Marguerite Casey Annual Report

We imagine a just and equitable society for all, where all children are nurtured to become compassionate, responsible and self-reliant adults; where families are engaged in the life of their communities, the nation, and the world; and where people take responsibility for meeting today’s needs as well as those of future generations.

Marguerite Casey Foundation exists to help low-income families strengthen their voice and mobilize their communities in order to achieve a more just and equitable society for all.

Marguerite Casey Foundation is dedicated to creating a movement of working families advocating on their own behalf for change. We strive to bring humility and hope to our work. Our actions are guided by the firm belief that significant positive change is not only possible, but absolutely necessary. Within this framework, we seek to do the following:

• Support and nurture strong, vibrant activism within and among families, enabling them to advocate for their own interests and improve the public and private systems that impact their lives.

• Examine, change and inform the advancement of social and economic policies and practices that promote the development of strong families and strong communities.

• Encourage the development of a coherent knowledge base for advocates, families and the organizations that serve them.

• Invest in system change and cross-system change in order to generate greater knowledge and provide effective working models for practice.

The foundation’s target population includes low-income families, communities of color and youth residing in rural and urban areas in the West, Southwest, South, Midwest and Washington state.

INNERCITY STRUGGLE

PROJECT SOUTH

THE LABOR/ COMMUNITY STRATEGY CENTER

AMERICANS FOR INDIAN OPPORTUNITY

A Message From the Chair and the President & CEO

A Shared Vision of Collective Leadership

Passing the Baton

Building Youth Leadership by Learning How to Follow

Transforming the City One Bus at a Time

Board of Directors and Staff

2010 Financial Summary

Grantees

Remembering Marguerite Casey

A Message From the Chair and the President & CEOHere at the Marguerite Casey Foundation, we see the river of change a little differently than most. Our grantees and their family constituents have helped us to understand the leadership models, both brand-new and centuries-old, that they have found most effective in building and sustaining a movement for America’s families. Key to what they’ve taught us is that effective leaders do not walk alone. They do not dismiss the collective wisdom of the village. A movement leader walks with his village, even if the process takes them in a new direction.

This collective model of leadership is challenging on many levels. It runs contrary to the American ethos of bootstrap individualism. It goes against the convention of teaching school children about how change happens by having them write reports on preassigned “great leaders.” But, as the stories you’ll read in the following pages reveal, this collective model of leadership gets results – and that may be its most subversive feature of all.

In last year’s annual report, we introduced you to several grantees whose work illustrates the kind of network building we believe is essential to creating and sustaining a social movement. This year, we introduce you to a few of the extraordinary leaders who walk alongside their constituents as they shape a 21st-century family movement.

The leaders profiled are a sampling of the many who have lit our path over the past few years. None waited to be appointed or anointed. As our board chair, Dr. Freeman Hrabowski III, puts it: the nontraditional leader “just takes charge, using a command of the language to capture the concerns of a community – and doing something about it.”

We recently returned from a visit with grantees in Miami, where we had the privilege of meeting several tenacious individuals who “just took charge.”

We rode the bus with an 82-year-old community leader who walks six miles each day, organizing his neighbors to demand safe and livable housing.

We met a blind woman who knocks on doors and speaks to her neighbors, saying: “You’ve got to open your eyes to what is going on around you.”

We met a young man, a “Dream Walker,” who trekked 1,500 miles from Miami to Washington, D.C., facing fatigue, derision, the Ku Klux Klan and the fear of deportation, all for the opportunity to go to college in the only country he has ever known.

Freeman A. Hrabowski IIIChair of the Board

Luz Vega-MarquisPresident & CEO

These leaders reminded us of what is possible when people see that others, just like them, are changing lives in their own communities – and once they see that they, too, can be catalysts for change. Because once you find the ability to speak for yourself and your community, nobody can take that away. It is yours.

They reminded us of what defines a leader in the context of a social movement. A leader is someone who has a fierce desire to speak for her community – and knows her community intimately. It is also important that a leader have an organizational platform from which to speak – a structured place for leadership to develop. Marguerite Casey Foundation’s grantees have shown that if you give people an opportunity to articulate their issues clearly and forcefully, they will step up and do it. They will be heard.

When we launched the foundation ten years ago, we knew the professionals had something to offer, but, from the beginning, we believed it was the families themselves that had the most to offer because only they knew the kind of change their communities needed. Their leadership has proved critical to making change at the individual, community and public policy levels.

From the families we also learned that collective leadership is the key to sustainability. A charismatic leader can be useful in some circumstances, but collective leadership sustains a movement over the long haul, because if something happens to one individual, others will step up.

For us, the most profound lesson – one that informs and infuses the work of the foundation – has been that effective leaders are also followers. Sometimes you take the opportunity to speak, but most of the time you’re listening, learning, supporting, guiding. That is because the best solutions come from the community. If your goal is to find collective rather than top-down solutions – the only way to build and sustain an authentic movement for social justice – you have to be a follower to be a leader.

In this annual report you will meet leaders whose strengths are rooted in indigenous tradition and values; who have succeeded in passing the baton from one generation to the next; who have learned by following youth leaders; and who have nurtured transformative change.

These are the stories of leaders who, like so many of you, inspire others to speak out on behalf of their communities to achieve change for all.

Sincerely,

2010 Annual Report | 4

Unlike most mothers, Native American leader LaDonna Harris never had any trouble getting her three children to take their medicine.

Maybe that’s because what she was offering her children – and the hundreds of other young Native Americans who came from all over the country to study with her – wasn’t a sticky-sweet red liquid with a bitter aftertaste.

