a great set-up with the Riley Foundation, by 1986 (one year after inception) they were working with five separate neighborhood associations. This is why the efforts of the 1986 Funders Day were so critical. You may then say that they received the $2 million loan from the Ford Foundation to purchase land acquired by eminent domain, however it took over 3 years to close on the loan. Money did seem to appear when they needed it, but they were standing on the edge of the cliff with their toes curled under waiting for the life line.
ReplyDeleteKatie, I just read these comments after writing my post and it looks like we were thinking along the same lines! I agree with you especially that the initial support of the Riley foundation was crucial to their continued success. Without them, the organization may have never even been formed or spent its first years looking for funding and eventually dissipated.
ReplyDeleteRallisa, I agree that they had some financial struggles, as do most nonprofits, but the 1986 funders day was set up to help the neighborhood associations DSNI was working with so that DSNI wasn't competing with them. I didn't get the impression from the readings that they were "waiting for a life line" but rather that they, along with the Riley foundation, saw the benefit in using their status to increase awareness and support for the surrounding neighborhoods.
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ReplyDeleteI have tried not to read the previous comments; I don't want my initial contribution to merge into a response. But there did seem to be three broad aspect of the DSNI's development that stood out to me.
ReplyDeleteWhile there was some professional guidance, most of the organizers came from the community. The governing body was created to resemble the people they represented.
Secondly, it addressed the problems organically, by going house-to-house learning what the most important issues were. The list of the important issues me not from an outsider telling the community what its problems were, but from the actual people within.
Lastly, while not always a silver bullet, the Urban Village highlighted what plagues many urban areas. Not only do they suffer from these "food deserts" but even from a lack of basic retail. When people within have to spend money outside the community, the people are keeping others employed but not bringing jobs to the community. A good adage to live by is money spent in the community means jobs in the community.
When you factor in the fact that they took manageable steps rather than jumping into a massive unmanageable project, you can realize how well the DSNI worked.
As I read Streets of Hope, there were two main benefits that I felt DSNI possessed that allowed it to be so successful. The first characteristic that it possessed was that it had an extremely focused mission. It has been my observation that many times organizations come together with the hope of improving one thing or another and seem to get off course so easily. Whether it is because they completed their original mission or whether they have simply run their course, it seems as if some organizations begin to select projects simply because the opportunity presents itself. Many times these projects are not in line with the mission. When this happens, the organization loses power. In order for a community development organization to stay strong, it must 1) have a strong mission and 2) know when to disseminate when that mission has been accomplished. The second factor that I believe DSNI possessed was strong financial support. Many times organizations spend so much of their time and money trying to figure out where funding will come from, that they don’t have the time or resources to actually do the job. The fact that DSNI had the financial backing of the Riley Foundation was monumental. Not only did the foundation lend its financial support, but it also lended DSNI the clout that it needed to accomplish its mission.
ReplyDeleteI would like to constructively agree and disagree with Philoblogger on the issue of organic growth. While I do feel that organic growth is a positive thing, I believe that unbridled organic growth can be dangerous for an organization. While it worked for DSNI, it has been fatal to other community development organizations. Sometimes this "organic growth" leads to organizations tackling issues that are outside of their mission or too large for them to tackle. I would say that any organization should look at each new project it is faced with and determine whether it is in line with their mission and also whether it possesses the resources to accomplish the task at hand.
ReplyDeleteI am responding to what philoblogger said concerning hiring decisions. DSNI did a tremendous job choosing, as a group, when to hire people locally, in the broader community, or outside of their community. For instance, the decision to hire DAC as planning consultants for the urban village did not initially seem to me the best choice. The other firm had local experience and clout, but DSNI did what was best for their organization by hiring the firm from Washington DC. DAC listened to neighborhood concerns and was sympathetic to the slow process of neighborhood unanimity.
