Questions to Ask When Designing an Anti-Poverty Project

Last night my boyfriend and I had dinner with an old college friend of mine, who's really thrilled about a new effort she's working on with Food Security Partners of Middle Tennessee.  As she laid out their initiative, including target clients, target audience, etc., I found myself wanting to pepper her with questions, some of which I got out.  (It sounds really exciting, btw.)

In the spirit of sharing, the following is a non-exhaustive list of things I think we should ask ourselves when we're considering new anti-poverty efforts:

1. Is there evidence of need?  And by evidence, I don't just mean data collected and published in a research report, though that's certainly helpful, but actual input and feedback from low-income community residents or households that we'd be targeting.

2.  Are there existing anti-poverty efforts in this area underway, especially, by local community groups?  For instance, are low-income mothers organizing to fight for school improvement or to curb gang activity or to get a grocery store in their neighborhood?  If so, is that something you and/or your non-profit can support versus compete with or co-opt?  If there doesn't appear to be a local organizing effort going on, why or why not?  Does it suggest a lack of time and resources versus what we might see of a lack of awareness of a problem that we've identified?  And if so, is our problematizing (such an academic word!) of a situation legitimate?  Or are we looking for problems to fit solutions?

3.  How are you going about engaging the community or population you wish to work with?  Notice I didn't use the word "serve."  Personally, I'm all about service, but I want to check against maternalism here or caretaking, versus collaboration.  In our Christianist, private-sector world, we've got to balance charity and philanthropy with empowerment.  How will on-going decision-making be structured, for instance?

4.  How well do you or your non-profit represent the target community?  What are the cultural similarities or differences?  Do you live in the same neighborhood?  Is your organization's leadership or staff from the neighborhood?  What are the racial, ethnic, income and/or gender commonalities?  What is your shared history?  If there is none of this, how and why did you or your group choose this community?  How will you bridge or recognize or celebrate differences?  Is your project culturally relevant or sensitive?

5.  What are the potential outcomes from your efforts?  For instance, what might be the positive and negative externalities of bringing in a grocery store to an underserved area?  What if only Wal-Mart wants to come in, offending your personal sensibilities but providing low-cost food for residents?  Will your effort trigger additional development efforts and gentrification pressures?  (You may be small scale, but consider the larger market forces surrounding any anti-poverty efforts you're pursuing.)

6.  What is the political climate like for your work?  Is your topic popular?  Legal?  (I learned last night that in many places, incl. TN, community gardens are actually illegal.)  Who are your allies in business, politics, the community and philanthropy? What kind of political opposition might you face?  What kind of trouble could this cause?  What kind of political changes need to occur, if any?

7.  How will you build in reflection and feedback into your initiative to ensure you're going about it equitably, inclusively, etc?

8.  Where will your funding come from?  How will you balance funders' expectations and requirements with your projects' goals and the goals of the community (which, ideally, are the same or complementary).

And then of course, there's business planning questions...One I'm going to avoid is it is replicable/scalable?  I don't like this one since it's a popular one for funders focused on outcomes often at the expense of figuring out if something works for a target community first.  Eventually scalability or replicability or customization needs to come in, but not in the early stages, IMO.

What am I missing?

(PS: Sorry for the long gap b/w posts; the internet, it is a fickle friend!)

PPS: Are you reading Nathaniel's blog?

(Photo by sandranadhar.  Though this one, from my department that I stumbled onto via Flickr, cracked me up!)