25 Minutes with the Eckerd Family Foundation's President, Joe Clark
1. Tell us about your work at the Eckerd Family Foundation. What is the mission of the foundation and how does your work help to make that mission a reality?
We are a family foundation and a spend-down foundation, two factors that distinguish who we are and how we operate. When the Eckerd Family Foundation first opened its doors, it was with the understanding that we would have about a 15-year life span. Our current plan calls for us to close no later than 2014, and we intend to complete the last round of regular grantmaking by the end of 2012. Up to two years have been set aside to close the foundation, evaluate the effectiveness of our work, and make final distributions.
With that sort of close-ended framework in mind, our mission has been to invest in strategies to support youth at risk in Florida as well as North Carolina and Delaware where three of our directors reside. With an extended family, it was important to establish geographical priorities as well. As an organization, our primary area of interest is youth in the 13 to 25 age range, particularly in three categories: youth failing in the traditional education system, youth who are aging out of foster care, and youth who have had involvement in the juvenile justice system. Incidentally, our early work to establish priorities was based on research presented through YTFG. Our mission has been to focus on these areas and support interventions that are data-based and produce verifiable youth outcomes.
As president of the foundation, one of my many roles is to make sure that the foundation takes advantage of opportunities in the locations where our Board of Director members reside. Within our three areas of focus, we want to ensure that we're scanning for the opportunities that exist around us. For me, that means spending considerable time listening to stakeholders, trying to find productive connections, identifying leadership, and ensuring that the foundation is scanning areas not only where the need is great but which offer opportunities to leverage our investments and promote systemic change.
2. Given your mission, what are some of the great programs or community investments that successfully address issues concerning disconnected youth?
One important lesson we have learned is that even though we have three distinct focus areas, we are really talking about "the same kids." For example, 30% or so of youth in and aging out of foster care have involvement with the juvenile justice system; generally, all are challenged in school. So basically, the same strategies apply to all these kids. If you are interested in the education of youth at risk, you must have an understanding of the data that breaks down who these kids are and where they are.
One of the investments we've found that can produce great outcomes is supporting vocational or career education. It is an option that is sometimes overlooked and, in my view, not completely understood. It can be a transformational kind of investment. Supporting nontraditional education means you are taking a kid who would otherwise drop out of school altogether and turning him into a graduate with a career path and a lifetime of options ahead of him. A common misconception is that vocational training is an endpoint; it is not – it's the door to future opportunity. Success, for us, is measured by seeing our kids completing an education and going on to further their training or having the option and opportunity to continue community or regular college. This is a strong point of intervention for us, since it gives youth a number of allies they haven't seen before – in the business community and other career paths where assistance is more forthcoming than we anticipated. And often times, it takes only a little money to achieve that success.
Our work with youth aging out of foster care and the Cby25™ Initiative throughout Florida has resulted in systematic change. We have leveraged our investment and formed partnerships with state and local government as well as the judicial system. Our county, Hillsborough, was one of the first of three pilot sites in the nation starting in 2005. Our work supporting the Cby25™ Initiative and youth aging out of foster care has also focused on data-driven youth outcomes and the assets that ultimately empower youth to make the right choices and become independent – a solid education, life skills, staying out of trouble, and getting the right help – it is all connected. Now we are able to present data – hard data – supporting better outcomes in a cost-effective way!
3. How has being a spend-down foundation influenced your approach to grantmaking?
Because we have always known that our grantmaking has a limited life, we've had to think more strategically and acknowledge that we simply can't do everything we might like to do for our youth. The foundation has had to focus in on three or four really important issues and decide how to be strategic in attaining our goals. The result is that we've placed a high priority on trying to make data-driven decisions and look to data to hold ourselves accountable for measurable youth outcomes. Not only does this allow us to look back and reflect on what the foundation has been able to do, but it also allows for replication in other communities. This will allow the Eckerd Family Foundation to extend into perpetuity, even though we will no longer be actively contributing to the philanthropic community.
It is difficult to overstate the value of the connections made through the Youth Transition Funders Group. We're not a big foundation, and we're not a national foundation, but we have benefited tremendously from the network and the experiences of others. This crossover between organizations is an intangible benefit but it has tremendous value just the same. By working together we achieve more than we could as individuals.
4. What role can foundations play to highlight model states or model programs for replication and praise?
The core of all of our work is to fund programs that are data- and results-driven. We want to support leadership and initiatives that create tangible results for entire communities, since being able to see the numbers gives other organizations and the media a reason to talk about the issue. For example, in the area of juvenile justice, one of the biggest challenges we've had here in Florida is the issue of juvenile arrest. The problem is that too many young people come into the system and are arrested for misbehavior-type offenses. But misbehavior has turned into misdemeanor and an arrest record can be life changing. We are not talking about public safety issues here and, putting aside one-time bad behavior, we are usually dealing with a behavioral issue, family issue, or mental health issue – things that are more effectively and efficiently addressed outside the portal of the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, many states have made these offenses equal in the eyes of the law.
As a result, we've been pushing that public safety is best addressed by taking care of kids and preparing them to continue their education in place of institutionalization. One of the points of intervention here is to create alternatives to arrest. We've been a big promoter of the Civil Citation Initiative. Instead of arresting a young person, he or she gets a civil citation and is assessed to find the root cause of the behavior. In one of the pilots we funded here in Hillsborough County, we've seen 550 fewer arrests and saved the county and the city of Tampa $750,000 overall. By exploring these alternatives, we can come up with better youth outcomes that are more cost effective and really address the underlying issues at play.
5. Several nonprofits are having a hard time during this recession, even as some experts suggest that it will end soon. Do you have thoughts on how the philanthropic community can succeed during this time?
I think the real question is what is it that creates lasting change, and how do you support that? As a society, we don't concentrate on good news; the airport doesn't announce happy landings and newspapers don't announce philanthropic outcomes that have exceeded expectations. We hear when things aren't working or when something goes wrong. After all, those are the things that get attention.
One of our challenges has been learning how to promote what works – and we've discovered that it's not only a positive experience, but an inexpensive one as well. We've tried to move into a higher range of social media marketing to more effectively deliver our messages. Again, people want to support things that work but being able to do that effectively is challenging.
I think that our economy has, as one of the side effects of the recession, forced people to become more receptive to looking at change if it will produce better outcomes in a more cost-effective way. Community budgets are tight everywhere you look, and organizations that are able to prove they can impact the bottom line in a positive way have a greater opportunity to promote good programs and influence support.
25 Minutes is a YTFG interview series to introduce new members to our network of philanthropic leaders and to update the Action Group on the emerging work of long-time members of the Youth Transition Funders Group.
