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Amplification

Amplification

Amplification: “the action of enlarging upon or adding more…”

Over the course of the past several years, The Fedcap Group has been focused on the concept of Amplification: adding value to our existing work by doing things or serving individuals not required within our contracts and, as such, amplifying our impact. It is based on our commitment to doing things that fundamentally change the long-term economic well-being of our target populations.

I have asked our company leaders to identify what they are doing in their company, which are beyond the minimum standards—that amplifies results. The 1+1 = 4 kind of value-add to a contract that can be achieved if we think creatively. While we want to meet every standard as laid out in contracts or meet industry requirements, we want to do more.

THIS is the reason that we get up in the morning.

Examples of amplification might be:

• creating a matched savings account program for individuals who are newly employed to incentivize savings

• providing services to the children of the adults we are serving

• offering parenting classes when this is not required in the contract

• conforming all early childhood programs to an integrated environment

• preparing individuals in day habilitation environments find community-based employment

• offering a service that we believe is critical, one that has evidence behind it, that will help (in the short and long term) move groups of people to long-term economic well-being that is not required by the contract

This effort says to the individuals we serve 1) that we do more than what is required of us and 2) you and your family matter.

The potential for amplification impact is significant. Currently, at any given point in time, we serve nearly 300,000 children, youth and adults in our 20 companies across The Fedcap Group. If we consider amplifying our efforts JUST by providing 1-2 services to the children ages 0-8 of adults in our many programs—we have the potential to amplify our impact to over 60,000 children.

Amplification is still evolving at The Fedcap Group—and will continue to over the next many years. We are working to identify discrete, evidence-based or promising practices that we might offer as part of our amplification endeavors.

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A Consortium Led By Fedcap Inc. Selected As Service System Manager For Employment Services In The Hamilton-Niagara Area

A Consortium Led By Fedcap Inc. Selected As Service System Manager For Employment Services In The Hamilton-Niagara Area

[HAMILTON, ON February 14, 2020] – Fedcap Inc., the lead of a consortium of local GTHA-based non-profits, has been selected to help people in Hamilton-Niagara catchment area on their journey towards sustainable employment. Fedcap Inc. is set to oversee the delivery of the Government of Ontario’s new, more locally-responsive, employment services as of April 1, 2020.

The new employment services system, funded by the Government of Ontario, will be focused on providing tailored support for unemployed people, including those with disabilities, on their journey towards employment and into sustainable work. Hamilton-Niagara is one of three prototype areas where the new employment services will begin. Peel and Muskoka-Kawarthas are the other two catchment areas.

In addition to being the lead of a group of local like-minded service delivery providers to drive the transformation and help more people into work, Fedcap Inc. brings a wealth of international experience leading similar changes to employment programs both in the US and the UK.

Fedcap Inc. is a member of The Fedcap Group, which is a growing global network of non-profit agencies dedicated to advancing the economic and social well-being of those with complex needs. Since 1935, The Fedcap Group has delivered high impact outcomes by reducing barriers to societal inclusion and improving financial wellbeing through employment, working with more than 320,000 people each year.

President of Fedcap Inc. Grant E. Collins II, said: “We’re delighted to be able to help support people back to work, or even into work for the first time in the Hamilton-Niagara area. However, this is just the start – we are extremely ambitious and will be enhancing local capacity and amplifying the good work and best practices already underway. Together, we will innovate and help to transform the lives of as many people as possible. Our aim is to spread the power of possible.”

Notes to Editors

• Fedcap Inc. heads up a consortium that includes four Toronto-based non-profits: the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work (CCRW), Community Living Toronto (CLTO), Corbrook, and Operation Springboard who will assist with developing effective approaches and testing new ways of helping more succeed in sustainable employment. Chronicle Analytics will provide data analysis.

• Fedcap Inc. will oversee day to day operations in the Hamilton-Niagara catchment area with an aim to build capacity within existing local delivery partners.

• The Fedcap Group has more than 80 years’ experience developing innovative, sustainable solutions and creating measurable changes for those with complex needs.

