MORE TO EXPLORE: Nonprofits and Government

Maria Ponce Sevilla

MPA in Public & Nonprofit Management & Policy
2022

ASSESSING THE STATE OF SUBNATIONAL GOVERNANCE INSTITUTIONS IN ASIA

Client
LOCAL PUBLIC SECTOR ALLIANCE I
Faculty
Paul Smoke
Team
Sandon Mims, Angelica Zundel

The Local Public Sector Alliance (LPSA) is a nonprofit organization seeking to promote inclusive, equitable societies by enriching the understanding of decentralization and localization as complex, cross-cutting, and multi-stakeholder reforms. To advance this work, LPSA engaged a Capstone team to perform a regional analysis on the empowerment of subnational governance institutions in South and East Asia. The team utilized the Local Governance Institutions Comparative Assessment (LoGICA) framework—an assessment tool that analyzes a country’s multilevel governance structure, subnational institutions, and intergovernmental systems contributing to inclusive governance, effective public service delivery, and sustainable localized development. The team conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh to compare the country's de facto versus de jure multi-level governance system, and worked with local counterparts to prepare an in-depth assessment of the country’s subnational governance institutions. The team’s final report includes a regional analysis that draws upon desk research and interviews with country experts, to be distributed among LPSA’s professional network.

Capstone Year

BUILDING A BETTER FUNDRAISING STRATEGY

Client
HEWNOAKS ARTIST RESIDENCY
Faculty
Sonia Balaram
Team
Lauren Bloom, Jiaxin Chen, Kevin Muehleman, Chris Noland

Hewnoaks Artist Residency is a small nonprofit located in Lovell, Maine that provides artists the gift of space and unstructured time to advance their work. Relying heavily on support from grants, Hewnoaks engaged the Capstone team to provide evidence-based guidance and recommendations on ways to diversify its funding resources and build a better fundraising apparatus. The team completed surveys and interviews of key stakeholders and researched fundraising strategies and peer organizations that completed similar expansions. Based on its findings, the Capstone team devised an overall fundraising strategy for Hewnoaks and developed key recommendations and tools, including a three-year implementation plan, strategies for augmenting volunteer and board member engagement, fundraising event best practices, and a detailed guide to enhance the donor engagement cycle of the organization.

Capstone Year

IDENTIFYING INNOVATIVE FINANCE SOLUTIONS FOR SERVICE DELIVERY IN MOROCCO

Client
UNITED NATIONS CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT FUND II
Faculty
Paul Smoke
Team
Bethelehem Araya, Alejandra Gonzalez-Ariza, Sophia Klein

The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) innovates financial solutions to empower local governments in the least-developed countries to increase dedicated budgetary space and resources for programs that improve lives. UNCDF’s West Africa team engaged a Capstone team to identify ways to better finance service delivery within Morocco's public finance architecture. The team focused on public lighting infrastructure—an expensive budget item for municipalities—and identified an initiative to cut expenses in half. The Capstone team traveled to Morocco to interview stakeholders at the regional and national levels to refine its analysis. The team proposed the introduction of a revolving loan fund to finance upfront investment in energy-efficient public light systems, with repayment being made through cost savings realized from energy savings. The team recommended application of this approach in Morocco's Oriental Region as a scalable model to implement a revolving fund for infrastructure development, furthering the client’s mission to find local solutions to local service delivery gaps.

Capstone Year

REDUCING FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT RISK AND IMPROVING OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

Client
JERSEY CARES
Faculty
John Ceffalio
Team
Margot Besnard, Alejandro Galindo, Tarun George, Daryl Ocampo, Junyi Ouyang, Shiyulan Wang

Jersey Cares is a nonprofit organization that leads volunteerism in New Jersey by engaging volunteers in projects that address community-identified needs. Through its successful Corporate Service Program, the organization customizes projects for corporate partners to engage their employees in volunteer initiatives. Given rapid revenue growth from this program, Jersey Cares enlisted a Capstone team to address concerns about financial management systems that can be time-consuming and prone to human error. The team designed and executed a four-phase project that entailed: 1) mapping existing revenue and expense management systems using evidence from staff interviews and organizational documents, 2) researching best practices in nonprofit financial management related to staffing, processes, and technology, 3) identifying and evaluating recommendations to improve operational efficiency and reduce risk, and 4) developing an implementation timeline informed by the client’s unique context and best practices in nonprofit change management.

Capstone Year

QUANTIFYING SOURCES AND VIEWPOINTS IN CRIME REPORTING

Client
CENTER FOR JUST JOURNALISM
Faculty
Erin Connell
Team
Cat Blake, Noah Brook, Helena Wippick

The Center for Just Journalism (CJJ) is a resource for journalists covering public safety issues that aims to support stories that are rooted in fact, lack sensationalism, and enhance public understanding of safety. CJJ engaged a Capstone team to investigate the diversity of sources and viewpoints that journalists include in written news pieces about crime and the legal system. The team conducted a content analysis to quantify the frequency at which law enforcement and non-law enforcement sources are quoted in stories, as well as the viewpoints expressed by different source types related to policing, adjudication, incarceration, and other strategies to address crime. The team used a random sample of 300 US-based crime stories to develop a codebook to analyze sources used and viewpoints expressed. The team’s final deliverables to CJJ included a research report detailing the findings of the content analysis, recommendations for further research, and a guide for journalists to audit their own reporting.

Capstone Year

STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE DATA AND COMMUNICATIONS PRACTICES

Client
NEW YORK PEACE INSTITUTE
Faculty
Erin Connell
Team
Samantha Harpool, Domny Hernandez, Aashika Nagarajan

New York Peace Institute (NYPI) is a community dispute and resolution center (CDRC) that provides mediation, conflict coaching, group facilitation, and restorative justice services to promote peace in Manhattan and Brooklyn communities. Research around effective methodologies for domestic conflict resolution is limited. As a result, there is insufficient access to research around measures of success in the field, and a lack of adequate guidance and standardization for CDRCs across the country. NYPI engaged the Capstone team to assist with developing strategies to improve the organization’s data and communications practices in order to convey impact more effectively to funders and the public. To inform the strategy development, the team completed internal and external assessments of data and communications practices in the field. The internal assessment consisted of interviews of NYPI staff, a review of NYPI’s existing data, and a communications SWOT analysis. The external assessment consisted of a literature review, peer scan, and interviews of peer organizations. The team synthesized its findings from these assessments in a final report to NYPI that includes a logic model and recommendations for strategic data and communications practices.

Capstone Year