“Medicine” is an English term used to convey an indigenous concept central to LaDonna Harris’s philosophy, and that of Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO), which she founded and, at 80, is still president of the board. Laura Harris, LaDonna’s daughter, describes this medicine as “a person’s internal strength, what makes them individually strong to contribute to the common good... It’s part of an indigenous cosmology of always thinking of the collective. You are a strong individual in order to contribute to a collective, and that collective is not just your community but the entire universe.”


“It is the responsibility of the current leadership to bring along the next generation of leaders.”

Americans for Indian Opportunity


“LaDonna’s basic philosophy is that everybody has medicine,” explained Laura, whose own is potent enough that AIO’s board appointed her executive director a decade ago.

“‘Medicine’ is a term that really means personal strength – your inner voice, your courage, what motivates you to do the work you do, the ways you contribute to your peoples, to your culture – that’s your medicine, and everybody has their own. But you can only contribute that medicine if you are a pro-active, non-victim-oriented, culturally grounded person.”

LaDonna’s own medicine, said Laura, “is all about nurturing others to take shared responsibility,” drawing out inner resources and tapping into personal drives so that young leaders can access their own medicine.

“Medical school,” at AIO, takes the form of the Ambassadors Program, the “only national Native American leadership program based on

a core of indigenous values,” according to Laura Harris.

Laura remembers that those developing the program actually looked up the word “leader” in the dictionary. “It said that ‘leaders’ were people who had authority, control and power over others,” she recalled. “That does not jibe with our indigenous value system. We looked at the most successful Native American political leaders and social entrepreneurs and saw that they acted like diplomats. They had to be the liaison between their tribal government, U.S. and state governments, local communities, programs and funding sources. So we called the program the Ambassadors Program.”

Participants meet periodically over the course of two years – first at the AIO offices, then in Washington, D.C., and finally at an international gathering,


Albuquerque, New Mexico

Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO) was founded in 1970 by LaDonna Harris and fellow Native American activists. AIO catalyzes and facilitates culturally appropriate initiatives and opportunities that enrich the cultural, political and economic lives of Indigenous peoples. AIO draws upon traditional Indigenous philosophies to foster value-based leadership, inspire stakeholder-driven solutions, and convene visionary leaders to probe contemporary issues and address challenges of the new century.

Founder/President Executive Director


where they begin to connect their own struggle with indigenous peoples’ struggles globally. Throughout the program, they are steeped in the AIO worldview that “truly effective Native American leadership is a shared responsibility,” said Laura. “It is the responsibility of the current leadership to bring along the next generation of leaders.”

“My mother has done that all her life,” Laura added – “almost accidentally with her three children, and on purpose with about 200 young Native American

professionals – transferring wisdom and knowledge to the next generation so that they can take up the reins of leadership.”

LaDonna Harris picked up those reins early in life. Raised by Comanche grandparents in Oklahoma, she married her high school boyfriend and put him through college and law school so that he could pursue his dream of a career in politics. Like most of her efforts, that one succeeded: Fred Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1964. A year later, LaDonna founded Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity, the state’s first intertribal organization. President Lyndon Johnson took notice and appointed her to the National Council on Indian Opportunity.

Politically, LaDonna may be best known for her role in negotiating the return of the sacred Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblo, along with 48,000 acres of mountain land taken by President Theodore Roosevelt in the early 20th century. The restoration of Blue Lake marked the first time the federal government had returned land to tribal people.

That victory helped LaDonna to build Americans for Indian Opportunity, founded with the mission of weaving an indigenous network that would enrich the cultural, political and economic lives of indigenous peoples. But she didn’t stop there. As comfortable in the halls of power as she was in the AIO offices, Harris went on to be “an active and influential part of many different social movements in the U.S.” said Laura – to put it mildly.

LaDonna’s movement building contributions extended to the women’s, peace and environmental movements. A founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus and founding member of Common Cause, the National Urban Coalition and half a dozen leading Native American organizations, Harris has also been appointed to many a cry


boards and collected so many awards that she’d likely need the walls of an airplane hangar, not an office, to display them all. She also found time to serve as an adviser to UNESCO and the U.S. Office of Economic Op-portunity and to run for vice president on the Green Party ticket.

AIO ambassadors, in the collective spirit, are encouraged to take what they have learned and use it to advance their own tribal communities as well as to connect with others. In one instance, an AIO ambassadors’ visit to New Zealand inspired indigenous leaders there to launch The Advance-ment of Maori Opportunity (AMO), now AIO’s sister organization, which to date has graduated 100 Maori leaders from its own Ambassadors Pro-gram.

In 2008, AIO and AMO participated jointly in the Indigenous Peoples’ Summit in Hokkaido, Japan. Members of the two groups have also traveled to Bolivia in a joint effort to nurture relationships with indigenous nations and communities across the globe.

“As a futurist,” Laura said, “LaDonna sees taking the work international as the natural next step. Now that we as indigenous people have learned to work together nationally, we have to bring that movement to a global level. That’s LaDonna’s vision, and her legacy to AIO.”

Learn MoreLearn more about AIO’s Ambassadors Program: Smartphone: Download the free “Kaywa Reader” from http://reader.kaywa.com/ iPhone: Download the free “QR Reader” from the App Store.

“....transferring wisdom and knowledge to the next generation so that they can take up the reins of leadership.”

Across the country, at nonprofits dedicated to social justice, leaders whose values were forged in the ‘60s are deciding the time has come to pass the baton: to tap into what’s left of the retirement account and travel the globe, read to the grandchildren or use the wisdom the decades have granted them to launch new endeavors.

