The holiday is both a celebration of Black culture and an opportunity to take specific actions to advance equity.

Juneteenth (sometimes known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, or Emancipation Day) is a celebration of Black culture and freedom that has carried great significance since it was first proclaimed a holiday in 1865. The June 19 date commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S.

As our country wrestles with its deep history of racism, the holiday is gaining more traction and meaning. In the wake of the conviction of Derek Chauvin for George Floyd’s murder and other police-involved killings of Black people, our country is reckoning with systemic and institutional racism and the lasting effects of white supremacy. 

“Systemic racism and implicit bias are infused across too many of our systems,” says Jody Levison-Johnson, president and CEO of Social Current. “While we recognize the work that has taken place thus far to increase equity and opportunity, we must continue to build on it, and acknowledge that the road ahead of us is long, and that we must work toward change at the individual, organizational, community, and system levels.”

Juneteenth provides the opportunity to reflect and engage in several ways:

“There is much work to be done, but community-based organizations, because of their deep legacies and connectedness with their neighbors have a great opportunity to amplify the observance and recognition of Black culture and its contribution to the building of America,” says Undraye Howard, senior director of equity, diversity, and inclusion and engagement. “Nonprofits, public agencies, and businesses working to help all families thrive must look to move the needle on the adoption of equitable practices and policies on a systemic level.”

The History of Juneteenth

President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation Sept. 22, 1862, and it became official Jan. 1, 1863. However, it took two-and-a-half years for Union soldiers, led by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, to arrive in Galveston, Texas, with news that enslaved people had been freed. Historians are still examining that period in history and have identified a few possible reasons, all grounded in racism, that allowed slavery to continue past its official end.

Gen. Granger read the following proclamation, General Order Number 3, to the people in Texas:

“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.”

This declaration of freedom was significant, even if the realities for formerly enslaved people were still brutal and uncertain. A wave of migration began, to reunify families torn apart and to relocate to the industrialized North. 

According to the National Registry of Juneteenth Organizations & Supporters, Juneteenth first became a major celebration and gathering of families in Texas, with many formerly enslaved people journeying back to Galveston in the decades following the proclamation. The color red became associated with Juneteenth, to represent the resilience of formerly enslaved people. Juneteenth celebrations were often held on church property; they were often banned from taking place in public areas controlled by white people.

Juneteenth Today

Today, Juneteenth is recognized and commemorated in communities across the country. It is an opportunity for organizations across the social sector to educate, advocate, and celebrate. Here are some ideas for marking Juneteenth at your organization, based on recommendations from the National Registry of Juneteenth Organizations & Supporters:

Examples from Organizations 

What Happens Beyond Juneteenth?

The goal of Juneteenth is to commemorate the historical emancipation of enslaved people, but also to advance equity for Black Americans, who still do not experience true freedom as they encounter barriers to safety, health, and well-being. Opportunities abound for making equity a year-round commitment for your organization.

This article was originally published June 3, 2021. Updated June 11, 2023.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Alliance for Strong Families and Communities’ Change in Mind Institute announced today the 10 sites selected for its Texas Learning Collaborative on applying brain science. The Texas sites selected include: the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans, the Austin Public Education Foundation, Bastrop County Cares, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston, the Children’s Museum Houston, Family Service Center of Galveston County, Fort Bend County, New Hope Housing, Inc., Santa Maria Hostel, Inc. and the Texas Center for Child and Family Studies.

The Change in Mind Institute received more than $727,000 each from both the Powell Foundation and the Episcopal Health Foundation for the new initiative, which will launch next month.

Through their engagement in the Change in Mind learning collaborative experience, participating organizations will determine their own paths for creating the transformation best suited to their unique needs. The process of embedding brain science principles will lead to improved outcomes for children and families. In addition, it will further enhance their organizational cultures and leadership ability to work collaboratively with partners to build better service systems and policies.

