Can philanthropy ‘fix’ public education?

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Special to Philanthropy Journal

Damon Circosta

There is a battle going on in North Carolina, where I work, and across the country for the future of public education. In the fog of war, sometimes it’s tough to tell who is on what side. Everyone wants to ascend to the mantle of “champion for kids” or “reformers of education,” and everyone fervently believes their solution is the winner.

As the debate about public education has become increasingly polarized in the last decade, the sharp partisanship draws frustration from frustrated parents whose objective is to send their kid to a great school.

Meanwhile, another interesting trend continues.  Private philanthropic organizations continue to find ways to support strengthening our schools. The headlines speak for themselves: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Commits $350 Million Nationally To Help Students Succeed in the Classroom, Annenberg to Give Education $500 Million Over Five Years, and Mark Zuckerberg Giving $100 Million to Newark Schools.

For context, America spends more than $500 billion a year on public elementary and secondary education. States typically provide a little less than half, local governments about 44 percent, and the federal government contributes about 13 percent of all direct expenditures.

Philanthropists, by contrast, only spend about $4 billion annually. You need a good education to do the math, which equals just 0.008 percent of total expenditures. Though it’s a drop in the bucket, this private money is having a growing influence on public education. 

The flexibility that philanthropic dollars provide can help spur innovation in our public schools. But foundation money injected into the public school system is merely an opportunity. There are no guarantees that a grant will “fix” public schools.

In my limited experience working to fund education initiatives, here are some issues that we strive to address:

Know Your Limits
As states continue to feel the pinch of the recession, and public school funding does not keep pace with enrollment, foundations are increasingly being asked to send resources to our public schools. But as philanthropists, we must understand our place in a large, complex system. In 1972, the Ford Foundation published a critique of its own education reform efforts during the 1960s. The report observed that the foundation’s projects “underestimated the complexity of improving schools” and did not fully account for the difficulty of working with unions, community leaders and parents, or the effect of broader social conditions. Let this be a lesson for us going forward. 

Fund Innovation
Foundation funds are not large enough to the fill budget gaps left when public revenue decreases. We shouldn’t even attempt to pick up the slack when public dollars fall short. Instead, our money is best spent on programs that are experimental in nature, not plugging holes. It’s been said that foundation dollars can be the “passing gear” of society. As such we should always look to rev the engines of something new, even if it means a greater risk that we will fail.

Invest in Talent
The lion’s share of grant funding goes to pay for salaries.  We need to invest that money in talented people who are doing innovative work. There is no shortage of remarkable talent in public schools, from the classroom teacher to local superintendents. Identify those who are making a mark, support their work and pay them well enough to keep them in public schools. 

Stay Local
A scathing critique of the Annenberg Challenge in the 1990s concluded that the reason this funding was largely a failure is because the program was based on the notion that failing public schools simply needed expertise from talented and motivated outsiders. Public education is a huge enterprise in this country. Philanthropic dollars work best when they are used to identify a specific, local problem. This strategy builds greater trust between partners and foundations don’t try to bite off more than they can chew.

Be a Cheerleader
While our public education system undeniably needs reform, we must remain positive and humble. Harping on the words “failure” and “broken” is unhelpful to our efforts. Nor is it helpful to pretend that philanthropy can save the day. It might feel good to couch a grant as the “winning ticket” for a school, but it does a disservice to all of the wonderful, important things that others do for public schools. We must be the outspoken and optimistic cheerleaders on the side, sticking up for public education and believing in its success.

Bring Your Friends With You
Too often, I see grant makers get really excited about a project and then restrict the ability of other interested funders to join the effort. The best school improvement projects I’ve seen are ones that have multiple funding streams and buy-in from a broad swath of the community. If you find a project worth investing in, let your grant-making friends know they can share in the work and outcome.

There are very few institutions in our increasingly segmented society that have the opportunity to bring people together like public schools. Our government is polarized, our churches are segregated and we have even begun again to live apart from one another. If we invest in the right strategies, we strengthen an institution that democratizes and unites us. Education provides for our country’s future. It’s vitally important that we get this right.

Damon Circosta is the executive director of the A.J. Fletcher Foundation, which provides operational funding for Philanthropy Journal.

Volunteers help build brighter futures for Cambodian students

Special to Philanthropy Journal

Jamie Amelio

From the very beginning, Caring for Cambodia (CFC), which in 10 years has built and nurtured 21 schools in Siem Reap, Cambodia, was a bottoms-up organization.

Before the schools, before the teacher training program, before starting to provide all our students two meals a day, a small group of women sat in my living room filling backpacks with school supplies. Within weeks of my first visit to Siem Reap, piles of toothbrushes, T-shirts, pencils and notebooks were spilling out of my spare room into the hall and living room. Soon another group of volunteers was creating homemade picture books in English and Khmer and laminating them so they wouldn’t wilt in the Cambodian heat.

CFC could not exist but for the hundreds of volunteers who have donated so much of their energy – and, in many cases, their hearts and souls – to our cause. They likely would never have appeared at all if my family and I had not moved to Singapore. 

