This is the fourth episode of our podcast series featuring Vince Griffith, Vice President of Social Solutions.  The discussion includes Vince's insight on performance management, including best practices, the challenges facing organizations, and ETO Blueprints.

For this week’s post, we’re featuring the efforts of the Motion Picture & Television Fund to more effectively enhance the quality of life of those they serve

The Motion Picture & Television Fund (MPTF) is the entertainment industry’s foremost resource for help and care in Southern California. MPTF provides child care, retirement care, inpatient and outpatient social services, and wellness programs to individuals who work in entertainment as well as their families, colleagues, and friends. It’s most visible service is the retirement community it has continuously operated for 84 years.

MPTF needed to move beyond counting contacts to measuring overall impact and effect on constituents’ quality of life. They also needed to specifically optimize the success and support of a critical program, the Relocation Stress Program, which helps constituents successfully transition from independent living to living in a retirement community, assisted living facility, or long-term care facility.

While MPTF staff eagerly embraced the transformation to an outcomes-based paradigm, board members needed to be sold on the value of looking beyond numbers to improved lives. Also, the subjective, “human” nature of the organization’s work made outcomes difficult to quantify.

After two years, MPTF has compiled enough information to demonstrate in a quantitative manner the positive impact its programs have on people’s lives, health, and quality of life. While board members and other supporters may still struggle to understand the underlying theory, the reports make the impact of programs very clear.

The Relocation Stress Program now clearly demonstrates its value. ETO Software has been leveraged to increase funding for individual programs (including the Relocation Stress Program) as well as for the organization. MPTF is now helping other organizations make the transition to an outcomes-based paradigm to better demonstrate the effectiveness of human services programs.

Here, Odile Swift comments on the MPTF's implementation of ETO and the organization's outlook on effectiveness. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, those seeking donations are starting to more readily turn to social networking sites to seek out potential givers.  It's not sneaky - it's smart.  Considering that the biggest givers are individuals, according to GiveWell - they are reaching them right where it counts.  Plus, nonprofits and chariries are making it easy to access the information donors want, even those tear-jerking videos, and pass it along to their friends and families, who reportedly are 100 times more like to donate based on a friendly recommendation than a blind solicitation. And donating is of course, a mere click away – just as easy as shopping online.

Although this phenomenon is reportedly going to help boost donations to the philanthropic sector, we hope those donors using social networking sites for donor research are doing just that – their research. We love the accessibility, but we still need accountability. These givers should be smart enough to know that there’s more to donating than feeling good and there’s more need for the money than what might be visible on Facebook. Props to charities for meeting the donors half way.  But a reminder to donors to not take the easy way out.

Our Customer Spotlight installment is meant to feature outstanding organizations and their unique use of ETO. For our first post, we’re featuring the collaboration between the City of Hartford and Capital Workforce Partners and their efforts to effectively distribute human services citywide.

The City of Hartford and Capital Workforce Partners are leveraging Social Solutions ETO Software® to improve social services across the community. Several Hartford city departments, including Health and Human Services, Office of Young Children, and the Office of Youth Services, are collaborating with nine community nonprofit organizations, through the use of ETO Software.  This collaborative approach is helping the organizations provide better, more effective service to the city’s diverse population.

The Hartford-wide initiative was introduced to establish a continuum of care, enabling service providers across a variety of agencies and organizations to collaborate and share information ensuring consistent, high quality care to the community. The ETO Software® facilitates easy and convenient access to many different resources and information so that social service workers can:

•    Monitor and asses background information of people in need of care;
•    Input information to manage cases shared across all organizations involved;
•    Assess efforts, and improve service quality by documenting connections between activities and outcomes.

“We are excited and pleased about using ETO to help us better identity needs in our community, inconsistencies in our service and ways we can more effectively provide for our residents,” said Eric Jackson, Chief Information Officer at the City of Hartford  “Not only is the software flexible and scalable, but it is also robust enough to meet all of our service provider’s needs and allow for more effective use of our resources.”

Kevin Deame, Project Manager, Hartford Connects, comments on the collaboration and efforts of the partnership at ETOlution 2008. 



What do you think of the City of Hartford’s unique use?  We welcome your comments and suggestions not only about this post, but regarding exceptional use of ETO among any organization.