“We are thrilled to lead this collaborative learning process in partnership with these 10 sites,” says Jody Levison-Johnson, president and CEO of the newly merged Alliance for Strong Families and Communities and Council on Accreditation. “As we’ve seen with our previous learning collaborative, understanding and embedding the core story of brain development can have a profound positive impact on an organization’s internal operations as well as its work to build resilience in children and families.”

“Supporting early childhood brain development is a key part of the Episcopal Health Foundation’s strategic plan to improve health, not just healthcare in Texas,” noted Elena Marks, president and CEO of Episcopal Health Foundation. “In 2020, EHF invested more than $3 million in similar early brain-building projects and programs across the state and we are honored to support this ground-breaking initiative to expand on that work.”

“The Powell Foundation is focused on ensuring that children enter school with a strong foundation of skills that will jump start their success and benefit them throughout their education, career, and lifetime,” says Nicole Tritter Ellis, Powell Foundation Program Officer. “We know that supporting the systems that foster healthy environments for children’s development and education is key to building these skills, which is why we are pleased to support Alliance’s Texas Change in Mind Learning Collaborative.”

About the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities and Council on Accreditation (COA)
The merging Alliance and COA and resulting new organization will convene and catalyze a dynamic, inclusive, multifaceted network of human/social services organizations that leverages the collective experience of the field and research to spark a current in the sector and drive continuous evolution and improvement. Our goal is to activate the power of the social sector and create a unified, intrepid, just, and purposeful network that propels our field forward so all people can thrive. The new organization will provide a range of offerings and learnings to actively shape the future of the sector through policy, advocacy, knowledge exchange, certification, accreditation, connection, and ongoing iterative and reflective interactions. The Change in Mind Institute is a program of the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities.

About the Episcopal Health Foundation
By providing millions of dollars in grants, working with congregations and community partners, and providing important research, the Episcopal Health Foundation (EHF)  supports solutions that address the underlying causes of poor health in Texas. EHF is based in Houston, has more than $1 billion in estimated assets, and operates as a supporting organization of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. #HealthNotJustHealthcare

About the Powell Foundation
The Powell Foundation is a private, family foundation based in Houston, Texas and focused on improving the lives of Harris, Travis and Walker County residents. The Foundation seeks to foster community wellbeing by empowering children, families, and individuals with the conditions, supports and skills necessary to thrive. It is particularly focused on ensuring that children achieve college and career readiness by supporting the entire education continuum, from early childhood development through post-secondary education completion. Visit powellfoundation.org for more information.

Three-Strategies-Organizations-Can-Use-to-Address-Race-And-EconomicsWe have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.  — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (more…)

In 2016, COA began our 2020 strategic planning process. We talked with and surveyed our network on their reasons for seeking COA accreditation and how we could provide even more value to their experience. One recurring theme was the need for data. Our organizations employ sophisticated quality improvement systems to manage their success, but respondents noted a lack of quality external benchmark data to complement their internal data.

History

COA’s pilot benchmarking program launched in the summer of 2016 as part of COA’s Maintenance of Accreditation (MOA) process. It was based on two years of research and replaced our old, narrative-driven MOA process. In the old process, organizations would write an extensive overview of their PQI activities in the past 12 months, and COA would review these narratives and provide feedback. It was a time- and resource-intensive process, and at the end of the day provided little value to COA or our accredited organizations.

We wanted to create a system which had 360-degree value for our network, and this idea was the genesis of the pilot benchmarking program. By collecting, aggregating, and sharing data, we created a system which provided value to all parties:

  1. COA can better understand our network;
  2. Organizations are monitoring basic key performance indicators to understand their performance; and
  3. Our network, as a whole, is enriched with comparative benchmark data.

We started with five measures of organizational health and sustainability: days cash on hand, staff retention rate, management retention rate, average staff tenure, and rate of substantiated grievances. Organizations resoundingly preferred this system and, based on feedback from our network, it surfaced again and again as a priority for us during our strategic planning process for 2020. Based on feedback from our network, we’re enhancing this system to collect and share back even more benchmark performance data.