• The Fedcap Group has tremendous results in breaking down barriers to societal inclusion and financial well-being working with more than 320,000 people each year.

• During the past ten years, The Fedcap Group has combined with 14 US-based organizations and expanded to UK where it currently manages similar contracts for the governments of England, Scotland, and Wales.

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Tying Performance Management to Company Goals

Tying Performance Management to Company Goals

Great Leaders know how to create a culture for teams to succeed. One aspect of that culture is learning how to effectively use data to enhance overall performance. Over the course of my past several blogs I have been stressing the importance of living and breathing data, using information to document impact, drive internal and external system change, and inspire donors.

David Ostberg, Director of People Science and Performance at Culture Amp, discusses goal setting in a recent article. He stresses the importance of clarity in goal setting and I could not agree more. He states “Clarity is the foundation of effective goal setting and it enables leaders to tie goals to employee performance. It’s necessary to be specific about the long and short-term objectives you expect your teams to achieve.”

In my experience the more specific the goals, the better the organization’s overall performance. As such it is critical to be specific about the following:

• What is the specific goal and how is it tied to organizational goals?

• What are the team member’s specific and delineated responsibilities to achieve the goals?

• Who else outside the team will contribute to success? How have they been engaged?

• What are the measurements of success company-wide and individually?

• How frequently will reporting occur? What is the framework for reporting? Is it understood? Are the reports structured so that they are easily understood? We are using green-yellow-red at The Fedcap Group to indicate goal achievement. One glance provides a great deal of information and drilling down into the reports tells a more granular story.

• How will we recognize progress and celebrate wins?

• What are the milestone dates we need to hit along the way?

When goals are clearly stated, and mechanisms for measurement are defined and commonly understood, it becomes much easier to assess employee performance by tailoring day-to-day work expectations to the goals. This process, called cascading goals, ensures that employees understand exactly what the organization is focused on and how their work contributes to the achievement of goals.

Aligning and managing company, team and individual goals achieves several critical things:

• Everyone understands where the company is headed and their role in its overall success.

• There is a greater willingness to hold one another accountable – as success and individual performance are interwoven.

• There is a transparency in the efforts and in the outcomes that levels the playing field.

• It makes it easier for leaders to assess strong performers and those who need additional support to succeed. It also makes it clear where there may be talent gaps in the team.

• It provides opportunities for authentic celebration.

Performance reviews that are aligned to company goals set the state for professional and personal development of all members of the organization. Everyone can see how they contribute to the whole and they can play an active role in ensuring that employees identify new knowledge, skills, and abilities to pursue and the learning resources needed to reach specific goals tied to organizational needs.

I welcome your thoughts!

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The Performance Management Imperative

The Performance Management Imperative

Historically company performance review was an annual affair…review the numbers and, based on what you learned, chart the course for the next year. Sometimes the course had been corrected based on the numbers, but often not. Reputation often drove business success—as much, if not, more than performance.

As we know this is no longer an effective approach to leadership. The market changes too fast and companies need to both predict and respond to marketplace trends and rapidly course correct as indicated. We need to perform (at least) at the level required in the contract. More likely than not, if we are to stay competitive, we need to exceed contractual expectations.

According to a recent survey reported in NonprofitHR, “87 percent of global organizations said they had transformed their performance management approach in the last 18 months or intended to change it in the near future.” Organizations are moving to an emphasis on continuous, rigorous review of data, leveraging accessible and efficient financial and
programmatic platforms.

Today effective company leaders must be able to cite precise performance goals (financial and programmatic) and their status toward meeting targets by the day, month, quarter and year.

“Go deep with business performance monitoring…” advises Optimas Financial and Accounting Solutions. “It can be the difference between success or failure in this highly competitive marketplace”. Optimas cites benchmarking, a technique of comparing our business performance against competitors as a good way to gain insight into performance. Companies can use benchmarking to compare their performance to similar organizations working in the same sector, and within their own organizations by comparing performance with industry standards.