Movement organizations inspired by the 1960s and founded in the ‘70s and ‘80s find themselves grappling with the notion of “legacy” – how to transition to new leadership from executive directors who are often also the founders and whose personalities are entwined with the identity of their respective organizations.

Even in a “jobless recovery,” choosing from among a sheaf of strong resumes is, unfortunately, not a problem nonprofit organizations looking for new executive directors have. According to a survey published in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, only one in three potential nonprofit leaders – who have seen their bosses work 60-hour weeks

Passing the Baton“We realized that we didn’t have to wait... We came up with a proposal to have staff leaders take on executive leadership, dividing the work among us.”

Project South


to hold together understaffed, under-resourced organizations, with no expectation of surpassing a five-figure salary even at the apex of their careers – aspires to become an executive director at a nonprofit organization, and nearly half plan to leave the nonprofit sector entirely.

In 2007, the Atlanta-based Project South (Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide) was among the first to tackle the legacy question. That was the year Director Jerome Scott, co-founder, face and force behind the organization since the mid-1980s, announced his plans to move on.

Scott would be a tough act to follow. A Detroit native whose political conscience was forged as a young man during the Vietnam War era, Scott was a co-founder of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. When a job with a printer brought him to Atlanta in 1979, his commitment to movement work held firm, but he noticed that the young organizers knocking on doors in Southern neighborhoods

“didn’t know a lot of the history of the South. We decided that we needed to rekindle that history.

That was the basis for starting Project South.”

Partnering with movement allies across the Southern states, Scott ran Project South as an all-volunteer organization until 1994. With a focus on leadership development initiatives, collaboration and youth engagement, Project South continued to grow, serving as anchor organization for the first U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta in 2007, the year Scott told his staff he planned to leave. The obvious next step was a transition plan.

What made the Project South transition plan unusual is that the staff decided to nominate themselves as the new collective leadership. As they put together the U.S. Social Forum, current co-director

Atlanta, Georgia

Founded in 1986, Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide is a broad based membership organization.Project South develops intergenerational leadership skills for community organizing and education justice. Through its People’s Movements Assemblies it provides a public space for disenfranchised peoples to come together across boundaries of geography, race, identity, and orientation to find common ground and forge common agendas for justice.

Passing the Baton

Co-Director Co-Director


Emery Wright and his colleagues Christi Ketchum, Will Cordery and Stephanie Guilloud, now co-director with Wright, found themselves naturally taking on increased leadership roles. (Ketchum and Cordery have since left Project South; the staff now comprises the two co-directors, three full-time and two part-time program managers.)

“We knew Jerome was planning to transition at some point,” said Wright – an Atlanta-born organizer and educator who has taught a range of subjects in settings

from prison classrooms to college campuses – “and we realized that we didn’t have to wait for him to tell us what that process was going to look like. We came up with a proposal to have staff leaders take on executive leadership, dividing the work among us. He agreed that it was a great idea; the next step was to discuss at the board retreat how the process would work.”

Both Guilloud and Wright were 30 years old to Scott’s 60 at that time, and age difference aside, the beloved director was leaving big shoes to fill. Luckily, Scott was willing to stay on to help the staff through this major restructuring, and the board supported the plan.

Scott increasingly shared his leadership role with the emerging leaders. Even when he stepped down as director in 2008, he stayed on as an adviser. But a transition can be only so gradual. After nearly two years of scooting further and further back, Jerome Scott left the organization.

Guilloud – whose movement background includes serving on the steering committee of a U.S.-Nicaragua solidarity organization for five years and working as a lead local organizer in the 1999 World Trade Organization shutdown in Seattle – remembers vividly the day Scott moved his desk and files out of the office. “That shift in gravity is significant,” she conceded. “You feel the reverberations – you might not even know where you land! ... But because of the intentionality, we were able to integrate it, to reconvene and build a new kind of trust.”

Project South may have been a pioneer in its passing of the baton, but an entire generation is clearly considering this transitional time. In April 2010,


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for example, 1,000 people gathered in Raleigh, N.C., to mark the 50th anniversary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a group whose sit-ins and other efforts to combat racial injustice through direct action became emblematic of that era’s political protest movement.

“Perhaps the most important question on everyone’s mind,” Tom Hayden (SNCC’s first communications coordinator) wrote in The Nation in celebration of the anniversary, “was the future. Just as important as securing a legacy in history was opening the way to a better tomorrow.” At a Saturday plenary session, adult children of key SNCC leaders rose one by one to take the places of those elders who were still living, “while hundreds wept, clapped their hands and sang.”

Not every departing leader is lucky enough to have an activist child in the wings to take over his or her legacy, but the Project South story indicates that may not be necessary. With support from leadership trainer Helen Kim of the New York-based Building Movement Project, Project South’s emerging leaders found themselves digging deeper than ever before, turning Scott’s departure into “a story of generational and organizational transition from one era to another.”

And as for that 6,000-person study finding young people fleeing the responsibilities of movement leadership? The Project South team, at least, is bucking that trend, and they say their friends are, too, stepping into leadership positions all across the South.

“It makes perfect sense we would want to lead Project South through a new moment, to innovate, to carry it forward,” Guilloud enthused.

Jerome Scott and the activists of his generation, she observed, were not climbing a career ladder, and neither are she and Wright: “They established nonprofits to be movement building vehicles. The folks who step up consider movement work to be our life’s work, not our job. And Project South was the place where we wanted to do that.”

Learn more about Organizing Institutes & Workshops at Project South: Smartphone: Download the free “Kaywa Reader” from http://reader.kaywa.com/ iPhone: Download the free “QR Reader” from the App Store.