ReplyDeleteJ. Michael Munger (Mike), I agree with your assessment especially the third point. Because DSNI represented the people and wanted to address their problems organically they sought the assistance of DAC International, a professional consulting firm, to manage the creation of a comprehensive plan for the Dudley Street neighborhood. Without a community plan the Urban Village development would be a stab in the dark with a strong probability of missing many key facilities and services needed by the neighborhood for sustainable growth. The comprehensive plan worked because throughout this process DSNI and DAC made input from the community their first priority as evident by (1) the philosophy statement from DAC that “community participation is a means to and end…to move from decision making to implementation”, (2) the community wide meetings to educate residents on the existing neighborhood assets and resources as well as (3) the charettes (design workshops) where the designers for the Urban Village began drawing what the residents were speaking in words for review by the community.
ReplyDeleteSusan, I do not think they were competing for funds at all. The point I wanted to make was that DSNI was trying to raise money to provide funding for themselves as well as the other neighborhood associations. If you look on page 147, the author tells us that Consumers United Insurance Company backed out of their $1 million commitment for securing land to buy-out the “triangle”, but even before that happened DSNI anticipated the need for more money. It was great that they had already sought the loan from the Ford Foundation. I know that they received a lot of capital from several sources, but from my understanding of the reading it was not enough. See on page 157 where Eugene Newport jokes with the Ford Foundation to write the check for $5 million. The Urban Village was a $135 million development and capital was needed to ensure one of the primary goals of keeping the housing portion affordable to low-income families. DSNI had to aggressively seek multiple financial opportunities and then hope and wait for them to pan out. If they did, that was the life line, if not they had to keep looking.
ReplyDeleteJ. Michael, I like what you were saying about money spent within a community translates into jobs and other opportunities for those who live in the community. DSNI had a good understanding about his, even before they use the more professional community developers.
ReplyDeleteThe way DSNI used eminent domain laws to gain assess to vactes lands help to turn a land from eye sores to new homes that someone has to build. That brings jobs back to the community. The new homeowners have a vested interest in the communities success, while city owned land does not bring money into the community, nor does out of sight landlords. These are the biggest problems within poor communities. So few people have a vested interest in the success of the community. DSNI successfully fought against this and used laws that existed to do it.
Katie, I think I have to side with Philoblogger, to the point of the hiring of outside firms might not have been the best decision. DAC was from an entirely different city and cannot know the inner workings of Boston's political system. Sometimes this can be a good thing because they can view everything froma non bias point of view and just make the best non partisian decision. I do not think this was best for DSNI, who needed political insiders to help get things done.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I like how philoblogger mentions the yoth programs that were started. It began to operate like a group that wants a long lasting change in their community. If you do not develop young leaders from within, you will begain to get stagnant and less innovative. The same problem is here in Birmingham. We had sweeping changes that help Birmingham grow, but as that leadership get older, they began to lack foresight, to see the new "big thing". DSNI nurished this, by helping through youth programs that would educate young people. These young people are going to be the next generation that will keep pushing for improvements in their community.
John, I think that in this case, DAC really helped to serve DSNI to help plan development based solely on the residents' desires. I do not think that their lack of experience in Boston's political system outweighed the benefits they offered DSNI during the planning process of the Urban Village. In addition, the hire of Eugene Newport, though he was an outsider, seemed to be a great decision. I think that he really gave DSNI some added credibility. I also think that DSNI's continued commitment to hiring a large percentage of minorities and local people was crucial to the success and distinction of the organization.
ReplyDelete@ Ashley re: Philo -- Organic growth is the only way successful organizations work. The research for my paper stumbled upon this fact. Top-down organizations, where an outsider comes in and "tell" a community what to fix is nowhere near as successful as a bottom-up grassroots organization that consults with a "professional."
ReplyDeleteIt is true without professional leadership and guidance, they may lose their focus, but "astroturfed" solutions do not work.
@ Rallisa: The problem with outside sponsorship and assistance is the undue influence that money entails. Just like when the federal government provides block and categorical grants, sponsors might have their views on how to solve the situation. Corporations (i.e. Wal-Mart) give money to communities in the promise that they can build a store, thus killing any "mom and pop" establishments. Money is good, but the strings that come with it aren't.
ReplyDelete