On any given night, approximately 40% of San Francisco’s jail population identifies as homeless. Many of these vulnerable individuals will face jail time again after their release. A fraction will cycle in and out of the criminal justice system anywhere, between eight and 23 times in a single year.
“Arrest is not an inevitable result of homelessness,” said Jake Segal, vice president of advisory services at Social Finance, a nonprofit that mobilizes capital across the public and private sectors to improve social outcomes. “But stable housing with appropriate support can provide a strong buffer against future jail stays.”
If people have access to assistance immediately after their release — if they’re connected to housing support services and a case manager, for example — they’re less likely to end up incarcerated for another offense. Knowing that, last year Social Finance partnered with the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department and Tipping Point Community, a local philanthropic funder, to pilot a program that refers inmates to housing and other social services upon their release.
“Social Finance got its start working in criminal justice. Increasingly, much of our work focuses on homelessness, and this project is a natural intersection of the two,” Segal said of the San Francisco Jail Discharge Planning Project.
Much research was needed before the program could launch and for the Sheriff’s Department, time was of the essence. “We were building the airplane as we were flying it,” said Ali Riker, director of programs for the Sheriff’s Department. “We wanted to get [the program] up and running because there was such an overwhelming need, but the biggest question we had was, ‘Discharge to what?’ It’s fine to tell people, ‘This is where the shelters are,’ but we really needed more resources to offer, particularly for those familiar faces coming in and out of our jail cells.”
To help them assess and learn from other jail-discharge programs across the country, Social Finance turned to GLG. The world’s largest knowledge marketplace, GLG connects professionals from across sectors with more than 700,000 subject-matter experts — a vast network of expertise representing nearly every industry, market, and issue area. By enlisting GLG’s help, Social Finance was able to quickly and accurately examine trends and best practices among discharge and reentry programs.
“We wanted to find programs that focused on comprehensive, community-based collaborations with the intention of driving impact on recidivism and housing,” Segal said.
GLG tapped into its extensive database to identify the right experts, including former prison officials, community leaders and policy experts, and arranged phone calls with each within 48 hours.
Because of GLG, “we were able to get a more comprehensive understanding of the key factors we needed [to focus on] for the program,” said Segal.
For example, it can be surprisingly difficult to identify the most frequently arrested inmates within the jail system and effectively intervene. Their jail stays may be short — the result of minor violations — and they may be released in the dark of night. With the guidance and advice of GLG’s experts, the Sheriff’s Department and Social Finance set up a database to better locate those who need help and ensure they’re matched with high-quality housing and support services the moment they leave jail.
Segal and his team learned other best practices too, such as the importance of collaboration between jail staff and community partners; robust screening and assessment criteria of a client’s needs; and giving case managers a key role.
“Successful reentry starts with risk assessment while the client is still in custody,” said Segal, adding that caseworkers are really the “glue” of the project. “They can make sure vulnerable people get to where they need to go.”
One year after its launch, the San Francisco Jail Discharge Planning Project has helped some 200 people transition more smoothly from jail. If GLG hadn’t played a part, “we wouldn’t have had the same knowledge about what makes a great program,” Segal said.
Citing their positive experience, Segal and his team at Social Finance have already decided to draw on GLG’s experts for help with future projects. “It’s become an incredibly important part of our research,” he said.
This article was paid for and produced in partnership with GLG. GLG Social Impact delivers the power of GLG’s platform to the social sector.
Tag: GLG
This Nonprofit Helping College Students Knows What It Takes to Succeed: Information Capital Plus a Network of Mentors
If you were trying to get your first nonprofit off the ground, you’d probably have a lot of questions — but not necessarily the money or the expertise to answer them. So what would you do? In the case of Aimée Eubanks Davis, CEO and founder of Braven, a nonprofit that helps promising, underrepresented college students land strong jobs after graduation, you turn to GLG.
As the world’s largest knowledge marketplace, GLG gives professionals the opportunity to connect with more than 700,000 experts — a worldwide network of leaders who represent nearly every industry. For Davis, a current GLG Social Impact Fellow, that means two years of free access to GLG’s vast resources — an unparalleled opportunity to help her grow Braven by soliciting advice on the strategic and operational challenges faced by young organizations.
Before launching Braven in 2013, Davis taught sixth grade in New Orleans with Teach For America. However, it was only when she moved into senior leadership roles for the organization that she fully realized the education-to-employment gap: specifically, that a college degree doesn’t guarantee a career. Only about a quarter of first-generation college students, students from low-income backgrounds and students of color go on to graduate school or secure a quality first job. Through Braven, Davis vowed to change that.
Braven partners with large public universities to build career education into their curriculum and give underrepresented students the skills and networks needed to succeed in the workplace. Braven also fosters a sense of community among the students they serve, along with a healthy dose of self-confidence — the soft skills, Davis realized, their affluent peers had already developed.