Rigorous performance management is essential to ensuring sustainability, relevance and impact—key pillars of the work of The Fedcap Group. Each year performance management becomes increasingly important and is the focus of our Corporate Weeks, Brown Bag Lunches and Leadership Academy. We are working hard to activate additional features of our financial, HR, fund-raising and business development software platforms—becoming increasingly data informed.

For monitoring financial performance, we have selected key measures such as revenue, cash, margin, A/R, % of budget expended, pipeline, billing, and contract maximization—developing both agency-wide and company specific dashboards. These dashboards focus our leaders on the right financial metrics—the metrics that we believe matter.

It is imperative to build the same kind of deep dive key performance indicators (metrics that
matter) in the areas of contract/regulatory compliance, program outcomes (to include our 5 Bold Goals I have discussed in past blogs), fund raising and new business development.

Critical to the long-term efficacy of building a data driven organization is our approach to employee performance. According to Sara Pollock in HR Daily Advisor the strategies for driving employee performance must include tightly linking company and programmatic goals to individual performance measurement. I believe that employees need to see the direct link between what they do every day and the overarching goals of the company. Tying their performance to organizational goals and outcomes means that they have a stake in the impact, they see how their role contributes to making a long-term impact. I plan to discuss this more in upcoming blogs.

As always, I welcome your thoughts.

https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2018/01/11/6-strategies-effective-performance-management/

https://www.bernardmarr.com/default.asp?contentID=772

http://www.optimasllc.com/learning-center/3-essential-business-monitoring-methods/

https://www.nonprofithr.com/performance-management/

https://ultraconsultants.com/erp-software-blog/monitoring-business-performance/

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Leveraging Research to Drive Systems Change

Leveraging Research to Drive Systems Change

There is a great quote by Albert Szent- Gyorgyi that resonates with me: “Research is to see what everyone else has seen and to use the information to think what nobody else has thought”.

Over the course of the past several decades, evidence has become more fully embedded in human services. Evidence based practice is a process that involves creating an answerable question based on a client need, locating the best available evidence to answer the question, applying the evidence, and evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of the solution. The current human service marketplace demands performance. It requires that we work hard to design, and refine our interventions, applying rigorous research to ensure that our limited resources are utilized optimally to change lives.

Single Stop is a company of The Fedcap Group (www.singlestop.org). Single Stop offers a one-stop off-ramp out of poverty by supporting individuals and families in meeting their basic needs, including food, housing and health care. Its national network of partner organizations allows Single Stop to meet clients at their point of need in the places they frequent the most such as food pantries, libraries, veterans’ centers, community colleges and universities. Over the past several years Single Stop has been focused on addressing food insecurity on college campuses. According to the 2018 study by Temple University and Wisconsin Hope Lab, the survey of 43,000 college students at 66 schools found that 36 percent of students on U.S. college campuses are considered “food insecure,” meaning they do not get enough to eat. Similar studies echo these statistics. The study found that hunger is a particularly prevalent issue on community college campuses and that 42 percent of community college students were food insecure. One of the biggest issues for students is affording healthy food, with 46 percent of community college students reporting an inability to pay for balanced meals. Unsurprisingly, when students are forced to worry about when their next meal will be or where they will sleep at night, their academic performances suffer. One study from researchers at the University of Florida found that food insecure students were more likely to have GPAs below a B average.

Recently Single Stop was invited to present at The Society for Social Work and Research’s 24th Annual Conference: Reducing Racial and Economic Inequality in Washington D.C., which included thousands of researchers, scholars and practitioners from around the world. The presentation was given as part of a panel discussion on Inequality, Poverty and Social Welfare Policy and included key findings of the Single Stop Impact and Implementation Report released by Metis Associates in 2018. The report detailed the impact Single Stop is having on college campuses including:

• First-Time-In-College (FTIC) students who utilized Single Stop services were 9.6 percentage points more likely to stay enrolled or have graduated by the end of Spring 2017 than their peers who did not utilize Single Stop.

• Non-FTIC students who used Single Stop services had persistence rates that were 8.2 percentage points higher than their peers.

