Policy Briefs: Charting Civil Society

This brief profiles community-based nonprofits in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area that are helping newcomers adjust to their new social and political environment, while affirming their cultural identities. The brief focuses on nonprofit groups that serve Asian, Middle Eastern and African populations and examines the characteristics of these organizations in terms of their number, size, location, and scope of activities. The findings provide a unique picture of the community-based resources that are helping immigrants incorporate into American life.

Over the past decade the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area has become increasingly diverse, driven in large part by the growth of the Latino population. By 2006, almost 610,000 Latinos lived in the region. Today's immigrants, like those before them, contribute to the development of civil society organizations and rely on them for services and activities. Yet little is known about these organizations and the ways they help newcomers build and engage in civil society. This brief provides an overview of nonprofits and religious congregations in the Washington, D.C. region that focus on providing services and support to the Latino population.

Nonprofit organizations are a crucial link in our nation’s emergency preparedness and disaster response efforts, but their role is not always well integrated into disaster planning. After both Hurricane Katrina and 9/11, nonprofits provided immediate and longer-term assistance to help people cope with devastating life changes and the emotional aftermath, but the importance of long-term services is not well understood or even acknowledged by victims and policymakers alike. This brief highlights the lessons learned from the Urban Institute’s assessment of the American Red Cross September 11th Recovery Program, which provided grants to community-based organizations to provide longer-term case management, mental health services, and other services to facilitate recovery to eligible individuals.

Over the past decade, legislators have been looking for ways to increase private charitable giving and direct these resources to programs that serve low-income people. To further these goals, Arizona enacted a charitable tax credit in 1997 as part of the state’s welfare reforms. This brief examines the structure of the Arizona program, the initial effects on giving, and the types of organizations that benefited from the charitable tax credit. It concludes that although the Arizona charitable tax credit stimulated some additional giving during relatively good economic times (1998-1999), it is not a panacea for funding the nonprofit sector. The jury is still out as to whether it may weaken a broad array of organizations that create community cohesiveness and civil society.

While the transfer of policy between state governments is a well-researched practice, little is known about the state-to-state spread of programs generated and implemented by nonprofit organizations. In 1990, the nonprofit Child Care Services Association in North Carolina began an education and compensation scholarship program for 21 child care workers in three counties. As of August 2003, the program, now known as the T.E.A.C.H. (Teacher Education and Compensation Helps) Early Childhood® Project, had spread to 23 states and is annually providing more than 15,000 scholarships. This policy brief examines factors that supported, promoted, and challenged the transfer of the T.E.A.C.H. model to four states (Florida, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Washington). This research finds that effective policy replication involves multiple stages and a number of roles for policy advocates.

Little attention has been paid to whether funding from federal faith-based initiatives is reaching its intended partners, such as congregations in low-income neighborhoods that on a daily basis assist some of the nation's most vulnerable and needy people. Using a sample of congregations in three low-income wards of the District of Columbia, this brief explores how congregations are responding to the initiatives and their experiences in working with government.

This policy brief outlines the features of the Military Child Care System (MCCS) that make it an exemplary model of quality care and affordable costs; and compares it to several civilian models that undertake quality reforms. The study highlights the importance of public investment in child care programs and of establishing and enforcing standards for quality care.

This brief looks at the structure of the charitable sector and describes the unique challenges these organizations face in soliciting contributions, selecting beneficiaries, and distributing funds for wide-scale disaster relief, and outlines four principles of public finance that are useful guidelines for navigating related problems.

The strong economy and tight labor market of recent years have spurred hefty increases in executive compensation in corporate and nonprofit America. Yet, the growth of salaries and benefits for nonprofit officers has been significantly more controversial than increasing executive compensation in the corporate sector. Even government regulators have taken notice, as evidenced by the temporary regulations recently passed by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

As a first step in assessing the effects of welfare reform on nonprofit human service providers, this brief draws on data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics to describe how the size of the nonprofit human service sector in selected urban areas changed during the initial period of rapid devolution and welfare reform in the 1990s. Specifically, the brief examines the entry and exit of nonprofit human service providers from 1992 to 1996, when the federal government granted large numbers of AFDC waivers to states to revamp their welfare systems. The analysis stems from a broader study of the impact of AFDC waivers on nonprofit providers and focuses on the 53 largest intrastate metropolitan areas in the United States.