The A Spot

I really enjoy reading the Nonprofit Online News when it pops into my inbox. Michael Gilbert always provides an eclectic mix of references, links and observations. He uses a process and style of for the newsletter which is a million times easier to read then the HTML laden versions I get from other sources. Simpler is definitely better. Check out the post he wrote on the process. Now if he would just improve the searchability of the newsletter archive!

Last week he had several tidbits that jumped out at me as interesting including reference to a recent Casey Foundation guide to measuring advocacy and policy. You can find their guide here. It contains a strong focus on the development of a theory of change, and lays out alternative ways to measure the same outcomes…which helps organizations choose the best methods to fit their organizational culture and competency.

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Last Tuesday was Town Meeting Day here in Vermont – a State holiday that allows voters in small and mid-sized towns to get together and debate the coming year. In my rural town, more than half of our 903 residents turned out to discuss the annual school budget, the purchase of a new fire truck, and how much support we should offer to a library in a neighboring town. Children colored and played in a near-by schoolroom, and in the middle of the meeting the town recessed to share a lunch of shepherd’s pie and jello salad.

The discussion was civil and orderly, governed by Robert’s ubiquitous Rules of Order. Everyone who wanted to have a say on a given issue, for or against, was given the chance to speak and make their case. The whole affair was eerily reminiscent of the Norman Rockwell painting Freedom of Speech, in which a weatherbeaten rural citizen — with more than a slight resemblance to Abraham Lincoln — rises to speak his mind at a public meeting, the rest of the crowd leaning in the better to hear him.

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I found this article by Laura Miller of Salon.com a fascinating look at how advocacy works in communities where civil order breaks down — as Miller puts it, whether you’re talking about “Afghanistan, Somalia, or the South Side of Chicago.”

The piece is an extended book review of Sudhir Venkatesh’s inside look at inner city housing projects, Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes To The Streets. Venkatesh spent seven years following a Black Kings gang leader through the Robert Taylor Homes, the largest housing project in the United States. His account documents how when civil services are unavailable and ostensibly “legitimate” authority figures are unable or unwilling to act on behalf of their constiuents, all sorts of informal power structures will emerge. Citizens come to rely on back-door connections and unspoken agreements to advocate for their needs.

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Welcome to the “A” Spot, and welcome to our inaugural post!

And just what, you must be wondering, does the “A” stand for?

Why, it stands for “advocacy,” of course. The Advocacy Spot.

Hmmm. Yeah… And I guess now you’re probably wondering what we mean by “advocacy”.

Good question! That, in fact, is exactly what the A Spot is all about! Now that’s out of the way, we can get started.

Pardon me? Oh. Right.

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