If a cry falls from a young man’s lips and no one is there to hear him, did he make a sound?

Most adolescents can relate to this version of the old tree-in-a-forest conundrum: They have volumes to say, but may often feel as if no one – least of all adults with any power – wants to hear them.

In East L.A., the urgency to be heard runs particularly deep. Young people have for years attended run-down, under-resourced, overcrowded schools where drop-out rates run as high as 60 percent. Many of the youth come from immigrant families and carry with them their parents’ hope that education and hard work will open the doors to the American Dream. But, how can they access that dream when their schools don’t offer the classes they need for college?

Just as there are young people across the country asking to be heard, so, increasingly, are there adult-run organizations stepping up to create space for youth’s voice – through youth media, youth leadership trainings and other efforts to include youth in movement building efforts.

“‘Listening’ is easy, but taking direction from the youth leaders in our group – that’s where we learned the biggest lessons.”

Building Youth Leadership by Learning How to FollowInnerCity Struggle


But at East L.A.’s InnerCity Struggle (ICS), when the youth leaders spoke, their adult allies found themselves faced with their own conundrum – and a test.

If the youth lead, but adults fail to follow, are the youth truly leaders?

“‘Listening’ is easy,” said ICS Executive Director Maria Brenes, “but taking direction from the youth leaders in our group – when, as adults, we were unsure whether their chosen battle was one that could be won – that’s where we learned the biggest lessons.”

Founded in 1994, ICS aims to build a movement for education justice in East Los Angeles by organizing and developing the leadership skills of high school students and their parents. Early in Brenes’ now nine-year tenure as executive director, ICS youth leaders – organized under the banner of United Students – surveyed 1,200 Garfield High School students. Their findings were unambiguous: overcrowding, students said, was impeding their education, and a new campus was the only viable solution.

“The young people were adamantly committed to this solution,” Brenes recalled. “And they were right – there were 5,000 kids at a school built for 1,000. But, politically, it was risky.”

The district had already set aside bond money to construct a new high school, but a small group of business- and homeowners were vehemently opposed, and they had the ear of the city’s major power brokers.

ICS, on the other hand, was a nascent community organization, unsure it could rally public will to sway the battle. If ICS followed the students’ lead and lost, it risked losing what political capital it had managed to build.

Los Angeles, California

InnerCity Struggle (ICS) was founded in 1994 to organize youth and families to build power toward social, economic and educational justice in East Los Angeles and promote healthy, safe and non-violent communities. The core work of ICS is to devel-op engaged and informed youth and parent leaders who can act as agents for creating quality schools and improve not just their com-munity, but all the communities served by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Executive Director


Maria Brenes understood that. But, as someone who had helped recruit lawyers and convene community meetings during her senior year when, with the passage of virulently anti-immigrant Proposition 187, the school district began investigating every student with a Spanish surname, she also knew what it meant to fight for the right to an education.

So, at a crucial crossroads, the adults at ICS cast aside political caution and

followed the lead of the youth. With the backing of ICS, youth leaders attended school board meetings, pleading their case. They marched to the Los Angeles school district offices. They recruited their parents to help them gather more than 5,000 signatures in support of a new campus.

Throughout the years-long campaign, East L.A.’s students continued to let their views be known. The school they deserved, they insisted, was not another drop-out factory. They wanted the kind of high school the kids in the suburbs had: one with a range of academic options and a college-preparatory curriculum.

United Students reached out, telling parents and neighbors how some students sat on the floor for lack of desk-space. They revealed that only 40 percent of the freshman class would graduate, and just one in 12 of those who did would be adequately prepared for college.

Many of the parents were Mexican and Central American immigrants, working long hours for low pay because they believed in the promise of America: that their children would do better than they had, via education.

When parents learned that their children didn’t have access to courses they needed for college eligibility, Familias Unidas was born, adding thousands of parent voices to the already powerful youth chorus.

In September 2010, Esteban E. Torres High School opened its doors, with a 12-acre campus, two gymnasiums, auditorium, playing fields – even underground parking to address neighbors’ concerns. It is composed, by student request, of five smaller academies, ranging in theme from urban planning and design to social justice leadership. The movement veterans of ICS not only won chairs enough to sit in at the new high school, it’s clear they merit endowed


chairs at the social justice academy. Not only did their efforts bring the first new high school to East L.A. in 85 years, they put ICS on the map. As momentum built around the campaign for a new school, elected officials noticed ICS’s capacity to build public will, and that triggered a string of other wins – including a new elementary school, a new adult school, and $200 million in state funds for eastside middle and high schools to reduce class size and increase the availability of courses required for public university eligibility.

“I reject the notion that young people don’t have the capacity to lead their communities,” Brenes said, the heat in her voice evoking the teenager who answered hate-mongers by organizing her community before she was old enough to vote. “There’s something critical about their point of view that moves efforts like this one forward and carries the public will.”

“...I reject the notion that young people don’t have the capacity to lead their communities.”

Learn more about InnerCity Struggle’s programs: Smartphone: Download the free “Kaywa Reader” from http://reader.kaywa.com/ iPhone: Download the free “QR Reader” from the App Store.

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Eric Mann The Labor/ Community Strategy Center

Dine out in Los Angeles and you’re bound to overhear locals one-upping each other about the hardships of trying to get around in the freeway-ridden megalopolis. Traffic is ridiculous, and you can’t get anywhere without a car.

The Angelenos who trade in such banter, inevitably, are those who have cars. Transit talk among the thousands of L.A. residents who commute from one end of the sprawling city to another to care for children, yards or swimming pools takes a different tone. When they talk about how hard it is to get anywhere in L.A. – to work, school, the doctor or the grocery store – they are dead serious.

