Foundation Creates Prize for Social-Service ‘Superstars’

A former charity employee turned software entrepreneur has started a foundation to recognize talented social-service workers and to goad nonprofit groups into more effectively measuring the performance of the workers on their staff.

The Superstar Foundation, started by Steve Butz, plans to give $20,000 over the next two years to 10 outstanding social-service workers.

The Baltimore foundation hopes to raise more money, eventually creating a $10-million endowment that will allow it to give 40 to 50 awards totaling between $400,000 and $500,000 each year.

Mr. Butz, who worked for seven years with human-service organizations before starting the company Social Solutions, says he created the foundation out of frustration at how little correlation existed between the performance of charity workers and their pay.

“Money does motivate people,” he said. “You find merit-pay systems in business, with sales, or with traders on Wall Street. Why rob the direct-service field of the thing that motivates people in almost every field of human endeavor?”

Social workers in the United States are paid an average of $44,900, according to the National Association of Social Workers. Salaries depend on the size of a charity’s budget, not on performance, said Mr. Butz.

Statistics and Stories

In its first years, the foundation’s seven-person board will determine who gets the money. Mr. Butz said the trustees would look at both statistical and anecdotal evidence in making their selections.

For example, they might compare how long social workers’ clients are able to hold down jobs.

The grant maker plans to unveil its application process this September.

Mr. Butz said he hopes the awards will encourage charities to find better ways to measure their staff members’ success.

“The goal is to both raise awareness of the salary issue and raise awareness of the dearth of performance-management information in the sector,” he said.

Mr. Butz said he would like to see many of the grant makers that he works with as head of Social Solutions, which provides software and other services to nonprofit groups, become financial supporters of his new foundation.

He said he planned to make a donation of stock to the foundation that would amount to at least 5 percent of the $10-million goal.