• FTIC students who used Single Stop services had degree-bearing credit pass rates that were 5.6 percentage points higher from Fall 2014 to Fall 2017.

• Non-FTIC students who used Single Stop services had degree-bearing credit pass rates that were 6.2 percentage points higher than their peers.

• GPAs for both groups were also higher than their peers who did not utilize Single Stop.

• The graduation rates for students who utilized Single Stop were also higher. Graduation rates for FTIC students who utilized Single Stop services were 6 percentage points higher by the end of Fall 2017. For the non-FTIC students, graduation rates were 6.5 percentage points higher than their peers by the end of Fall 2017.

The Fedcap Group values this important research and is committed to replicating the promising practices of Single Stop to impact college graduation rates across the country. Now that we have a growing body of research about what works to change college persistence and graduation rates, we believe we have an obligation to disseminate this knowledge with the intent of integrating Single Stop type services on every college campus in the country—building a national mandate that Single Stop type services are embedded in the college environment.

Convenings such as those held by the Society for Social Work and Research emphasize our collective responsibility to work together to shape our service delivery systems and influence decision-making in policy and practice through research and information dissemination.

I invite you to think about how you are contributing to systems-level change within your area of practice. I would love to hear from you!

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Strategic Partnerships as a Vehicle to Make a Lasting Impact

Strategic Partnerships as a Vehicle to Make a Lasting Impact

The Fedcap Group is comprised of a growing number of top tier companies with a common mission of improving the long economic well-being of individuals we serve. Our combination, with over 20 companies, is driven by the unprecedented complexity and enormity of the social, political, and economic challenges facing the nonprofit sector. We do not believe that these challenges can be tackled alone. Moving the needle and fundamentally changing the outcomes for those we serve requires a concerted, collaborative action by organizations committed to making a long term, sustained impact. Effective combinations enhance our collective market position, improve efficiency in service delivery, enhance our overall service structure, improve quality and have potential to achieve broader systems change.

It is our experience that this kind of integration of efforts requires significant time, energy, effort and resources. It requires that we develop a collaborative mindset by working together to define success, articulate shared goals, and create mechanisms for rigorously measuring
impact.

As an example, a collaborative of institutional funders focused on poverty alleviation. Tom Fry, a member of the collaborative, characterizes Big Bang as a learning community where members exchange information and profile grantees to accelerate the flow of funds. “It’s a symbiotic relationship” explains Fry. “Each member brings their expertise and knowledge, and that enhances everyone’s decision-making ability and ultimately achieves greater impact.”

This concept of a learning community is at the heart of our approach to combinations. Strategically working to identify best and promising practices, leveraging each company’s core competencies and building and sharing knowledge, improves our collective efforts.

A successful learning community provides a platform to fundamentally improve the outcomes for individuals we serve, as well as to influence the way that systems design and fund services.

It sets goals and measures collective progress.

It provides a platform for shared learning—both successes and failures.

It provides diverse opportunities for people to develop skills.

It accelerates learning toward replication and scale.

By joining together, nonprofit organizations create an optimal environment for staying relevant, ensuring long term sustainability and measurable impact.

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Staying Focused and Clearing the Noise

Staying Focused and Clearing the Noise

There was a time when organizations had a contingency plan just in case things changed. In today’s world, change is the rule rather than the exception. How do we manage the daily onslaught of distractions, continuous change and upgrades and stay focused on our mission? 

How do we clear the noise?

Each year The Fedcap Group launches a new Leadership Academy—comprised of emerging leaders from across the organization. During the first session, we spend time discussing the importance of tuning out the noise in order to enhance our focus, and our analytical and critical thinking.

We talk about the importance of using questions to clear the noise…moving away from being swayed by what we think we know and focusing on learning more and developing a deeper understanding of the problems we are trying to solve.

Business Insider advises that in order to develop the focus muscle, companies need to select 1 to 3 high priority goals and stick to them. In the same spirit, several years ago Steve Jobs said something that has stuck with me: “Focus is not about saying yes. It is about saying no to the hundred other good ideas that clutter the mind and shift the focus.” 