Eric Mann is serious about transit, too. Mann, executive director of The Labor/Community Strategy Center (Strategy Center), best known for its 3,000-member Bus Riders Union, has 45 years of movement building under his belt, and six books detailing an approach known as “transformative organizing.”



“200 grassroots leaders, 3,000 dues-paying members and 50,000 supporters on the bus”

The Labor/Community Strategy Center


The mission of the Strategy Center, said Mann, who has helmed the organization since 1989, is to “address the totality of urban life.” Vague as that aim may first appear, it comes into sharp focus through the lens of transformative organizing theory, which holds that there are no “single issues.” Pull one thread in the web of injustice that strangles the life of a community, and others will follow until, eventually, local organizers who set out to battle unsafe housing, unfair wages or overcrowded buses will transform not only their community but themselves, from single-issue advocates into full-fledged leaders in the global movement against systemic oppression.

A transformative organizer begins where the people are – and in Los Angeles, the people were on the bus (or interminably waiting for it). And those buses were old – many had as much as 500,000 miles on them – broken-down and unreliable. The Municipal Transit Authority (MTA) meanwhile was talking about about eliminating monthly passes because of a budget crisis while simultaneously launching a billion-dollar rail line to affluent Pasadena.

The Strategy Center launched the Bus Riders Union to combat the racism reflected in those disparities. As the wheels of history went round and round, the city bus once again became the staging ground for a landmark civil rights battle.

In 1996, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Bus Riders Union joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates in a civil rights suit against MTA, charging the agency with violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by establishing a separate and unequal transit system that perpetuated the ghettoization of its 400,000 riders – at least 80 percent of them people of color.

Los Angeles, California

The Labor/Community Strategy Center (Strategy Center), founded in 1989, is a multiracial, intergen-erational “think-tank/act-tank” working to impact local, national and international public policy and grassroots organizations and movements from a regional base of 10 million people. For the past 12 years the Strategy Center has focused its efforts on building and expanding the Bus Riders Union, successfully replacing diesel buses with clean fuel buses, creating upwards of 1,000 green jobs, and winning $2.7 billion in funds for public transit.

Executive Director


Winning the court case and gaining a landmark consent decree was the easy part. But, as any student of Brown v. Board of Education (or any student at one of America’s still-segregated public schools) will tell you, even a Supreme Court decree is just a piece of paper unless there is an army of organizers standing behind it.

That’s where the Bus Riders Union comes in – again. Described by Mann

as a “multiracial dynamo of 200 grassroots leaders, 3,000 dues-paying members and 50,000 supporters on the bus,” the riders union, over the past 12 years, made sure the city replaced 2,000 dilapidated diesel buses with 2,500 new compressed natural gas vehicles and created more than 1,000 green jobs out of $2.7 billion in new funds for public transit.

The Strategy Center also runs the National School for Strategic Organizing, where participants put in 60-hour weeks, learning theory and strategy in the classroom and putting it into action on the buses.

Riding the bus, Mann said, organizers were struck by how frequently they met parents on their way to visit jailed children, or teenagers trying to get to court hearings. None of these passengers asked the organizers to ease up on the bus battle, Mann said, but, increasingly, they asked them to take on the over-incarceration of black and brown youth.

Young riders also told organizers about selective enforcement of the city’s truancy laws. If a city bus didn’t come or arrived late, making young riders late to school, the students didn’t have the leeway to check in at the office like the white kids across town and run along to class with a tardy slip. Instead, they were caught up in “sweeps” by the L.A. police department’s truancy task force, whose members would literally stop students on their way to class and redirect them to a processing center – sometimes in handcuffs – where they would receive $240 truancy tickets. Of the nearly 50,000 tickets issued over the course of five years, 88 percent went to African-American and Latino students.

While pundits racked their brains over why so many black and Latino students dropped out of urban high schools, the Strategy Center’s Community Rights


Campaign joined with other youth organizations to protest the penalty-based approach to student tardiness. In April 2011 – more than half a century after President Eisenhower ordered the U.S. Army to Little Rock, Ark., to protect nine black children trying to make their way to school – the LAPD announced plans to revise its procedures, including giving students a one-hour grace period before tardiness becomes a criminal matter.

At a rally at Westchester High, student poet Cynthia Barrow hinted that students aspired (as do Strategy Center’s organizers, whose efforts continue) for something more from their city than 60 minutes’ clemency before they again become police fodder. The young leader exhorted the city’s transit authority, police department and school system to imagine a better approach:

Imagine, MTA, If students had better transportationTo better their chances at receiving an educationAnd not end up at a police station…

Imagine if schools weren’t a pipeline to prisonIntroducing our youth in the court system at an early ageImprisoning them like an animal in a cageIt’s time for a change

“I came out of the Sixties, when people just said, ‘I’m part of The Movement’ or ‘I want to change the System’,” and something was understood,” mused Eric Mann, even as, half a century later, one of his own young heirs reflected the same connections back in verse.

“No one thought one specific policy change would be the answer,” Mann elaborated. “People were poor; black; women; living in slum housing; sent off to an unjust war; so there was always the sense when we would meet people working on a particular issue that we all were working on the same thing.”

Learn MoreWatch The Strategy Center’s “Transformative Organizing Theory Workshop” video:Smartphone: Download the free “Kaywa Reader” from http://reader.kaywa.com/ iPhone: Download the free “QR Reader” from the App Store.

