A COVID Silver Lining for CED Professionals: Innovation

Community and Economic Development – Blog by UNC School of Government

https://ced.sog.unc.edu

A COVID Silver Lining for CED Professionals: Innovation

By Maureen Berner

Published July 21, 2020

Last October a CED post highlighted the importance of understanding the capacity of nonprofits who work with local governments to provide needed social services. The focus at the time was on the program participation tipping point, where community partners disengaged from participating in a program because they lacked the capacity to be able to meet program guidelines and requirements. The program in question was one that provided healthy meals for school-age children during the summer, when they couldn’t access the school cafeteria as they would do during the school year.

The post presented four key aspects of organizational capacity: Administrative, Financial, Infrastructure, and Personnel. As explained in that post, an example of administrative burden would be required paperwork in applications or reporting. An example of financial burden would be required financial security, match, or ability to carry costs. An example of infrastructure burden would be the need to have storage or transportation capability. An example of personnel burden would be the need to provide staff or volunteers, with or without a particular expertise.

Unfortunately, COVID has forced a much brighter spotlight on the key issue of nonprofit capacity. When schools were forced to close this spring, almost 1,000,000 children across North Carolina who would normally receive free and reduced-price lunch through the school system still needed to be fed, regardless of an unfolding pandemic. Schools, local governments, nonprofits, and scores of volunteers had to develop entirely new systems to meet this need in a matter of days. What was different this time was the significant new capacity issues that emerged.

In terms of administration, some regulations core to the original program conflicted directly with public health recommendations. For example, the original program required children to eat meals as a group, on site, often with optional educational activities. Congregate meals don’t work in times of social distancing. In terms of finances and infrastructure, schools and nonprofits were not prepared for the financial commitments needed – similar summer programs traditionally served less than 1/5 of the eligible population, whereas the current situation called for much greater coverage. And with COVID, personnel capacity changed completely. The traditional volunteer base of retired individuals or families who staffed the meal programs disappeared due to health risks or child care responsibilities. Capacity on all fronts was turned upside down, but children still needed to be fed.

Innovations emerged. Rules were waived so that children could take food from the distribution site. Then, more changes were made that allowed parents to leave the children at home, reducing their exposure when the food was picked up. Stakeholders were able to access and shift funding. A different set of volunteers joined staff who would normally work in the lunchrooms to insure work was completed. Resources that were idled were re-deployed in different roles – school buses that normally would take children from neighborhoods to school instead took meals from the school kitchens to the children in their neighborhoods. For example, in Carrboro, NC, one large mobile home park welcomed to a school bus every school day at 11:30 AM. The bus would pull up to a standard central location, honk it’s horn loudly, and soon parents or children wearing masks were walking away with boxes of meals.

CED professionals would be wise to take a step back and observe the innovative workarounds, new practices, ideas and back-of-the-envelope solutions that COVID has forced onto the communities. In some cases, we will be thrilled to return to the practices used prior to the pandemic. Conversations with many on-the-ground practitioners, however, indicate a hope that some of the changes which allowed unexpectedly higher levels of service quality or coverage would become permanent. As you move forward, consider the following questions:

• Where did the crisis reveal long-term, or previously unrecognized, capacity constraints or process weaknesses?
• How did your community respond?
• Where were changes made that you would like to keep long-term?
• Do you have data to support that view? If not, are there ways to gather information systematically so that short-term solutions can lead to long-term improvements?
• Are others experimenting? What are they learning?

There is an old saying – necessity is the mother of invention. While medical researchers are working hard to find innovative ways to stop a pandemic, our local CED professionals are working just as hard on ways to keep our communities running so that when we emerge, our systems are stronger than before. Thank you.