General Powell’s Charity Gets Mixed Reviews From Non-Profit Leaders

When Gen. Colin Powell agreed to chair last year’s Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future in Philadelphia, he made it clear that he wanted to also lead the toughest part of the battle: getting companies, government agencies, and charities to make good on the promises they made to help needy youngsters.

“There have been too many short-run ideas and projects, and most of them die as soon as the champion leaves,” General Powell says. “I’m in this for the long haul.”

As head of America’s Promise here — the non-profit group created to monitor progress made toward the summit’s goals — General Powell and his colleagues have marshaled 346 pledges from organizations that want to help kids. America’s Promise is also working with groups in 268 cities and towns that are trying to follow up on the activities at the Philadelphia summit.

But critics in the non-profit world say that America’s Promise has not done enough to insure that the commitments by national organizations are filtering down to the city and state level.

Others are disappointed that America’s Promise has not come up with a uniform, national measurement tool that organizations can use to assess whether children’s lives improve due to summit-inspired efforts.

Still others fear that America’s Promise, by creating name recognition for itself, is competing with charities for foundation and corporate grants. The organization has gained a high profile through public-service announcements on prime-time television. And the symbol that the organization uses — a red wagon — along with the group’s logo can now be seen on Kellogg’s cereal boxes and on several advertisements by companies that want to publicize their association with the national movement.

As part of the one-year-anniversary celebration of the summit, General Powell will give a report to the nation next week at the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Chicago. And America’s Promise plans to release an update showing how much progress each organization has made toward fulfilling its commitment.

Officials at America’s Promise — which has a $6.5-million annual budget and a staff of 50 — acknowledge that they had a slow start. But they are quick to say that the organization has overcome initial difficulties, including the fact that the organization has had three different presidents in its first year. Its current president, Peter Gallagher, has been at the helm about six months.

What’s more, General Powell says he is “doing everything I can” to direct attention to needy kids. He adds: “And that translates into interest that we then direct back to the non-profits.”

General Powell dismisses the criticism that America’s Promise competes with charities for money.

“People will see over time that America’s Promise does not compete with what they’re doing,” General Powell says. “What we are trying to do is not take a slice out of a small pie. We want to take just enough to keep ourselves running and make the whole pie bigger. Ultimately everybody will benefit.”

Some non-profit leaders are not sure their organizations will benefit, however. Many have complained about fruitless attempts to get in touch with corporations in their regions that have made pledges to carry out the summit’s goals. Local units of national companies are often unaware of the commitment their businesses have made, or they have received no directives about it from their national headquarters.

As a result, some charity executives want America’s Promise to require, or at least recommend, that corporations and other groups stipulate whether and how their local offices will carry out the company’s summit pledge.

“That’s a fair criticism,” says General Powell. “I used to be on top of a very large organization and I would say, ‘Do this,’ and then I’d go out to Camp Swampy. And no, nothing [was done].” America’s Promise, he adds, “probably ought” to ask companies and other national organizations how they will carry out their pledges at the local level.

America’s Promise officials also say they hope that local charities will collaborate more and that small groups will ally with big charities so that companies will not have to work with so many disparate organizations.

Small non-profit groups should join together, says Tim Hanlon, senior vice-president for marketing and communications at America’s Promise. When they do, he says, “a company is going to look at that and say, ‘There is traction there. I know if I invest in that coalition, I’ll see results.’”

To allay concerns about the coordination between national and local efforts — and urged to do so by community foundations — America’s Promise plans to announce next week a new program to work with such funds. The community foundations, which raise and distribute money in specific geographic areas, will help decide how to disperse corporate donations and other pledges made nationally in their region. In addition, they will raise money for local kids’ needs.

“This strategy with community foundations has almost unlimited potential because it engages local strength,” says Rae Grad, senior vice-president of America’s Promise. “It will stimulate more resources that are lying in wait.”

America’s Promise also plans to help local charities in other ways. Next week, officials say, its Web site (http://www.americaspromise.org) will have a new feature to allow charities to get information on companies, other charities, and government agencies working on summit goals in their region.

In recent months, the organization has started to offer resources such as videotapes and how-to guides on organizing state and city summits modeled after the national event.

It also arranged a gathering in Kansas City, Mo., that brought together civic leaders from five cities who shared ideas on ways to meet the goals of the Presidents’ Summit.

Carrie Moffitt, chief executive officer of Volunteer Houston, said that she got good ideas by attending the meeting. For example, she says, Houston may copy the approach taken by organizers in Kansas City who have paired corporate donors with “promise partners” — local charities that already serve young people.

Such meetings, says Ms. Moffitt, give charities a way to learn from other regions that are further along in carrying out the summit’s goals. Trying to meet the national summit’s goal of helping two million kids by 2000 doesn’t leave much time for planning, she notes. “We’re building the plane as we fly it.”

One problem that all of the participants identified at the meeting, says Ms. Moffitt, is that charities and other groups do not have a uniform way to measure whether the myriad new efforts to help children actually do so. “All of us are struggling with measurement,” she says.

Last year, officials from America’s Promise said that they were working to come up with a way to evaluate whether organizations were achieving the goal of helping kids. But researchers working with America’s Promise to design an evaluation instrument say that measuring progress toward summit goals may be impossible due to expense, confidentiality issues, and the difficulty of accounting for the vast array of factors, apart from the summit, that could influence children’s well-being.

America’s Promise will soon release an assessment tool, created by the Search Institute in Minneapolis, that charities can use to determine the needs of kids in grades 6 through 12. However, in a written description of the tool, America’s Promise has advised local leaders that it “is not intended as a pre- and post-test of the success of your initiative.”

Lacking a uniform measuring device, charities across the country are coming up with their own ways to document increased aid to children and its effects.

In Atlanta, 100 Black Men will measure its accomplishments by determining whether a child’s aspirations have changed as a result of having a mentor. That is one indicator of success; another is whether the mentor reports a positive experience.

In Newark, Do Something, a charity that encourages young people to volunteer, has come up with a 100-point “Quality of Life” index, based on surveys of local attitudes and hard data like juvenile-crime rates.

Some non-profit officials, unable to figure out how to measure the effects of their programs, are simply offering new services to needy youngsters and hoping that much good will result.

But other charity leaders argue that a uniform evaluation tool can be developed and is essential to monitoring progress.

Bill Hoogterp, a volunteer who works full time at Do Something, says: “We need a comprehensive measuring tool that becomes widely used. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just a compass to tell us whether, over all, kids are doing better and neighborhoods are getting stronger. Without such a tool, it is easy to lose a lot of kids.”

General Powell says that it will take years to see if the summit will cause substantial change. But he is confident that the national movement he is leading will prove to be successful.

“If you create 500,000 more spaces for Boys & Girls Club kids, I just know that that will produce a generation of kids 10 years from now who have benefited from that 500,000 spaces’ worth of care, compassion, safety, and opportunity to grow,” he says.

But the real test, he adds, “will come years later when you see whether or not teen-age pregnancy rates are going down, school-completion rates are going up, and more families are being formed rather than children being born out of wedlock. I look at that as the most important measurement.”