“They were underselling their greatness,” Davis said. “If no one tells you how to write a resume or what a cover letter looks like, you’re shooting in the dark.”
In 2014, Braven launched its first program at San José State University in California with just 14 students. In the five years since, the nonprofit has grown exponentially. Today, they’ve reached over 1,800 students at additional partner schools: Rutgers University–Newark in New Jersey and National Louis University in Chicago.
College students enroll in an accredited course that allows them to explore their individual strengths and the career paths that might prove a good fit. They practice writing resumes, drafting cover letters, building portfolios and participating in mock job interviews. By the end of the semester, they’ll have a team of mentors whom they can turn to for help.
It’s a support system not unlike GLG’s, Davis said. Working with the organization’s network of experts was like “hitting the jackpot on advice,” she added.
When Braven’s chief of staff asked GLG for feedback on the nonprofit’s organizational design and operating model, the response was robust — so much so that Davis said that “the input from those calls is helping to guide a two-day retreat this fall.”
Braven’s product and tech teams tapped GLG experts for their insights on building an innovation team: How should they staff it? How do they budget for innovation? Braven executives were also curious about how leaders at other companies approached staffing as their companies grew in size and scope.
“We ended up using GLG’s input to decide on our staffing structure, the roles we would hire for and their responsibilities, and how we would distinguish core product work from innovation work,” Davis said.
Braven also relied on GLG’s expertise in shaping a new product designed for the nonprofit’s employer-partners, which include corporate heavyweights like LinkedIn, Salesforce and Charles Schwab.
“We were able to get great insights that helped us design a pilot product suited for their rising talent,” Davis said.
Davis praised both the volume and quality of the advice and feedback Braven received through her fellowship with GLG.
“Some of the questions we had — what it would take to get all these opinions would have been impossible [without the fellowship],” said Davis. “GLG set us up for success.”
And that’s not unlike what she and her team at Braven do for their own Fellows.
This article was paid for and produced in partnership with GLG. GLG Social Impact delivers the power of GLG’s platform to the social sector.
The Partnership That Helped Save a Nonprofit
Imagine a job that encourages you to not only look for problems in the world, but to actively play a role in solving them. That’s just one of the things that drew Austin, Texas-based Brooke Currie to join GLG, the world’s largest knowledge marketplace, as a recent college graduate.
GLG’s mission is to bring the power of insight to every professional decision by connecting clients who have questions to subject-matter experts who can answer them. As a team leader in GLG’s Austin, Texas, office, Currie primarily works with professional-services clients; her colleagues serve financial-services firms, life-sciences companies, corporations and law firms — yet that’s only a handful of the types of organizations GLG supports.
Through its Social Impact initiative, GLG helps organizations across the social sector. The GLG Social Impact Fellowship provides two years of free platform access to high-impact, scaling nonprofit and social-enterprise teams. GLG Social Impact partners with grantmaking foundations, nonprofit advisory firms and impact investors to maximize their solutions. And the GLG Social Impact partners program enables every GLGer, regardless of role, tenure or geography, to connect nonprofits of their choosing with pro bono expert consultations.
For Currie, that meant helping women who are trying to advance their careers.
“As a young woman in the corporate world, it seemed like a good way to give back,” she said. “I know I have tried and erred a few times myself. If I could be a tiny help to anyone, that’s what I wanted to do.”
Last spring, Currie reached out to Mia Johns, the executive director of the Austin affiliate of Dress for Success. Launched in 2003, the central Texas affiliate helps approximately 1,000 women each year — and not just by providing them with suitable clothes to wear to an interview or a new job. They also offer workforce development skills and professional support to women entering the job market.
“Dress for Success is a really strong worldwide brand, but each affiliate is responsible for raising their own funding,” Johns said. “We rely on our community [for support].”
When Currie reached out to offer the organization (free!) expertise, Johns’ emailed response included “many, many exclamation marks.”
“They were very excited we were offering help to them,” Currie said.
Over several phone calls and emails, Currie narrowed in on what Dress for Success Austin needed to work on most — namely, updated promotional materials that would provide potential clients with a clearer sense of the services offered. The organization also saw a need for fine-tuning communications among their network of 300 volunteers. And Johns asked what else they could do to help clients continue improving their skills in pursuit of more lucrative jobs.
“Nearly three-fourths of our clients who get jobs make less than $15 an hour,” Johns said. “It’s important for us to think of creative ways to increase their skills so they can get better-paying jobs.”
Any one of the issues facing Dress for Success would have taken time and money to find just the right expert to help — “and most of the time, nonprofits don’t have the staff or the funding to do that,” Johns pointed out. But thanks to GLG’s extensive database of industry-specific experts, Currie had the answers at her fingertips.
“The most challenging part for me — which I enjoyed — was figuring out who were the right experts to help,” said Currie. “The options were kind of limitless.”