Singapore is a city like no other, a unique blend of East and West. On the one hand, its infrastructure out-Wests the West in its modern design, six-star hotels, cosmopolitan restaurants and mega casinos; on the other hand, its Eastern culture imposes strict laws against jaywalking, littering and chewing gum. About three-quarters of Singapore’s 4.8 million people are ethnic Chinese, but the island also has a large foreign population, including about 100,000 U.S. expatriates.

Because wages are so low, expats tend to have a lot of help in the form of drivers, nannies and cooks. That frees up spouses who are there because their husbands or wives (mostly husbands, even in the 21st century) are working for a multinational in the region. For me, it meant I had a coterie of dedicated volunteers available.

The situation has since changed, but at the time Singapore, like the rest of Asia, lacked a strong culture of giving. But I have watched that change before my very eyes, though, now see people from all cultures caring. Nonprofit organizations were not a part of the zeitgeist, yet within the expatriate community, there was a hunger to give back some of what we had received.

We were living in paradise and we knew it, while just a few hours away hungry children were going without schooling. Although we have some wonderful men on our board of directors and my husband Bill has always been a powerful, inspiring presence, CFC’s nucleus of volunteers remains women. Maybe that’s why I’ve always considered CFC an organization of such emotion and passion.

While our first school was being built in 2004, we expanded our base in Singapore by asking women we knew to lunch and showing them photographs of the Cambodian children. As our organization matured, we encouraged our volunteers to visit Siem Reap to see for themselves what we were doing and to help out.

We started organizing “Make a Difference” trips, which soon evolved into much more ambitious projects than bringing donations of school supplies and clothing to the schools. Groups of families began to build houses in the surrounding villages and help with construction projects on one of our campuses. Going deep into a village that most tourists never see and working side by side with Cambodians to build a home, turn a mud field into a playground or help serve our free school meals inspired our volunteers.

We were particularly fortunate to have a number of women with extensive experience in early childhood education. In a country where, in the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge deliberately singled out and murdered 75 percent of its teachers, these women created a formal program to “teach the teachers.”

Extraordinary volunteers form the backbone of CFC and keep us motivated. I have repeatedly witnessed peoples’ inner light magically glow when they walk into our schoolyards or classrooms, help serve breakfast to young Cambodian students or congratulate a middle school graduate. People feel it, and they become committed, not because of anything I could ever say to them, but because they get what we are trying to accomplish and feel compelled to do something!

Jamie C. Amelio’s book, Graced with Orange, tells her story of travelling to Cambodia, adopting two Cambodian girls, founding Caring for Cambodia (CFC), a nonprofit, non-governmental charitable organization, and changing her own life and the lives of those around her.

Cyber bullying has devastating impact on LGBT students

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Special to Philanthropy Journal

James Miller

A new study from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) sheds new light on cyber bullying its consequences on our youth. And while this report is billed as the “first of its kind,” all of us who work with youth-serving nonprofits know the storyline all too well.

Facebook taunting, intimidating e-mails, graphic snap-chats – these types of bullying happen every minute of every day. This report by GLSEN helps inform yet another aspect of how pervasive bullying really is in our communities.

But let’s take a step back and ask: Why is this really a problem in the LGBT Community? According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness:

• •  Roughly 25 percent of LGBT students report missing school due to fear of victimization.
• •  90 percent of LGBT youth report being harassed or assaulted over the past school year.
• •  Stigma attached to LGBT youth put them at higher risks for anxiety, depression, substance abuse and suicide.
• •  LGBT youth are 20-40 percent more likely to contemplate and attempt suicide compared to their heterosexual counterparts.
• •   Individuals experiencing harassment and victimization experience poorer academic outcomes and psychological health.

From an organizational standpoint, these numbers are astounding. From a young man who went through this type of cyber bullying when coming out, I can honestly tell you it is simply heartbreaking. So much has changed over the last 15 years, but hate never fades into the background; it just finds new machinations.

But why spend all of our time looking at this issue as simply a problem? The Internet, in all its splendid glory, is a double-edged sword, which makes this GLSEN report even more compelling. When examined, the report breathes hope into this community. It reminds individuals that the Internet, especially for rural youth, offers resources and information that could never be available to them otherwise. Youth are able to express themselves anonymously in online spaces in ways that they may not be able to do in their physical space.

The LGBT Center of Raleigh has an extensive library and great programming, but we’ve also gone to great lengths to ensure that all of our outreach and educational materials are clear and easily accessible on our website. Our newsletter always includes events happening in the Triangle. Our Twitter and Facebook feeds are filled with uplifting stories, breaking LGBT news, fun facts, and other engaging resources that individuals can access from anywhere in the world. Making every resource available digitally and anonymously, we hope to reach the invisible majority of our youth.

The take-away from the GLSEN report is simple: LGBT youth have huge, unmet needs, but by being more aware of the inherent systems in place, we can empower youth and community organizations to enhance our outreach and improve our kids’ health and wellness.

Understandably, many of us can look into the not so distant past to remember a time when there was no such thing as the Internet. This simple fact does not negate its importance, but it should force the reader to remember one distinct fact: Times change, and our research and outreach must change with it.

James Miller is the executive director of the LGBT Center of Raleigh, which offers programs, resources and events for youth and adults.