Freeman A. Hrabowski IIIChair

Patricia SchroederVice Chair

David VillaTreasurer

Douglas X. PatiñoSecretary

Lynn Huntley Joan Poliak

America BrachoWilliam H. Foege

Kathleen Baca Director of CommunicationsPeter Bloch Garcia Program OfficerRich Boswell Administrative AssistantJames Carlton Program OfficerEricka Cox Program OfficerJennifer Gianni-Haubry Finance ManagerNatalie Holmes ResearcherSunny Hong Administrative AssistantAlice Ito Program OfficerSuphatra Laviolette Administrative SpecialistCheryl Milloy Evaluation & Research OfficerKathy Mulady Reporter, Equal Voice NewspaperPiilani Pang Office ManagerCynthia Renfro Director of Programs & EvaluationKathleen Roe Grants AdministratorStephen Sage Chief Financial OfficerNathan Sorseth Human Resources AssistantKaren Urlie Administrative SpecialistVanessa Ushio Graphic Designer & Web Manager

Herb WilliamsExecutive Assistant to the

President & CEO/ Liaison to the Board of Directors

Luz Vega-Marquis President & CEO

STAFF

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

William C. Bell

Grants & program services

Compensation & benefits

Operations & support services

2010 Financial Summary

To view the complete Form 990-PF, please visit our website at www.caseygrants.org.

Investment IncomeEarnings $ 76,994,000less: Investment management expenses (1,600,000)less: Federal excise tax (746,000) Net investment income 74,648,000

ExpendituresGrants & programs services 24,762,000Compensation & benefits 2,884,000Operations & support services 1,572,000 Total spending 29,218,000

Increase in Net Assets $ 45,430,000


Action Communication and Education Reform Duck Hill, MSFor education and organizing to improve civic engagement, reform public schools and increase the capacity of young people to use technology to document their engagement activities in Montgomery, Grenada, Carroll & Webster County.Action Now FS: Logan Square Neighborhood AssociationChicago, ILFor organizing and advocacy among and by low-income and working families in Chicago and its suburbs, and strengthening networks addressing concerns of low-income families.

Adults and Youth United Develop-ment Association (AYUDA)San Elizario, TXFor developing community leaders to advocate for colonia infrastructure investment.Advocates for Community and Rural Education dba Rural Community AllianceFox, AR For education, advocacy and activism toward preserving rural public schools and the communities around them.

SouthSouthwest

Midwest

Home State

West


SouthSouthwest

Midwest

Home State

WestSouth$7,175,000

Midwest$2,600,000

Home State$1,000,000

Southwest$4,095,000

National$3,225,000

West$3,305,000

Alabama Council on Human RelationsMontgomery, ALFor the Alabama Organizing Project to train a corps of advocacy and activist leaders to mobilize larger numbers of low-income families to effect policy change at local and state levels in Alabama.American Indian Association of Tuc-son dba Tucson Indian CenterTucson, AZFor developing politically strong and economically healthy American Indian families in Arizona.Applied Research CenterNew York, NYFor research, analysis, strategy and message development in support of racially equitable public policies.

Arizona Center for Empowerment (ACE) FS: Leadership Center for the Common GoodPhoenix, AZFor leadership development and policy advocacy training of low-income families to influence local, state and federal policies that have a negative impact on families in Arizona.Arizona Community Action AssociationPhoenix, AZFor the creation of a statewide constituent base of engaged civic leaders and low-income families advocating to eliminate poverty.

Totals by region of 2010 grants.


Center on Policy InitiativesSan Diego, CAFor research, public education, and movement building strategies that en-gage low-income families and commu-nities in the development and imple-mentation of equitable public policies.Centers for New HorizonsChicago, ILFor civic engagement, organizing and policy advocacy to achieve equitable education, employment, economic and community development opportunities for low-income family members.Central American Resource CenterLos Angeles, CAFor building the capacity of low-in-come Latino families in the Pico Union community of Los Angeles to effec-tively advocate for immigration and education reform. Central Arizonans for a Sustainable Economy (CASE) FS: The Partnership for Working FamiliesPhoenix, AZFor developing and engaging commu-nity leaders in advocating for improved municipal policies that support low-income families.Children’s Action AlliancePhoenix, AZFor the development of a statewide constituent base to advocate for poli-cies important to low-income working families.Church Council of Greater SeattleSeattle, WAFor education and organizing among faith communities, policy advocacy in support of immigrant families, and education and advocacy for reform of budget and tax policy in Washington state.Citizens for a Better Greenville FS: Southern EchoGreenville, MSFor supporting low-wealth parent and student organizing and advocacy for quality education in the public schools of Greenville, Mississippi.Coalition of Immokalee WorkersImmokalee, FLFor activism and advocacy for fair wages, human dignity, decent housing and stronger laws protecting workers’ rights for all farmworkers of the retail food industry.

Arkansas Public Policy PanelLittle Rock, ARFor expanding the base of low-income people engaged in advocacy and activism at local and state levels and to strengthen the Arkansas Citizens First Congress. Black Mesa Water Coalition FS: Native MovementFlagstaff, AZFor developing the leadership of Navajo and Hopi families and youth to engage in advocacy and activism for sustainable economic development and green jobs.Border Network for Human RightsEl Paso, TXFor engaging families in advocating for immigration reform and to organize networks across the Texas and along the U.S.-Mexico border.Californians for JusticeEducation Fund Long Beach, CAFor organizing youth, immigrants, low-income people and communi-ties of color in advocating for racial justice in California’s public school system.Casa de Proyecto LibertadHarlingen, TXFor developing community leaders in the Rio Grande Valley and engaging them in immigrant rights and immi-gration reform advocacy.Casa FamiliarSan Diego, CAFor the training, education, and leadership development of low-income families in the San Ysidro community.Casa LatinaSeattle, WATo help increase the economic well-being of low-wage immigrant work-ers and their families, strengthen constituent leadership, and promote policies that protect the civil and hu-man rights of immigrants.Center for Civic PolicyAlbuquerque, NMFor youth leadership development, advocacy campaigns for equitable state practices, and increased voter education and participation.