Goals

We had three primary goals for refining our benchmarking program:

  1. Universal measures: COA accredits over 60 services and works with a plethora of organizations within the human and social services space. When selecting new measures for this program, we stuck with measures of organization health and sustainability because these are applicable to human and social service organizations of any size or purpose.
  2. Unlike any other benchmarking services available to our network: we knew we needed a unique benchmarking program which provided:
    • Multifaceted measures which gave a holistic view of an organization’s performance          
    • Segmentation logic. Much of the benchmark data available to our sector is not specific to human and social service organizations. Many times, data is collected from all tax-exempt entities. But, it’s just not valuable for our network to be compared to animal welfare organizations, arts nonprofits, and similar entities. Our program is focused solely on human and social service organizations. In addition, we’re using all of our data to create very narrow segments or clusters of organization for even more valuable comparisons. In future iterations, we hope to roll out custom segmentation for our end-users.
  3. Improved data collection methodology: as a part of the new MOA process, we’re collecting benchmark data from our network annually and associating it with a discrete fiscal year. This ensures we have a consistent and reliable flow of data to share back with our network.

New Benchmarking Program

Starting in 2020, all organizations accredited under COA’s Private and Canadian organization accreditation will provide data via an Annual Report. This report is due 60 days after the start of your fiscal year and collects data on your prior fiscal year. It is part of our Maintenance of Accreditation process, and organizations must complete this report to maintain their accredited status. Here’s how the process will work:

  1. COA will notify your organization’s primary contact 60 days before the Annual Report is due. This should land around the first day of your new fiscal year.
    • Once this notification is received, organizations can access their Annual Report cycle via their MyCOA Portal.
    • The MyCOA Portal has step-by-step instructions for gathering and inputting the requested data.

Step-by-step guide to completing the Annual Report

Around the start of your fiscal year, your organization’s primary contact will receive an email inviting you to complete your Annual Report. It will list the due date and steps for completing the report.

Email invitation for annual report

Next, log in to your MyCOA Portal. Use the Pick a Cycle link to navigate to the correct cycle. In this example, the organization’s Annual Report is currently due. In addition, the organization has 2 Maintenance Fee cycles in 2020 and 2021; for these cycles, only the Maintenance Fee is due. To complete the Annual Report, select “2020 Annual Report.”

Picking an annual report cycle

On this page, the timeline will show when the Annual Report is due – in this case, on 12/31/2020. Select “Continue.”

Annual Report due date

This page gives a step-by-step overview of how to complete the Annual Report.

Step-by-step annual report instructions

Step 1

If you’d like, you can review the Annual Report requirements and FAQs using the links in Step 1.

Step 2

COA understands that, oftentimes, only one or two staff have access to the MyCOA Portal. So, we created the Annual Report Prep Tool to help you gather your data before inputting it into the MyCOA Portal. Click the DOWNLOAD button in step 2; COA will merge any data we may already have into this document so you’re not doing duplicative work. Share the Prep Tool with relevant staff to gather your data. Please note the completion of the Prep Tool is optional. The Prep Tool is for internal records only and does not need to be submitted to COA.

Step 3

In order to complete the Annual Report, all data must be submitted electronically in your MyCOA portal. Hover over the MAINTENANCE tab in the top toolbar, and select “Annual Report from the dropdown menu.

Maintenance drop-down menu

This will open the Annual Report electronic submission form.

Annual Report electronic submission form

If you used the Prep Tool, copy the information from the Prep Tool into this form. You’ll notice that the questions are in the exact same order as in the Prep Tool. You can save at any time by click the “Save my progress and resume later” checkbox in the top right corner and then the Save button.

Once all information is entered, click the Submit button at the bottom of the form.

On the following page, confirm the accuracy of your data. Then, click Confirm to fully submit your data. At this point, you can also select “Print this page” to print a copy of your report for your records.

