By Paul Krieger, United Way Intern
 |
| Alejandro Queral |
United Way of the Columbia-Willamette is currently
instituting major changes in the way we do business — especially how we
interact with our community partners and evaluate the impact and success we are
having in our region. This blog series will look out how our Community Impact
team is retooling to achieve our ambitious goal of breaking the cycle of childhood
poverty within our four-county region within a generation. In this first part,
I will interview Alejandro Queral, director of the newly formed Systems
Planning and Performance team, responsible for measuring and evaluating our
overall impact and efficacy.
Queral is a new member of our team, having come on board
in July. He holds a B.S. in environmental science and a master’s in evolutionary
biology and is a graduate of the George Washington University Law School. He
has also worked for the Sierra Club, directing their Human Rights and
Environment program, been a state government relations director of the American
Heart Association and a program supervisor for Multnomah County Health
Department. With his extensive background in health, environment and administration,
Queral brings a unique perspective to the role of SPP director.
What’s the function
of the Systems Planning and Performance team?
SPP is the part of Community Impact responsible for developing
systems that will help United Way make the investment decisions that will be most
effective at reducing or eliminating childhood poverty; ultimately, these
decisions will be based on data, available evidence and measurable outcomes.
What is the current
focus of your work in Systems Planning?
This is a period of creation and innovation for us; in fact
we are trying to define what we are given our new role. We are currently
working on creating and refining an integrated management system for multiple
data sources to make better decisions about how to invest and who to invest in.
We are moving toward a system where we can better evaluate the performance of
our partners as well as measure our own impact within the community. So we will
focus on key performance metrics that can help us measure how effective we are
toward eliminating childhood poverty, as well as to continue to improve our
investment processes and decisions moving forward.
How has the focus of
your department changed compared with years past, especially given the new
strategic focus?
We have taken a critical step in changing our focus from a
transactional, fundraising organization to a relational focus that is
community-based. With this new focus, we must identify who the key stakeholders
are in our community and who is driving change. We must enlarge our knowledge
base and understanding of what works so that we are more in tune with community
needs, and better understand where we can have the greatest community impact.
We need to increase our presence as a community partner by participating in our
community in more qualitative ways — we must do a better job of telling the
story of who we are and what our impact is.
How is Systems
Planning preparing for this new relational role and how do you envision this
will play out in terms of how we interact with partner organizations and
projects?
This is where one of the great opportunities lies for United
Way, to redefine itself. What does it mean to be relational, particularly in
the context of working with community partners and investing resources into their
organization and development? SPP has a key role to play in defining how we
measure success and in being able to convey what success looks like to our
community partners. SPP provides a framework for a performance-based approach
in making our investment decisions — we should be able to say what
organizations are really having an impact in ending childhood poverty.
But it’s more than evaluating or assessing their performance
— it’s also about understanding what it is that they’re doing that is working
well, that is helping move the needle, and understanding where the barriers are
that are preventing success. In other words, when we talk about being
relational, we need to think about accountability in a different way — not
necessarily about being punitive but about using the data we gather from the
community and the region to make better decisions about where to invest, where
to take action, how to approach a particular problem. So we will play a role in
not just gathering and managing data but turning that data into knowledge that
partners can use to make effective decisions.
So it’s a two-way
street — data can flow both ways
helping both us and our partners gauge performance?
Absolutely. I think it’s critical that we are learning from
organizations — we will certainly be creating the infrastructure internally to
understand what it is our partners are doing. It goes to the question of impact
— if we understand how to measure success, then we can say something about the
impact of United Way and our grantees in the community. And it’s more than a
two-way street; it’s really a whole network of organizations, and through that
network we will be sharing knowledge that can be put into action — not just a bunch
of data that only tell us whether we’ve met our goals or not. It’s more than
that. Through the network, we will all learn why we did or didn’t achieve our
individual and collective objectives and what we can all do to be more
effective.
Can you talk a little
about our role as a “backbone organization” and about being a convener?
There are a number of things there — one is the question of
what our role is within a collective impact model. We can play a backbone role
but I think we should also be open to adapting, particularly around the CommunityTransformation investment strategy. What I think we will see is that
organizations and collaboratives are at different stages of development and
readiness. So United Way has to tailor its role according to where
organizations and collaboratives are and how they envision their partnership
with us. We need to able to think about what is the best role for us to play in
enhancing the work of a particular community.
How about measuring
impact?
Since about 2012, United Way has been funneling resources to
a range of projects with focus areas around health, education and economic
stability. But within those things, it runs the gamut — around income for
instance, around EITC, rent assistance, financial literacy classes — all these
different things in the past have never shared metrics, have never shared
goals. It’s very difficult to condense that work into stories that people can
relate to. Statistics and theory are not sexy. People want to hear about
results. In previous years we have not been set up to understand the impact. So
what we’re doing is refining how to look at what works to reduce childhood
poverty based on the available evidence.
For some types of projects it’s relatively easy to measure
concrete impact and return on investment; for others that are less tangible, it
will take time and research to develop meaningful metrics. For example, what
does it mean for a family to be able to stay in their home one more month? How
does that impact their family stability? What does it mean in the long term?
Does that one time influx of cash have a long term effect on their ability to
stay employed?
The key is to be able to communicate the vision of where
United Way wants to be. In order to do that, we can provide data that shows
where our region is in terms of childhood poverty — measurements like academic
attainment, financial stability, public housing, services provided, etc. Moving
forward, we’ll be working on data that captures what our partners are doing and
how they’re moving the needle in a very local way.
Anything else that
our community should know about SPP?
The role of the Systems Planning and Performance team is to
create the underlying infrastructure that will allow the Community Collaborations
team (another new team within Community Impact) to better understand what is
happening in the community, how our partners are working and what kinds of
success they’ve achieved. It’s really important not to lose sight or forget
that Systems Planning is just one side of this coin and that the Community Collaboration
team will be more directly engaged with community members on the ground. Our
role really is to facilitate their work. We have a relationship where we just
don’t simply meet and talk but rather take action together and create the infrastructure
that allows us to take action together.
This is part one of a
three-part series looking at how United Way’s community impact team is
realigning in order to help break the cycle of childhood poverty. Up next is our
Community Collaborations Director Mayra Arreola.
Interested in how your
organization can help break the cycle of childhood poverty? Learn more about funding opportunities from United Way.
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