New York Building Congress (NYBC) is a membership association of contractors, architects, engineers, unions, real estate managers, developers, and owners who comprise the building community of New York City. NYBC enlisted a Capstone team to develop policy recommendations for reimagining the public realm of the Broadway artery running through the Inwood neighborhood in northern Manhattan. The team conducted research on existing conditions, designed a community engagement strategy, and delivered a report with recommendations for interventions to create a safe and equitable space for all users. The team’s final report will be utilized by NYBC in its advocacy efforts with policymakers for improving safety and enhancing the quality of life in the neighborhood.

Médecins du Monde (MdM) is a medical and humanitarian organization providing care to the most vulnerable populations in the world. For over 30 years, MdM has supported Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) projects, and is especially committed to providing SRH services in crisis and development settings. MdM engaged a Capstone team to identify telehealth approaches to improve SRH education and promote accessibility to SRH services for adolescents in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. In order to assess SRH interventions and specific needs in Kinshasa, the team conducted qualitative and literature-based research, created an environmental scan, and interviewed youth and institutional stakeholder groups. Using its research, the team created two digital survey tools and developed an annotated bibliography with existing scientific and operational studies on SRH interventions in low-resource settings. Based on its findings, the team proposed contextualized recommendations for MdM to guide future SRH strategy and efforts.

Participatory budgeting is a process in which community members decide how a portion of public funds should be spent. Participatory budgeting in New York City (PBNYC) began with four City Council districts in 2011 and has expanded to 31 of the 51 districts in 2019. One of the goals of PBNYC is to make public spending more equitable. Using publicly available data, the team conducted a difference-in-difference analysis to determine whether PBNYC results in a reallocation of capital project funds within districts and the extent to which these effects are moderated by neighborhood income level, gentrification, and political engagement. The team’s findings provide insight into whether PBNYC actually increases resources where most needed and are particularly relevant for policymakers and other stakeholders planning for PBNYC implementation citywide.

Students with special needs have historically been overlooked in the American public school system and only in the last 50 years has the federal government provided explicit protections for these students. Existing literature shows evidence of ongoing and significant differences in referrals to special education services based on race and gender. The Capstone team sought to understand whether, and to what extent, disparities in special education access contribute to disparities in educational outcomes for marginalized groups. The team analyzed data from the 2011 Early Childhood Longitudinal Study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and developed a final report outlining its findings to help inform special education support and services.

The Arthur Project (TAP) is a small nonprofit based in the Bronx that provides therapeutic mentoring services for underserved and vulnerable middle school youth and their families. Seeking to expand its impact, TAP engaged a Capstone team to develop a roadmap for program growth. The team assisted the client in assessing its operational readiness for growth, researching industry best practices, and identifying various models for nonprofit expansion. The team produced a literature review, environmental scan, and recommendations to inform TAP’s expansion. The recommendations include a set of prerequisites that best equip an organization for expansion, a suggested growth structure, and a screening tool to evaluate potential expansion sites.

Broadway for Arts Education (BAE) is a nonprofit organization that partners with the Broadway community and schools to bring transformative arts education programs to underserved youth around the world. BAE’s growing operation runs programs in New York, India, and Haiti with limited staff and resources. As a young organization, BAE is wary of staff burnout and its current strategic plan is disconnected from daily operations and programming. As such, BAE engaged a Capstone team to design performance development and review systems to achieve maximum organizational health, efficiency, sustainability, and impact. The team conducted extensive research with a literature review and an environmental scan consisting of interviews and case studies. An internal examination included surveys and interviews with BAE staff and board members. With its research, the team developed a report with five critical performance development and review recommendations, including a timeline for implementation and a toolkit with templates and resources.

For over 35 years, Echoing Green has been building a dynamic ecosystem to support and invest in emerging social entrepreneurs who work at the intersection of global justice, racial equity, and social innovation. In 2020, Echoing Green launched a $50 million Racial Equity Philanthropic Fund and a new Fellow support program to provide equitable and sustainable support to its community of nearly 1,000 Fellows. The organization tasked the Capstone team with developing an evaluation model for its new program structure to determine effectiveness and areas for improvement. The team researched the best ways to support BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) social entrepreneurs and leaders on a global scale and studied the tools and support mechanisms that are most effective in community building across sectors, geographies, and identities. The team developed an assessment tool to collect quantitative and qualitative data on the impact of the new program structure and its support offerings. The team produced a final report with recommendations for the future of Echoing Green’s engagement model.

Many healthcare organizations are working to improve their diversity efforts and outcomes, but ensuring that best practices are effective and sustainable has proven difficult. Many healthcare organizations have adopted DEI initiatives, but is this truly leading to a paradigm shift in diversity management? With an aging American demographic and an increasingly diverse population, it is crucial to prioritize culturally competent strategies in cultivating a more equitable system for both patients and practitioners. The team undertook a literature review that outlined the current state of diversity in healthcare in the following categories: care, educational opportunity, cultural competency, executive-level involvement, and best practices. The team recommended making efforts to increase accessibility to healthcare education in minority communities and honoring these communities through appropriate cultural competency.

Global Dialogue is an independent, international platform for philanthropic partnership, enabling funders to work together to advance human rights and social change within countries in the European Union (EU). Fiscal host organizations offer incubation and operational support for grants and small funders. Global Dialogue engaged a Capstone team to help determine its strategic direction as a UK-based fiscal host following Brexit. The team was tasked with evaluating the potential costs and benefits of partnering with an EU entity, establishing its own operation in an EU jurisdiction, or maintaining its current status. Using information obtained from desktop research and stakeholder interviews, the team prepared a final report outlining strategic options for Global Dialogue in the context of broader trends within the philanthropy and fiscal host sector.

The United Nations Capital Development Fund’s (UNCDF) Local Development Finance team is committed to facilitating effective urban infrastructure financing solutions in the world’s least developed countries (LDCs). As LDCs experience rapid urbanization, municipalities face mounting pressures to deliver a variety of public services. As urban inequality increases, LDCs also encounter additional challenges to providing basic infrastructure to marginalized communities living in informal settlements and slums. UNCDF enlisted a Capstone team to create strategies to improve and democratize access to basic services through urban form. The team conducted research on proven practices for creating livable cities that prioritize human connection and mobility, and for urban development that promotes health, prosperity, and sustainability. The team also investigated existing financing mechanisms that prevent municipalities from realizing the ideal urban form and proposed alternative solutions for community development finance. The team’s findings inform new efforts by UNCDF to create localized and specialized urban development funds.

New York City implemented an open enrollment policy for high school admissions in 2004, allowing schools to set their own admissions policies and students to apply to schools outside their geographic zone—leading to an increase in admissions screenings based on factors such as student attendance and past academic performance. The Capstone team explored the impact of this policy on public school fundraising, hypothesizing that families seek out “opportunity hoarding” within screened schools. The team examined fundraising by school-supporting organizations as one measure of opportunity hoarding, constructed an original dataset linking publicly available tax records to school-level data to identify the change in per-pupil fundraising by school, and conducted a difference-in-difference analysis comparing the NYC school system to zoned districts within Long Island’s Nassau County. While the team found that overall fundraising increased after the 2004 policy change, the small sample of available data limits the statistical significance of the findings. The final report presents a model for linking fundraising data to individual schools and suggestions for improving data availability.