October 21, 2004

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: Shelley Davis     

Shelley Davis: Capacity Building for Policy Change

By Brigette Rouson

 

Davis 3inchShelley Davis, Alliance for Nonprofit Management board member, has a career spanning many inter-related, essential roles in nonprofit leadership. Not only has she been a counselor and advocate for women dealing with domestic violence, but she has worked on staff and as a consultant to community groups to guide strategic planning and evaluation.  In institutional philanthropy, her service includes stints at the Field Foundation of Illinois and the Ford Foundation.

Now at the Joyce Foundation, she and her colleagues provide grant support for policy development and advocacy at the state and federal levels.  Shelley focuses on employment policy—primarily how to get low-wage workers into job training and education programs—and has the opportunity to pay attention to organizational capacity-building issues, such as media support, as they arise.

Shelley has served in the leadership of Chicago Women in Philanthropy, and is currently on the Chicago Foundation for Women’s allocations grantmaking committee.  She also serves as a board member for the Center for Third World Organizing, which trains young people of color to work in grassroots initiatives. 

To top it all off, she is a new mother. Daughter Naima was born in May.

On every page of Shelley’s story is a passion for broad-scale change.  And in every footnote is a dedication to learning, immersing herself in the work, making translations so that people in different roles can connect powerfully.  While working with individuals in Chicago who had experienced domestic abuse, Shelley found herself “serving on a lot of citywide coalitions and enjoying that work more… I was never burned out, but I really started thinking more about systemic change.” 

As a result, her next role was a natural at Chicago Women in Trades, one of the oldest advocacy groups in the country that helps women get into nontraditional, high-wage construction work. Shelley’s work involved advocating for affirmative action policy, and ensuring that women were hired and retained in construction and other nontraditional jobs for women.   Additional issues she addressed include sexual harassment and other workplace conditions.  With a 1994 U.S. Congress that many saw as taking a turn for the worse on these critical issues, she focused on defending state and federal policies.

Graduate studies in urban planning and policy allowed Shelley to examine the role of nonprofit advocates in community development.  Her research documented strategies of Black community organizers in three generations—the 1930s, 1960s, and 1990s—and the history of nonprofits in an empowerment zone. Through meeting after meeting—citywide and in neighborhoods—on issues such as empowerment zones, she had noticed that “a lot of foundations were changing their guidelines… and people freaked out.”  

Seeing the effect of funding dynamics led Shelley toward becoming part of the funder community.   In particular, many nonprofits saw the shift in grant guidelines as a constraint on the direction or pace of their community work.  “I started wondering who was really deciding what change would happen.  Would it be the nonprofits themselves?” she recalled. 

Being in a research mode also had also given Shelley room to ponder the pros and cons of “frontline” work as a nonprofit executive director, which originally held a lot of attraction.  She observed differences in quality of life, but also limitations on the ability to take action in a broader context, beyond what any one organization can do.  At the same time, she witnessed the intensity of organizations faced with possible funding cutoffs and pressed to document their work and capabilities.  She spotted a need and opportunity.  “I thought, ‘Let me go on the inside so that someone would know what nonprofits go through.’” 

After an internship at the Field Foundation (mentored by the president), she became a program associate at the Ford Foundation in civic participation, providing resources to groups that seek local and state policy change. Then, returning to the Windy City, her hometown, she knocked on philanthropy doors and found an unusual opportunity with the Joyce Foundation.

At the start, her charge included learning just how foundation staff view organizational capacity issues, making the case to dedicate funds for capacity building, and increasing the foundation’s overall ability to support long-term grantees in growing stronger. Shelley emphasizes being intentional about the level of risk in funding capacity building. One point she makes is that “Capacity-building grants are high-risk because you really are funding a process and you have to use an incredibly delicate hand to get the grantee to articulate and see their need. You’re actually funding a process and not a product—and that’s… a harder thing in our foundation culture to get a handle on.” That early work focused on organizational capacity has carried over into her current role as a program officer.

“I’m trying to be sensitive to what the grantee needs to make sure that they’re not starving themselves, that they’re a whole organization rather than an individual.”  Strategies she has used support executive directors so that they can fully utilize boards of directors, pair intermediaries with a group of grantees to work on implementing their strategic plans, and cultivating relationships within her own area of improving unemployed or low-wage workers’ access to job training and education. 

She noted that in a number of instances, she has found the intended effects or results of support came only after the grant period has ended.  With the emphasis on process, she acknowledged, a funder may find that “it’s going to take longer to bear fruit and really come alive.”

“It is about investing in the infrastructure of the group,” bolstering an organization as a whole, not the personal group of a nonprofit leader, with the purpose of “ensuring that the organization we care about today will be there tomorrow.” She added, “Not every organization that we support fits that category; some are only there for project-specific work.”  It is a practical, yet visionary distinction that has guided Joyce Foundation grantmaking.  “But for those long-term grantees that we feel are essential for every public policy [issue], they need to be in a strong position for the debates as they come up, and to start those debates.” 

Rather than stop at strategic planning or evaluations, Shelley and her counterparts are recognizing the larger context and working to strengthen particular areas of capacity.  “I think in this political and economic climate, funders have been forced to make some really hard decisions. When the economic downturn happened, I think foundations were less inclined to think about capacity building because they really had to focus on making sure the programs were still in place. And I think we’re still in that mode,” she acknowledged. “I don’t ever want funders to have to put grantees in a position to have to make a choice between receiving a grant for programs or receiving a grant for infrastructure and capacity. But at the same time we have to figure out a way to make sure that the groups we care about, that we think are most effective, are stable and strong. 

“With our grantee[s] in the Employment Program at Joyce, we’re doing more around strategic communication,” she explained, specifically supporting grantees on “getting their messages out there for the issues we care about, in this case the working poor. Because these folks are falling through the cracks, and in the public eye they’re invisible. And if this means [the nonprofits] need more capacity around media and communications, then we need to do that. And that’s one of the ways that we’re supporting capacity here at Joyce.”

As a grantmaker who takes her capacity builder role seriously, she also favors more attention to questions of standards for consultants, since “forced marriages” between nonprofits and consultants often do not work, and yet nonprofits often find it difficult to determine quality. Shelley finds the Alliance to be a unique place for making headway on this concern about standards.  She recalled joining the Alliance as soon as she got back to Chicago from New York.  She knew of the Alliance, which had been a Ford grantee in one of the initiatives she staffed, and saw it as valuable for her own work.  “I wanted a national network to plug into and have resources I wouldn’t otherwise.  I feel like the Alliance has the potential to be a hub for funders, for consultants and for capacity builders.”

Now, she says, is the time for the organization to do “bread and butter work” on outreach, ensuring that people do not find it to be “too beltway-centered or even bicoastal.”  Shelley is Co-Chair of the Chicago’05 Alliance/NCNA Joint Conference Host Committee and is gearing up for a major awareness-raising and fundraising effort to support the conference locally.  As a charter member of the Alliance People of Color Affinity Group, Shelley is also intent on fully realizing the principle of inclusiveness with respect to ethnic diversity.  She has spoken to the importance of independent consultants of color sustaining their businesses.  Whatever the issue, Shelley is known for her frankness, her willingness to take on complex dilemmas, and her commitment to being part of the solution.  

Contact information:

Shelley A. Davis
Program Officer
Joyce Foundation
sdavis@joycefdn.org


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