The Foundation’s Learning Curve

TFF was familiar with Bridgeport’s needs when they engaged in strategic planning almost a decade ago, yet several TFF representatives believe the Foundation could have conducted a more intentional and methodical landscape analysis before issuing the initial request for proposals in 2012. This oversight was rectified in 2016, when TFF staff produced a landscape analysis of the wider Bridgeport nonprofit sector and its interest in and capacity to implement SEL. This analysis, which ultimately affirmed TFF’s approach, also highlighted the opportunity to accelerate impact via investing in more partnerships/initiatives. Based on these findings, and all that had been learned by that point, the Foundation “re-upped” its strategy in 2018.

Board members and long-term investees alike noted that the Foundation successfully embraced adaptive learning over time^[2], becoming less rigid and more flexible, particularly as the second cohort was selected. This evolution took multiple forms including: streamlining reporting requirements; simplifying the capacity building work plan; and, developing, piloting, and then retiring the ‘Results Path’ (a tool designed to help investee’s monitor progress, which ultimately felt more burdensome than helpful to some partners).

Mirellise Vazquez, former TFF Executive Director, explained the adaptive learning philosophy enhanced the application of an equity lens to its grantmaking by altering how TFF selected investees and the types of capacity building they funded. While TFF’s mission is to ensure Bridgeport’s children achieve more equitable outcomes, TFF had room for improvement in this area: “We learned there was an equity issue at play and if we were really about closing the achievement or opportunity gap, we needed to be about equity and that had to manifest itself in every aspect of our work, including how we decided to make grants . . . so, when we reaffirmed our strategy in 2018, we were purposely a little more flexible about certain aspects of our Theory of Change. We learned we had to work within it in a slightly more flexible way.” Additionally, in response to the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police which catalyzed introspection and action across the country, TFF provided support to investees as requested for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, including anti-bias training.

Several board members noted that although TFF became more flexible over time, in many ways, the Foundation had been opportunistic and responsive from the start. TFF adopted an investment model best suited for individual organizations then immediately invested outside of that model in their first cohort with the selection of a multi organization partnership–the Bridgeport Public Schools Social and Emotional Learning Initiative (BPS SEL Initiative). They did so because of the promise of significant impact–indeed, a majority of Bridgeport’s children gained access to an evidence-based program, the RULER Approach to SEL, within just a few years by virtue of the slightly ‘out of scope’ investment. The original proposal submitted to TFF in 2013 by The Consultation Center at Yale and BPS, which was selected for funding, proposed piloting RULER only at Wilbur Cross Elementary School, and slowly expanding to other district sites. However, when Fran Rabinowitz became interim superintendent of BPS in 2014 and almost immediately called for district-wide implementation of the RULER program, TFF felt compelled to further invest in the partnership and seize the impact opportunity in the tradition of adaptive philanthropy which encourages adjusting grantmaking strategies based on real-time learning and stakeholder needs.

Second, the Foundation’s original logic model identified elementary aged students from K-5 as TFF’s target population. Expansion into middle or high school occurred relatively quickly with three out of four investees in the first cohort, based on SEL implementation success in their early grades. This expansion was both logical and inevitable given the investees also serve children outside the K-5 target population. As it selected its second cohort, TFF made an intentional choice to invest in an even younger population in response to significant needs in the early childhood education (ECE) sector in Bridgeport. Guided by community input and ECE literature that confirms the critical importance of providing children with a strong social and emotional foundation,^[3] TFF invited a proposal from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a coalition of Bridgeport ECE organizations to form the Bridgeport Early Childhood SEL Initiative. By 2017, TFF more intentionally sought to invest in a continuum of SEL supports for Bridgeport’s children and therefore the Foundation adjusted its investing aperture to include all grades, Pre-K-12.

Having sufficient human capital (enough trained, committed, skilled staff and leaders) remains one of the major challenges in the education and youth-serving nonprofit sector. Even prior to the catastrophic effects of the pandemic on staffing, there is simply insufficient funding available to schools to hire enough adults to fully implement all the annual goals each investee identifies. This is not a new problem in education, nor is it unique to Bridgeport. But the shortages have been severely exacerbated by the pandemic, with Bridgeport Public Schools experiencing a staffing crisis of more than 70 open positions in fall of 2021. While improving school climate and culture helps retain staff, BPS educators, in particular, are faced with a difficult decision when positions open up in other local districts that frequently pay $10,000 to 15,000 higher annual salaries than BPS. Teacher turnover at BPS hovered around 12% prior to the pandemic. Clearly, the sustainability of any initiative or strategy, including TFF’s, is jeopardized when staff that have been trained leave for jobs outside of the city.