Confirmation button

Once the data is submitted, the card on your Milestone Timeline will indicate the completion date and you are done with your submission! Please note: If you would like to make any changes to your submission, please submit a Support Ticket in the MyCOA portal.

Completed annual report

The Benchmark Report – available Q1 2021

Once COA receives all data from accredited organizations for a particular fiscal year, we’ll unlock the benchmark report and allow you to access it from within your MyCOA Portal. Download a sample benchmark report here.

Segmentation Logic

The benchmark report uses segmentation logic to create a comparison group of organizations like yours; we then use this group to calculate your benchmark figures. We use data on your business type (nonprofit or for–profit), services provided, revenue, and geographic location to construct this group and ensure an apples-to-apples comparison. We want to provide you with data which has the utmost “comparison integrity” so you can be confident the benchmarks are meaningful to you.

Comparison integrity chart

The cover page indicates the fiscal year to which the report pertains, describes the group of organizations against which your organization is compared, and lists the publication date – the date on which the report was generated.

The characteristics of your organization are used to generate the comparison group. The sample organization receiving this report is a nonprofit organization accredited under COA’s Private Organization Accreditation program and provides foster care services with a revenue between $5-10M. When generating your benchmark data, then, we pulled data only from organizations which fit these characteristics. This ensures the comparisons made in this document are valuable to the sample organization.

The following pages organize all benchmark metrics into their domains. First, we have the FINANCIAL HEALTH BENCHMARKS: each metric is given a title, a description of what it is and why it is important, and a chart comparing the sample organization’s data to the average value of its comparison group. In this top metric, Months of Liquid Unrestricted Net Assets or LUNA, the sample organization and its comparison group had 6 months of LUNA, so the sample organization can be confident that its liquidity – as measured by LUNA – is within normal range for their type of organization.

Each subsequent page lists measures belonging to a particular performance domain, and follows the same structure: title, description, and a chart comparing your data against your comparison group.

Scrolling down, the ADDITIONAL DATA page shows all of the sample organization’s data and the comparison figures in one view. We also provide the Percent Rank for each metric. The Percent Rank locates your organization within the comparison dataset. For example, the sample organization’s Months of Liquid Unrestricted Net Assets has a percent rank of 33.3%. This means that the organization’s Months of LUNA was higher than a third of organizations but lower than two-thirds of organizations in the comparison dataset. Percent rank is just another way of showing you how you compare to similar organizations.

The final page lists some FAQs. As your questions come in, we’ll update this page with more information for reading and understanding your benchmark report.

Additional information

We have created a custom website with further information about COA’s benchmarking program at www.coameasures.org.

If you missed our benchmarking webinars, please feel free to view the recording here.

If you have any further questions about changes to the maintenance of accreditation process, please feel free to contact Ingrid Zamudio, Data Science Manager. For questions specific to your organization, please submit a support ticket in your MyCOA portal.

Protect your clients, protect your staff, protect your organization, protect your community.

As the virus that causes COVID-19 continues to have a significant impact on our lives, accredited and in-process organizations have asked us how the standards can help them be ready and respond.  In this post we will make a few big-picture recommendations about where to start with your preparations, then point out the key standards that might inform your response.

A few quick recommendations

Before we look at specific standards, we have a few recommendations.  First, pull your senior staff and members of your governing body together to think about what your organization needs to do be prepared for and respond to the virus.  We strongly recommend that you review the CDC’s Interim Guidance for Administrators and Leaders of Community- and Faith-Based Organizations to Plan, Prepare, and Respond to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).  This resource is the single best resource we have seen to help you prepare your organization for the inevitable arrival of the coronavirus in your community.  The guidance provided is specific and clear and is continually updated as new information emerges.

Second, review and update your emergency preparedness plan and other relevant polices and procedures.  COA has several standards that address key preparedness and response issues that accredited organizations will already have in place.  These fall under the broad standards categories of human resources management, safety and security, and emergency preparedness.  More about these below.

