Clark Fund’s Overhaul Is Met With Mixed Response From Former Employees

When Michael Bailin took over as president of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in 1996, he found an organization that had

been exceedingly patient — perhaps too patient — in its grant making.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, the New York foundation had funneled millions of dollars per year into programs aimed at elevating the educational achievement of students attending inner-city middle schools; overhauling child-welfare and criminal-justice systems; and improving living conditions in two of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods.

Although the needs were great and the problems profound in each of those four grant-making areas, even after years of effort the foundation had relatively little concrete evidence to show that its attempts at “systems reform” had made a lasting impact.

“We were trying to reform huge, complex, entrenched, multibillion-dollar public systems with a staff of 25 people and around $25-million a year in grants,” Mr. Bailin said in a February 2003 speech at Georgetown University. “It was a battle of Homeric proportions fought with Lilliputian resources. How could we ever imagine that we could accomplish anything so significant in our lifetimes?”

Unrestricted Grants

Clark’s mixed record on systems reform influenced Mr. Bailin’s efforts to overhaul the foundation, when creating the Youth Development Fund. Instead of Clark program officers devising a strategy and then doling out funds to carry out their own plan, he wanted large, mostly unrestricted grants to go to charities that were already doing impressive work.

And by making the grantees accountable for growth, improved results, and increasing the quality of their management, Clark now had a way to assess its own operations. Clark’s trustees hold the foundation accountable for hitting milestones — like number of students served — that are directly tied to the achievements of its grantees. That accountability was lacking when the foundation was focusing on what it calls “systems reform.”

“The prior Clark programs were doing the Lord’s work, but if I’m going to be responsible for spending the money, I want to know what’s different that shows that the money is being well used,” says Mr. Bailin, who retired last summer and was replaced by Nancy Roob, his longtime partner in overhauling the foundation. “It has to be more than faith and anecdotes that tug at your heart.”

The former employees who lost their jobs in Clark’s strategic shift acknowledge that relatively little data exist to demonstrate that their programs were effective.

“It’s very understandable that the trustees would have had their fill of dealing with hard, difficult, messy issues with less than absolutely crisp and compelling outcomes,” says Hayes Mizell, who was director of the Program for Student Achievement, which focused on improving middle-school education.

(Clark’s fifth program from that era, which focused on tropical diseases, was spun off in 1998 to form the International Trachoma Initiative, which is dedicated to the elimination of blinding trachoma, the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness. In the Georgetown speech, Mr. Bailin called that program “more focused and enterprising” and said it is “exactly the kind of work that we’re proud to be known for and that we hope to do more of.”)

But several Clark employees from that era, including Mr. Mizell, say they still believe that tackling the country’s most-troubling problems is just as worthy a philanthropic endeavor as helping high-performing charities continue to improve and grow.

“It’s not a question of whether the Clark Foundation should have stayed the course,” says Susan Notkin, who headed Clark’s Program for Children, which focused on revamping welfare systems. “The larger issue really is that large public systems still exist and still need help. If the philanthropic field steps away from trying to help these systems change and improve, then we really run the risk of ignoring the needs of some of our most vulnerable populations.”

‘Winding Down’

Mr. Bailin says the foundation took great care in phasing out the programs that he inherited. In 2001, Clark made an $11-million grant to establish the Center for Community Partnerships in Child Welfare, which is headed by Ms. Notkin and is part of the Center for the Study of Social Policy. In 2003, Clark gave $750,000 over 42 months to the National Staff Development Council, an association that promotes continuing education for teachers and other school employees, where Mr. Mizell became a distinguished senior fellow after leaving Clark. Much of the grant pays for Mr. Mizell’s salary and program activities during that period.

“The people who were winding down would have preferred to stay, but we had to go on to something else,” Mr. Bailin says. “We took care to make sure that each one landed on their feet. What more can you ask for?”

Peter D. Bell, who preceded Mr. Bailin in the top job at Clark, says he admires Mr. Bailin’s “audacity” for committing all of the foundation’s resources to one program. Nevertheless, he remains proud of what Clark attempted during his tenure.

“One of the things that foundations can do is to take on very tough problems,” says Mr. Bell, the outgoing president of CARE, the Atlanta-based international relief group. “It’s important that foundations not be foolhardy, but that they also be willing to fall short, even to fail, if the problem on which they’re working is important.”