This is the third episode of our podcast series featuring Matt Schubert, CEO of Social Solutions.  Hear Matt talk about the ETO Cities model and his opinions on what the presidential candidates should address in terms of the nonprofit and social services sectors.

Isaac Castillo, Director Learning and Evaluation at the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) in Washington, D.C. joins us from the National Council of La Raza's annual conference in San Diego to share what is happening at this year's event.

(From left to right-Isaac Castillo, Sandy Gutierrez, and Alvin "Pibe" Alvarado from the Latin American Youth Center)

The day began with an excellent workshop session entitled, “Effective Case Management Can Make Your Work Easy.”  In the session, current ETO users AltaMed Health (in Los Angeles) described their process for working with youth and how they provide holistic case management as part of their services.  Angelica Gomez, a program coordinator with Association House of Chicago, followed by describing how she uses ETO Software as part of her client assessment process, as well as their procedures for documenting success among their service population.  Luis Enriquez, the Director of Friendly House, rounded out the discussion by talking about the importance of outcomes tracking and the need for extensive case management systems to document progress for participants.

During the lunch session, presumptive Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama spoke to the entire conference and discussed several important factors relevant to the ETO community, including the need to turn the passions of staff members into identifiable change for the populations we serve.

To round out the day, I had the pleasure of presenting with two fellow Latin American Youth Center staff: Sandy Gutierrez, the Chief Operating Officer, and Alvin “Pibe” Alvarado, one of our fantastic case managers.  Our session, entitled “¡Si Se Puede! – Measuring Success and Using the Results”, was attended by approximately 60 individuals.  We shared lessons learned from LAYC’s move towards becoming a true learning organization and how all staff can benefit from the use of ETO.  We also answered over 40 questions, ranging from “How did you convince staff that ETO was worth the effort?” to “Did becoming a learning organization lead to increased funding opportunities?” Most importantly, we shared the importance of pursing data collection and outcomes measurement for the improvement of services for the clients we serve.

Stay tuned for more updates from Isaac and his team at the conference!

It's no secret that were big fans of Steve Butz ... And it looks like the Baltimore Sun is too. 

Check out today’s article on Social Solutions, ETO Software and, of course, the Superstar Foundation.  In addtion to Steve, several ETO users were also featured.  We particularly liked a quote from Nancy Hall, a senior adviser at the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations and teaches a nonprofit management course at the Johns Hopkins University, who said, "It's not enough to just do good work, you have to show results." We couldn't agree more.  

This is the second installment of our podcast series.  Today, we welcome Adrian Bordone, a co-founder of Social Solutions and current Vice President. 

If you picked up a paper today, odds are you’ve seen reports of an interesting survey by Giving USA Foundation and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University that found that overall charitable donations increased by 3.9% in 2007 (or 1% after adjustments for inflation), bringing the total donations made by Americans to a record-breaking $306.39 billion.  While the news that giving in 2007 remained steady compared to previous years is reassuring to those worried about the impact of a weakening economy, the verdict isn't out yet on 2008.   

The survey found that corporate gifts and individual giving showed small declines after adjusting for inflation, but foundation grants rose 10.4% to $38.5 billion and charitable bequests were up 6.9% to $23.1 billion, contributing to the majority of the overall increase.  The survey also found strong growth in contributions to international organizations that provide relief, economic aid, exchange, and other programs. Donations rose 16.1 percent to 13.22 billion dollars and the study’s authors believe that was due to an increased awareness, especially among people born after 1981, of global issues.  Additional statistics and findings can be found here.

However, as gas prices continue to rise, the housing market remains somewhat stalemate, and job growth is minimal, the question of the impact of a poor economy on the nonprofit sector will continue to linger.  As Stephanie Strom of the New York Times points out in her story today, despite the survey's findings, there are signs of of a decline in giving. 

We’re curious to hear your thoughts—do the survey’s finding reassure you about the status of giving in a poor economy?  Or are you still concerned about this year's economic impact?

This is the first episode in a series of podcasts we will be posting to the blog. The aim of the series is to offer interesting, informal conversations with different people and personalities involved in and impacting the non-profit sector. We begin our series, with a conversation with Social Solutions founder and president, Steve Butz.