This has been the strategy of The Fedcap Group as we established our five bold goals to make a lasting difference. In my December 9th 2019 blog, I introduced our 5 bold goals:

1.) Every person living in foster care has the resources to go to college and graduate;

2.) Individuals who leave prison/jail get a job, rejoin their communities and do not reoffend; 

3.) Adults with an intellectual disability who want a job are employed at a competitive wage;

4.) People on public assistance obtain jobs and reduce dependency on government assistance; and

5.) Children ages 0-6 are prepared and inspired to complete their education, obtain employment and live full lives.

We are driven to achieve these goals. We are spending our time researching these five issues. We are asking questions. We are studying what has worked and what has not worked. We are establishing our baseline, building and testing innovative practice strategies, developing mechanisms for measurement and reporting, and we are building an organizational culture of possibility and accountability.

As a large organization these goals bind us –they are the demonstration of our common mission. And as these goals become reality, they become our legacy.

To be successful each leader of The Fedcap Group has to critically think, clear the noise and, as Steve Jobs said, say no.

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Equity: A Square Deal for Everyone

Equity: A Square Deal for Everyone

Last week I discussed the concept of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the workplace. This week I would like to focus more on this concept of Equity—not just in the workplace but across society.

The Square Deal was the name given to President Theodore Roosevelt’s domestic program, which reflected his three major goals: corporate responsibility to citizens, consumer protection and conservation of natural resources. Over the years the Square Deal was applied to his approach to conflict resolution–listening to both labor and management, his attitude of kindly justice between man and man, without regard to what any man’s creed, color, birthplace or social position, and his efforts to equalize the power imbalance between corporations and common people.

At The Fedcap Group, this concept is at the core of our work.

When I think about Equity, when I contemplate “a square deal”, I think about it in terms of aspiration and opportunity.

In the simplest terms, when you believe that achieving a dream is possible…when you believe that you have options and choices, when you are inspired by those around you to aim high, dreams become reality. Do you know that when a child has a savings account, even less than $500, she is 3 times more likely to enroll and 4 times more likely to graduate from college? The very act of just having the savings account inspires a young person to believe that college is possible. And then, college is not just possible, but it is a reality. Too often, bright youth in the child welfare system believe that they have no other option than to go to work directly from high school. They don’t believe college is a choice. Yet they are by every measure as smart and capable as their peers who happened to have the luck of the draw to grow up in a supportive family. When we instill in them the belief that they are capable, when they come to believe that they have a choice about attending college, they can—and do—rewrite the narrative that once told them college wasn’t possible.

So many people come through our doors believing the narrative they have been told about who they are –and about their potential. People told them they were lazy, and they believed it. Others said that they were not going to amount to anything, and they believed it. Others said that they weren’t very smart …and they believed that too. Soon their “brand”, their self-definition, the way that they presented themselves to the world was driven by these words. And the world responded accordingly.

But, if instead, what would happen if we told people how smart they were —and they started to believe it? If we told people how motivated they were, and they started to believe it? If we looked into their eyes and told them that they could accomplish anything they set their mind to, and they started to believe that too? What kind of a world could we together create? This is why our work with youth with disabilities or adults on public assistance is so critical. We don’t want to help young people simply transition to an adult service system—but to college, a job, and a full life in the community. And we want to help those relying on public assistance find employment and the pride of earning a paycheck.

Every day at The Fedcap Group we strive to find ways to help children, youth and adults with barriers to economic well-being, complete their education, obtain training, find employment and secure their pathway to long term self-sufficiency.

We work as hard as possible to help them get a “Square Deal”.

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2020: Increasing Focus on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity

2020: Increasing Focus on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity

We are entering a new decade. As with any new milestone, we look back and we look forward. As I looked back, I contemplated how far we have come in terms of equity in the workplace AND how far we still have to go.

