Ford Foundation Suggests that It’s Time to Reboot Grantmaking
Communities in Schools (CIS) is the largest and most effective US organization dedicated to keeping disadvantaged kids in school and helping them succeed in life. Founded in the 1970s, today CIS serves 1.5 million students in 25 states and the District of Columbia. Some 91 percent of these students graduate from high school, a success rate that has earned CIS widespread acclaim. Yet, in the early 2000s, CIS found out the hard way that grant-fueled growth does not ensure operational efficiency or financial health. Just the opposite.
CIS ran deficits most years between 2000 and 2005.1 With no reserves in the bank to make up the difference, CIS’s 990 Forms show the organization dipped into restricted accounts to meet expenses—an ill-advised practice. Meanwhile, vital functions, such as technology upgrades, financial planning, program evaluations, and staff training, went begging while CIS pressed ahead with grant-fueled program growth. “We were a classic example of the starvation cycle,” says Dan Cardinali, president of CIS at the time. “We had plenty of public and private resources to fuel program growth, but no strategy for sustaining operations at the national office.” It took a wrenching reexamination of priorities for CIS to pull back from expansion to patch its foundational cracks. . .