Coleman Advocates for Children and YouthSan Francisco, CA For leadership development of low-income families of color in Southeast San Francisco, and implementation of a Black Family Agenda to address the crisis of concentrated poverty.College of Business, Center for Entrepreneurial and Leadership De-velopment, Southern University FS: Southern University System FoundationBaton Rouge, LAFor the Louisiana Effective Leadership Program, a year-long fellowship that enhances the capacity of its participants to empower the people, organizations, and communities they serve.Community Culture and Resource CenterLexington, MSFor community organizing and activism to reform the public school system and address related issues in Holmes County, Mississippi.Community Justice for Youth InstituteChicago, ILFor engagement and training of low-income youth, parents and other stakeholders; strengthening networks; and knowledge development to increase community and organizational capacities and movement building for equity.Community Policy, Research and Training InstituteJackson, MSFor ongoing work to mobilize and build capacity among local leaders, elected officials and community members to hold the state government accountable for the dispersal of funds targeted to Mississippi and Louisiana.Community to Community DevelopmentBellingham, WAFor the promotion of immigrant integration, the organization and advocacy of public policy reform, and development of leadership of low-income family members.

Concerned Citizens for a Better Tunica County FS: Southern EchoTunica, MSFor education, advocacy and activism to hold policymakers accountable to low-income communities in the Mississippi Delta and statewide, particularly on issues of education, economic development, environment and affordable housing.Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement (COPE)San Bernardino, CAFor building leadership, policy advocacy and civic engagement capacity of African-American families and congregations in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.Council on FoundationsArlington,VAFor the Career Pathways to Philanthropic Leadership program, a program that reflects the organization’s diversity and inclusion values and strategic programming.Farmworker Association of FloridaApopka, FLFor activism and advocacy to support the well-being of farmworker families in Florida and across the South.Federation of Child Care Centers of Alabama (FOCAL)Montgomery, ALFor the education, advocacy and activism of low-income families in Alabama, in an effort to reduce the disparities in child care services statewide, regionally, and nationally.Fiesta EducativaLos Angeles, CAFor training low-income Latino parents to advocate for policies that will improve the lives of their family members with disabilities.Fresno Center for New AmericansFresno, CAFor education, leadership and skills development, and policy advocacy strategies to increase civic participation among Southeast Asian families in the Central Valley region of California.Futuro Media GroupNew York, NYFor starting a multimedia, multiplatform organization that gathers and reports news about Latinos and their diverse America.


Georgia Living Wage Coalition FS: 9to5, National Association of Working WomenAtlanta, GAFor advocacy, in support of public and corporate policies that increase access to family-supporting jobs.Greater New Orleans FoundationNew Orleans, LAFor the expansion of public policy work and the building of the capacity and resiliency of local organizers, advocates, and community-based organizations.Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA)Los Angeles, CAFor developing the capacity of low-income Latino youth and families in Greater Los Angeles to improve educational and economic opportunities in their own communities.Kentuckians for the CommonwealthLondon, KYFor a statewide membership organization in Appalachia working to end mountaintop removal practices by the coal industry, to reform taxes, and to restore voting rights to disenfranchised low-income individuals.Kenwood Oakland Community OrganizationChicago, ILFor organizing and advocacy by primarily African-American, low-income families in Chicago, and in collaboration with other organizations and networks addressing concerns of low-income families.Leadership Center for the Common GoodWashington, DCFor training programs and services to emerging and existing community organizations and to support the broader field of community organizing.Little Village Community Development Corporation dba Enlace ChicagoChicago, ILFor organizing and policy advocacy to obtain equitable public policy reform on issues of education, immigration and juvenile justice.

Louisiana Environmental Action NetworkBaton Rouge, LAFor education and advocacy with a low-income, people-of-color membership that promotes cooperation and communication among individuals, organizations, industry and government to restore and protect Louisiana’s natural environment and its most vulnerable citizens.Low-Income Families’ Empowerment Through Education (LIFETIME)San Leandro, CAFor leadership development of low-income parents to advocate for public policies that promote the economic security of their families.Mariposa Community Health CenterNogales, AZFor education and advocacy training and direct services to help low-income families in Santa Cruz County become better advocates for a range of family support services.Miami Workers CenterMiami, FLFor building a low-income people-led movement of racial and economic equity in Miami-Dade county and nationally.Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED)Berea, KYFor the creation of a sustainable regional economy that meets the needs of low-income people in eastern Kentucky and central Appalachia.National Council of Churches USAWashington, DCFor the Poverty Initiative’s efforts to better network its 36 member denominations’ 100,000 congregations, and unify its advocacy voice on federal policies that have a negative impact on low-income families.National Indian Youth Leadership ProjectGallup, NMFor educating Native American youth for improved behavioral health outcomes and leadership development and to become agents of change in their communities.