Within weeks, Johns was put in touch with three professionals, each of whom spent an hour on the phone with her, including a director who’d worked on the American Music Awards, a human resources specialist, and an expert on labor management who previously worked for Amazon.
“The consultants I worked with were stellar,” Johns said. “I felt so privileged to talk to them. They were sincere and all very helpful.”
The conversations sparked action: Johns hung up the phone understanding how to better communicate Dress for Success’s programs on their website and social channels. She developed leads on companies that could offer clients higher-paying jobs. And she implemented the advice from the human resources expert on how to best disclose recent turnover in the affiliate’s volunteer-coordinator position.
Currie called the entire experience “super-eye-opening,” in terms of how GLG is uniquely positioned to give an organization a leg up.
“It’s really rewarding to think creatively to help nonprofits problem-solve,” she said. “I love my job.”
This article was paid for and produced in partnership with GLG. GLG Social Impact delivers the power of GLG’s platform to the social sector.
The Game-Changing Way to Access Social Services
If you’re looking for a restaurant recommendation, you log onto Yelp. Need a ride? Request an Uber or Lyft. Want the highest-rated doctor in your health insurance network? Try Zocdoc.
It’s undeniable that technology has changed the way we identify and select services. But which app connects you with legal aid to fight an eviction notice, helps you locate someone to assist signing up your kid for preschool, or directs you to a food pantry that’s open late?
Founded in 2010 in Austin, Texas, the startup Aunt Bertha is an online database of human services, connecting governments, charities and churches with the 75 million Americans in all 50 states who need their services, says founder Erine Gray. Thus far, his company has helped more than 177,000 people.
“In the United States, we spend a lot of money attempting to fix social problems — poverty, housing, food, health and job training — the effectiveness of which can be argued. When you look at the 1.4 million nonprofits in the U.S., how do you know which ones are good and which ones are not?” asks Gray. “Most people are not professional social workers. For somebody in need, it’s very difficult to find out what’s available to you.”
The software company’s name refers to no one’s relative in particular — the domain name for Aunt Sue was taken, and Aunt Bertha sounded like an eccentric, matronly figure in contrast to Uncle Sam — but the idea for the company did come from Gray’s personal struggles. After his mother suffered from a stroke, he encountered difficulties locating adequate assistance (she had lost brain functionality and required around-the-clock care). Even though she qualified for help, Gray’s mother was rejected by more than 20 nursing homes, often with a baffling, one-sentence letter that said, “We are not able to meet your mother’s needs” and no other explanation.
“There are nonprofits that offer home healthcare visits if you have income that’s low enough, but I didn’t know about those services when I was navigating my mom’s care. People come up to me after talks and say, ‘My son had autism and I didn’t have anybody to talk to about it until I found a support group,’ or ‘I lost my job and didn’t know about worker re-entry programs,’” Gray says. “As a caretaker for someone who was disabled, in my experience, nobody is trained for when life throws you a curveball.”
That trying experience led Gray to ditch his career as a software developer (he says he wasn’t a very good programmer anyway), go back to school for a master’s degree and eventually take a lead role at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Making software and operational fixes, he streamlined the application process for services, saving the agency $5 million annually. Soon after, he took those lessons and founded his own company.
With Aunt Bertha, a person in Gray’s situation should have an easier time determining if their dependent is eligible for a given program. Searches can be narrowed based on multiple categories, such as age group, citizen or immigrant, housed or homeless and how urgent the problem is.
“What we wanted was a simple way for a seeker — the term we use for a person in need or their relative or champion — to essentially raise their hand and let an agency know electronically they need help,” Gray, a GLG fellow, explains. “Part of the vision is being able to find and apply for services in seconds.”
Eventually, as more users enroll in programs, Aunt Bertha will be able to track whether the charity met the person’s needs. As soon as a seeker submits an application for rental assistance or hearing aids, say, through the online portal, the service will clock the nonprofit’s response time and follow up with a satisfaction survey, creating a granular picture that’s more detailed than what can be found on GuideStar or Charity Navigator. The assessment will direct users to sign up for more effective programs.
On a grand scale, the program is already helping governments and nonprofits (like the Robin Hood Foundation) assess needs and measure the results of their funding. “We can tell you what people are searching for, what they’re finding and also what they’re not,” says Gray. For instance, if the number of searches for soup kitchens in Lubbock, Texas, suddenly spikes, it could encourage city lawmakers to look at large-scale solutions.
“If we’re successful, the entire nation will be able to visualize, in real time, where the pain is in the United States and see the suffering in the underbelly that doesn’t really show. Policymakers and data scientists will be able to see hotspots far earlier than any set of economic forecasts,” Gray says. “To be able to unlock that data and get it in the right hands, would be an amazing experience. We’d be able, in real time, to alleviate that suffering.”