With regard to service delivery: Depending on the types of services you provide and the populations you serve, you are very likely to get multiple communications from federal, state, and county oversight entities, as well as others with specific directives and/or guidance that will directly effect your work at the program level.  You will want to merge these varying sources of guidance– some of these will be mandatory–into a form that staff can understand and follow. 

It is important also to make this information easily accessible. One organization that serves the homeless mentally ill in upstate New York has been receiving updated virus-related directives from multiple sources almost every other day.  Every time one of these is received, the CEO merges the new information into updated procedures and then walks around and replaces the old documents, which have been posted all over the facility, with the newest version.  Staff are very busy and aren’t always able to stop what they are doing and check their email to see if new updates have been made to the online procedure manual.  So put such critical information right in front of them.

Third, communicate clearly and openly with the people you serve, your staff, and the public.  The situation in your locale may be changing quickly.  Your clients and staff will be looking to you for guidance.  Wild Apricot has a very good blog entry titled How to Create a Crisis Communications Plan for Your Nonprofit that you may find useful.

Communication also includes ensuring that staff know who to go to for answers in rapidly evolving situations.  Anticipate that some staff who have decision making authority may become sick. Plan for that eventuality, and make sure that staff know who to go to in their place. This is especially important in larger, multiservice organizations who may provide a variety of different services in multiple locations.

Now lets take a look at some of the key COA standards.  Currently accredited organizations will have policies and procedures related to these standards already in place.  For these organizations, your task it to review these and update them where necessary. 

Review and update your emergency response plan and procedures

Pull out your emergency response plan and procedures (ASE 6.01, ASE 6.02, ASE 6.03) and review them with COVID-19 in mind.  If you are like many other organizations, you may not have anticipated a fast-moving pandemic when your plan was developed.  Emergency response plans and procedures for multiservice organizations and those providing services at different sites may need to include location-specific guidance for each program site. 

Things to consider:

Review and update safety and security measures

The standards in ASE 5: Safety and Security address the safety and security of your staff and persons served at your program and administrative sites.  Review your most recent safety assessment and any measures that were implemented to address identified issues.  Then conduct a new COVID-19 assessment if time permits. 

Things to consider:

Review and update human resource management policies

By the time you read this, many of you will already be under restrictions mandating the closure of all non-essential businesses.  Although most of our accredited organizations will be not be subject to those restrictions, most have staff that do not necessarily need to be on-site to perform their jobs.  Many of you are scrambling to put human resource policies in place to reflect this new reality.  The standard HR 3.02 broadly addresses what may go into an HR policies and procedure manual.

Things to consider:

Again, the CDC has good, comprehensive, practical guidance for employers:  Interim Guidance for Businesses and Employers to Plan and Respond to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Review and update technology and information security for remote working

Remote working is as much a technological issue as it is a human resources management issue.  The policies and procedures required for RPM 4: Technology and Information Management, and RPM 5: Security of Information should be reviewed and updated if you will be requiring some of your staff to work at home. 

Things to consider:

Review and update policies and procedures for technology-based service delivery

The coronavirus has rapidly pushed technology-based service delivery from the periphery to becoming a core intervention modality for many kinds of social and human services.  If you are already employing technology-based interventions, take this time to review new rules and guidance coming for the federal government on its use.  Then review the standards in PRG 4: Technology-based Service Delivery to ensure that your current practices continue to meet the requirements of the standards. 

If you are thinking about employing technology-based interventions for the first time, you need to understand that there are many important factors to consider, including confidentially, security, data collection and  transmission, acceptable technologies, licensure, how to work with clients through electronic means, and more.  A review of the standards in PRG 4 will give you a frame of reference for what such services look like.

We hope this post helps to bring some of the most important questions into focus for you as you prepare for the coronavirus.  The function of accreditation is to build organization’s capacity and resilience through a careful and thorough review of its administration and service-delivery practices.  It does this by having you look at what you are doing and how you are doing it, thinking about how you can do things better, and, finally looking ahead so you can be ready for what is coming, both seen and unforeseen. 

Be safe.