Service & Volunteerism

Youth Service California wanted to better understand whether, how and to what extent two of its initiatives—the Regional Service-Learning Leads Initiative and the California Service Communities Initiative—contributed to the expansion of K–12 service learning in state school districts.

With BTW’s help, the organization evaluated statewide infrastructural support for teachers and their community partners. We then engaged field leaders in the development of next steps.

In measure as a result of this work, the California Department of Education’s CalServe unit adjusted its support for the following cycle of federal service learning grants.

For the 25th anniversary of its founding, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation commissioned BTW to prepare a publication on the characteristics of successful public service and political leadership. The Foundation asked us to base the publication on the life and influence of the late Senator Henry M. Jackson, who served in the United States Congress for 42 years.

In 2008, 5,000 copies of the publication were distributed nationwide to elected officials, educators and civic leaders. University institutes and community leadership programs used the text to guide discussions about civic engagement and public service.

BTW helped the Foundation launch the publication’s release by organizing a dinner in Washington, D.C. that attracted elected officials, the media, business representatives and academic leaders.

In the 1990s, Northern California Grantmakers (NCG) created the National Service Task Force to provide support to the then-new AmeriCorps programs.

NCG contracted with BTW to conduct an assessment of the 19 AmeriCorps programs funded by the Task Force. These programs offered a wealth of services that included tutoring, mentoring, health education, environmental projects and community development assistance.

BTW’s assessment first described the program models, including:

• Participant demographics
• Budget and funding information
• Program developments
• Key program impacts

BTW also generated lessons learned about service program participants. These covered:

• Structure
• Impacts
• Funding
• Policy implications

Measuring the impact of one-day service programs is notoriously difficult.

The funders of J-Serve, a national day of service for Jewish teens, wanted to learn more about the impact of the program. BTW was engaged to assess its effectiveness.

BTW designed an innovative online survey of J-Serve teen participants. This tool captured how the teens’ program experience had affected their understanding of Jewish identity and service to others.

We coupled these findings with information from interviews with national Jewish youth organizations and funders. The collective result was a comprehensive picture of J-Serve and recommendations for programmatic improvements.

In Fall 2007, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation commissioned BTW to assess the landscape of Jewish service learning. The foundations wanted to better understand what service programs existed, and where their investments could have the greatest impact.

BTW responded with comprehensive field research and a related action plan. That plan resulted in the emergence of Repair the World, a new organization dedicated to building support of authentic, high-quality Jewish service learning for Jews of all stages of life. With BTW’s guidance, Repair the World granted $1.7 million to Jewish service learning programs in its first year alone.

In the early 1990s, a large federal funding program called AmeriCorps was launched to support community service and volunteering. Community service organizations and the foundations that funded them were uncertain about its benefits.

With BTW’s guidance and support, a small group of grantmakers began meeting and eventually grew to become the center of the national conversation about private philanthropy’s role in service and volunteering.

An evaluation found that grantmakers who were active in an organization were more confident of their knowledge about service and volunteering. The happy result was that their foundations increased their level of grantmaking accordingly.

As the field of national service became more established, BTW guided the funders group to explore and define the role of private philanthropy in national service, community volunteering and civic engagement.

The field of civic engagement needed a network of grantmakers and donors that spanned a number of strategies. Civic-engagement leaders envisioned a network that would include national service, voter education and community organizing.

These leaders turned to BTW to create such an organization, and to develop its constituency and launch its programming. That organization was Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE). To establish PACE’s presence in the field, BTW:

• Designed and organized a national conference
• Recruited nationally known speakers
• Created a Web site
• Published monographs and publications on civic engagement strategies

To introduce PACE to new networks, BTW facilitated discussions about online organizing and the impact of the Internet on civic involvement and voter education.

By the end of PACE’s first program year, it had attracted new members and participants that reflected a spectrum of civic engagement strategies.