Neighborhood Improvement Initiative

It is inevitable that not every attempt to tackle complex social problems will fulfill its aspirations. In 1996, the Foundation launched a $20 million, ten-year Neighborhood Improvement Initiative to improve the lives of residents in three disadvantaged neighborhoods in the Bay Area: East Palo Alto, the Mayfair area of San Jose, and West Oakland. The goals of the initiative included the reduction of poverty in those communities. While the initiative did make a difference—creating new support organizations and nurturing new community leadership—the results fell short of the goal and did not reflect the large investments of financial and human resources.

In 2006, the Foundation commissioned two acknowledged experts in the field of community development to interview some two dozen individuals inside and outside the Foundation to undertake a frank assessment of what went right, what went wrong, and to provide lessons to others who may choose to participate in such initiatives.

The researchers concluded that the connections between the initiative’s various goals and strategies were insufficiently defined and that difficult relationships among the initiative’s various participants made its goal more difficult to achieve. Among the researchers’ central conclusions were that foundations undertaking such complex projects must be willing to directly address the power dynamics among participants and that all parties must be willing to learn and modify expectations as work unfolds.
Neighborhood Improvement Initiative Grants Authorized in 2006
 

For more information, please visit the Foundation Web site.