Complex Relationships: Case Study on a Youth-Serving Community-Based Educational Nonprofit in the Urban Schooling Landscape

• In Event: Philanthropy and Education Reform: New Models and Persisting Challenges

Abstract

Purpose:
In the wake of the federal government’s retrenchment from urban America in the 1970s and 1980s and the resulting increase of economic and social inequality, youth-serving community-based educational non-profit organizations began proliferating in the urban schooling landscape to support city youth detrimentally impacted by these funding shifts (Katz, 1989). When the 21st Century Community Learning Center (CCLC) grants passed in 1994, they were the biggest pool of public money for out-of-school time learning in American history (Baldridge, 2019). While federal funds provided opportunities for expanded community programming, this cash mandated certain benchmarks and requirements for recipient organizations (Fashola, 1998). Shifting away from federal mandates, youth-serving community-based educational non-profits turned to private philanthropy to support their work. Since then, youth-serving community-based educational non-profits have filled an important role: as enriching spaces outside of traditional school classrooms that help support public school students (Ginwright, 2009; Gutierrez, 2016). Despite this value, the relationships between non-profits and their partner schools and their funding sources require examination. Youth-serving community-based educational non-profits, just like traditional public schools, are not immune from the contemporary privatization and neoliberal educational reform movements that have spread across the country (Kwon, 2013).

Frameworks:
This study is grounded in frameworks of ecological systems theory, (Brofenbrenner, 1979) resource dependence theory (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978), and conceptualizations of power (Heimans & Timms, 2014), to explore how a youth-serving community-based non-profit understands its relationships with philanthropic funders and urban public schools. Together these frameworks underscore how organizations are “inescapably bound up with the conditions of their environment” (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978 p.1) and frame the relationships that are present in this study.

Data Sources and Methods:
This empirical paper uses a critical, participatory, qualitative single case study approach to describe the relationships that both sustain and limit a youth-serving community-based educational non-profit organization in a Northeast city in the United States. The research question guiding this inquiry was: How does this organization understand its relationship with their philanthropic funders and their partner K-12 schools? Methods included: in-depth semi-structured interviews, mapping activities, group interviews, document analysis, and a field observation.

Findings:
This paper finds that the organization is impacted by four interrelated and complex relationships with their partner schools and their funders. The four types of relationships that capture this complexity are: A) Beneficial-by-Necessity Relationships, B) Vulnerable-Dependent Relationships, C) Psychological Straining Relationships, and D) Dreamscaping new Relationships. The relationships are essential to understand the difficult position of and the constraints facing the organization that serves some of the most historically marginalized students.

Significance:
As young people’s participation, particularly from historically marginalized communities, continues to rise in youth-serving community-based educational non-profits, as do the number of nonprofits to choose from (Afterschool Alliance, 2014) the relationships that make-up their existence become even more critical to understand, and improve. Moreover, collaborating with community partners on this study showcases educational methods and approaches to design and carry-out research in a more humane and power-sharing mode that not only serves the educational academic field, but supports the ongoing development of practitioners on-the-ground.

Author

• Abbie Cohen, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author