Some of the important pieces of legislation that stand out to me in our national quest for equity, diversity and inclusion in the workplace include:

• The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that creates the right to a minimum wage;

• The Equal Pay Act of 1963 that mandates equal pay for equal work;

• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that promotes racial equality in the workplace by prohibiting racial discrimination in applicant recruitment, candidate selection and employee retention;

• The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life;

• The Family and Medical Leave Act entitles employees to take unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons; and,

• The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 bolstered worker protections against pay discrimination, allowing individuals who face pay discrimination to seek rectification under federal anti-discrimination laws.

These important milestones were driven by the recognition that the status quo was no longer acceptable, that we can do better as a country and, for some pragmatists, a conviction that companies do better when employees are treated fairly.

And those pragmatists were right. According to Josh Bresin, Principal and Founder, Bersin by Deloitte, companies that embrace equity, diversity and inclusion in all aspects of their business, absolutely outperform their peers by every measure.

I believe that in 2020 there needs to be an even greater focus on diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. Our talent pool is changing, and we need to be prepared to recruit, fully engage and retain talent that looks and thinks differently than our talent of the past—a workforce that helps us succeed in our future of “known unknowns”.

In thinking about this, I found that unpacking these terms can be helpful. Robert Sellers, the Chief Diversity Officer at the University of Michigan described them as: “Diversity is where everyone is invited to the party—we do not discriminate by race, color, or creed. Equity means that everyone gets to contribute to the play list—we understand, accept and value the differences between people. Inclusion means that everyone has the opportunity to dance–we have fostered a collaborative, supportive, and respectful environment that increases the participation and contribution of all employees. And when everyone has the opportunity to dance—this is when businesses thrive.”

A study of global enterprises by Forbes concludes that increased diversity, equity and inclusion ties directly to increased innovation and creativity. “This is not only because people with different backgrounds bring new information. Simply interacting with individuals who are different forces group members to prepare better, to anticipate alternative viewpoints and to better understand the dramatically shifting marketplace.”

As leaders, we need to create opportunities for discussion and education with our boards and our staff around best practices in diversity, equity and inclusion. We need to set goals, design a structure and implement policies that support those goals, and we need to monitor our progress.

I welcome your thoughts.

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Succession Planning

Succession Planning

“More leaders are selected for their thinking rather than for their labor,” Society of Human Resources Management

No matter how much we want to continue in our role, as leaders we need to think about who will succeed us and the key players of our organization. Unlike replacement planning, succession planning is not linear. It requires us to see the entire stage and all the performers so we can help them develop and achieve their potential as well as the organization’s. This involves a level of commitment from us to identify our organization’s future leaders by making a plan, a map for their development so they will be ready to assume leadership roles when the time comes.

As we look ahead—at short and long-term goals of the organization—we need to ask ourselves: What are the critical skills and talents we will need? How will our organization be the same or different? If we invest in succession planning, we give ourselves a competitive advantage in any future economic or political turbulence.

In a widely viewed youtube from his book, Effective Succession Planning: Ensuring Leadership Continuity and Building Talent from Within, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltxZKPixWPs William J. Rothwell, PhD, identifies the importance of narrowing the gap between now and the future—suggesting that succession planning is future focused management. Studying and preparing for the skills and capacities needed in these rapidly changing times.

Before Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple, he prepared a succession plan for Tim Cook, the man he had groomed as his replacement. The plan is called Apple University, a leadership curriculum with content and materials from Job’s experiences. As Alexis Ang writes in her blog: https://technologyadvice.com/huma-resources-software/. It was meant to teach employees to make decisions the way he did. Ang points out that “companies who choose leaders from inside the company report a 70 to 80 percent success rate and the latest HR software can make tracking and training new leaders easier than ever. These tools give companies the power to develop a well-fitting growth and leadership plan for each individual employee.”

The Fedcap Group approached leadership development and succession planning in a similar manner. In 2016 we established the Leadership Academy. To date nearly 50 individuals have participated in our year-long academy—and 33% have already been promoted within the organization. The academy is designed to teach individuals across the organization about how a Fedcap Group leader thinks and acts. It is preparing our leaders to lead.

Change is constant. And in our rapidly changing techno world, that is truer than ever. By being future focused managers and carefully planning for succession, we are ensuring the sustainability of our organization.

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