Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Fall 2005
In its replication plan, Maryland Nonprofits promised
to help five state associations customize the Standards to their own needs
and preferences and to help them adapt all of the promotional materials,
educational packets and training curricula associated with the program.
Maryland Nonprofits would provide ongoing consultation and training to
help replication partners implement all facets of the program and built
into the replication budget substantial pass-through grants in each state
($60,000 in year one, $45,000 in year two) to help finance the program
start-up.
Maryland Nonprofits also required that any association wanting to become a replication partner commit to hiring a full-time project coordinator and sustain a project budget of at least $90,000 per year—meaning that the association would have to raise and contribute at least $30,000 to the Standards program in year one and $45,000 in year two. Many nonprofit associations expressed interest, but Maryland Nonprofits selected Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Georgia as the participants.
Like the initial planning process to create the Standards for Excellence, the launch of the national replication was impressive, due both to the Maryland Nonprofits’ direct assistance and to the atmosphere of mutual support it created among the replication states. Rick Moyers, who headed the Ohio Association of Nonprofits from 1999 until November 2003, calls the initial stages of the replication process “one of the most collaborative and mutually supportive endeavors that I’ve ever been a part of. We met two or three times as a replication partners group, and each time we would leave loaded down with notebooks and electronic files that included everything we needed to be successful.”
Tish Mogan, vice president of the Pennsylvania Association of Nonprofit Organizations and the director of its Standards for Excellence project, also praises Maryland Nonprofits: “When we were going through the first round of certifications, they were right at my side, making sure that we were doing it consistently,” she says. Trisha Lester, vice president of the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits, says the pass-through funding was especially helpful. “[The extra funds] allowed us to go and talk with two or three groups at a time or have a more focused discussion around board issues or other concerns. Those are things we couldn’t have done without the support and they made a big difference.”
“Virtually everyone we spoke with had positive things to say about the role that Maryland Nonprofits has played in this process,” program evaluators Lawrence Bailis, an associate professor and senior research associate at the Center for Youth and Communities at Brandeis University and Andrew Sokatch, director of research and evaluation for The New Teacher Project, reported in September 2004. “There is widespread feeling that Maryland Nonprofits staff have gone beyond simply providing training and a range of supportive materials. They are, universally, thought of as caring, committed, and quick to respond.”
With this support, replicating the Standards for Excellence model proved both easier and harder than anticipated—but clearly feasible. Maryland Nonprofits anticipated that the replication states would make substantial modifications to the code to suit their own goals, culture and legal codes. Indeed, nonprofit leaders in each replication state reviewed and debated the code extensively. But in the end, while these conversations helped cement support for the Standards process in the replication states, none resulted in major modifications.
On the other hand, Maryland Nonprofits found it more difficult and time-consuming than expected to prepare replication partners to operate the program. In a progress report to Carnegie Corporation, Maryland Nonprofits confided that the least effective strategy employed in the project was allowing each replication state to move forward on its own timetable. “Having each partner at a different stage of the replication process was very challenging on both the pace and the evaluation of the work,” the report stated.
For the replication partners, the certification component of the program proved the most daunting. In a January 2003 interim report, Bailis and Sokatch noted that “The state association and local nonprofit agency time necessary to shepherd an application through certification—developing materials, providing training, review of materials provided by participating associations—is perhaps the clearest example of program elements that take far more time (and therefore money) than was originally assumed.”
This heavy burden was key reason why three of the five states—North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana—initially decided not to offer certification. Instead, they would focus exclusively on promoting the Standards and offering training and support to help nonprofits adopt whatever elements of the code suited their needs. Ultimately, Louisiana reversed its decision and began to offer certification. But North Carolina and Georgia continue to operate a no-certification version of the Standards program.
With or without certification, the Standards for Excellence model proved readily transportable. All five participating state nonprofit associations implemented the program successfully. As of December 2003, the partner states had distributed more than 20,000 copies of the Standards and 9,000 educational packets and they had received information requests from almost 2,500 organizations. The project also proved valuable for the state associations themselves and the associations’ aggregate membership grew nine percent in two years. “Perhaps most importantly,” project evaluators Bailis and Sokatch concluded, “the process of replicating the Standards for Excellence has provided them with a central organizing principal by which to grow, strengthen and direct their staff members, boards, and organizations.”