National Urban Indian Family Coalition FS: United Indians of All Tribes FoundationSeattle, WAFor policy advocacy, action research to advance policy reform, constituent engagement and leadership development.Native Americans in PhilanthropyMinneapolis, MNFor organizational development as well as convenings, education and advocacy in Indian Country.Nollie Jenkins Family CenterLexington, MSFor education, advocacy and organizing to provide community members - particularly parents, students, grassroots leaders and other organizations - with the tools to influence public policy and governance structures at the state and local levels.North Florida Educational Development CorporationGreatna, FLFor organizing and advocacy on issues of economic development and youth leadership for low-income African-American families.OneAmericaSeattle, WAFor civic engagement of low-income immigrants and allies, and for organizing and advocacy for equitable local, state and federal policy reforms.Pacific Institute for Community Organizations dba PICO National NetworkOakland, CAFor supporting a national network of congregation-based organizations using advocacy and activism to effect policy changes to benefit low-income families.Pacific News Service dba New America MediaSan Francisco, CAFor a pilot media hub demonstration project in New Orleans, LA involving participants from the Equal Voice for America’s Families campaign.Parent Institute for Quality EducationNational City, CAFor the capacity building of low-income parents to be effective participants in their children’s education and advocate for education equity in California’s public school system.

Progressive Technology ProjectMinneapolis, MNFor providing technology capacity to community-based organizations.Proyecto AztecaSan Juan, TXFor empowering families in creating civically engaged communities in colonias of the Rio Grande Valley.Puget Sound SageSeattle, WAFor organizing, issue education, and advocacy to increase equity for low-income families through accountable development in the region and sustainable community benefits.Right to the City AllianceBrookyln, NYFor strategy development, systems analysis, and civic engagement activities that will lead to substantial gains for the low-income families engaged through the alliance’s 36 member organizations.Somos Un Pueblo UnidoSanta Fe, NMFor developing the leadership of low-income immigrant youth and families and engaging them in advocacy that improves policies that protect their rights and economic stability.Southern EchoJackson, MSFor ongoing work to empower grassroots low-wealth families in Mississippi and the South to influence the formation and implementation of public policy.Southern Partners FundAtlanta, GAFor strengthening and increasing the education, advocacy, and activism capacity of low-income communities across the South.Southwest Youth Services CollaborativeChicago, ILFor supporting community development, organizing, and family service programs in southwest Chicago that assist local young people in building positive futures and becoming successful members of society.


Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowermentLakeCity, TNFor strengthening statewide civic action and collective action to advance green jobs, health care and voter engagement activities.Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE)Los Angeles, CAFor organizing, research, leadership, and community-based policy development to build an economic justice movement of low-income families.Sunflower County Parents and Students Organization FS: Southern EchoIndianola, MSFor community education, advocacy and activism to improve public education in Sunflower County and across the state of Mississippi.TARGET Area Development CorporationChicago, ILFor organizing, leadership development, direct services, community capacity building, policy advocacy, and movement building efforts.Tennessee Health Care CampaignNashville, TNFor support of education on and advocacy for comprehensive health care insurance coverage for all Tennessee residents.Texas Organizing Project Education FundHouston, TXFor engaging low-income families in Texas to advocate for improved health, housing, employment, immigration and predatory-lending policies.The OLÉ Education FundAlbuquerque, NMFor the training of community leaders and engaging them in advocacy for equitable policies and to provide resources to help low-income families increase their income.The Satcher Health Leadership Institute FS: Morehouse School of MedicineAtlanta, GAFor the Satcher Health Leadership Institute’s Community Health Leadership Program to develop leaders from communities that most reflect the disparities in health in America.

The Seattle FoundationSeattle, WAFor education, organizing, or advocacy by organizations that represent low-income families in Washington state.Tohono O’odham Community ActionSells, AZFor advocacy for improved health and education while implementing culturally relevant economic development strategies.United Congress of Community and Religious Organizations FS: TARGET Area Development CorporationChicago, ILFor organizing and strengthening of connections among groups and constituents across racial, socioeconomic and other differences in order to advocate collaboratively for equitable policies to improve the lives of low-income families.United National Indian Tribal YouthOklahoma City, OKFor the empowerment and engagement of Native youth leaders in local advocacy efforts and in a national campaign to address substance abuse in indigenous communities.United South Broadway CorporationAlbuquerque, NMFor youth job training and financial services to low-income families and to engage community leaders to advocate for fair lending, quality education and improved health care.

The foundation does not accept or respond to unsolicited grant proposals, inquiries or letters of intent. In doing so, our staff is better able to provide additional time and resources to our grantees and their constituencies in each of our target regions.

Remembering

Marguerite CaseyMarguerite Casey was born in Seattle, Washington, on September 5, 1900, and was the only daughter and youngest child of Henry J. and Annie E. Casey. Like her brother Jim, the founder of United Parcel Service, Marguerite profoundly believed in the importance of family, leading her to spend much of her adult life creating opportunities to help families and communities succeed and thrive.

In 1948, Marguerite and her three brothers established the Annie E. Casey Foundation to honor their mother’s legacy by encouraging public policies, human service reforms and community support to meet the needs of vulnerable children, youth and families. Almost two decades later, in 1966, Jim Casey’s interest in long-term foster care led him to establish Casey Family Programs in the family’s home town of Seattle.

Sharing her brother’s passion and vision for improving the foster care system, Marguerite served as a board member for Casey Family Programs from 1966 to 1971. She was also a loyal benefactress of Seattle University and is fondly remembered for contributing a Christmas tree each year to Waterfall Garden for Seattle citizens to enjoy.

Marguerite Casey’s lifelong generosity made a tremendous difference for thousands of families and children across the United States, and her giving spirit continues to shine today.Marguerite Casey Foundation was officially founded by Casey Family Programs in October of 2001 to help expand its outreach and further enhance its more than 30-year record of leadership in child welfare. Through the foundation’s work, the memory of Marguerite Casey endures and will continue to serve future generations.

Remembering

Marguerite Casey

Remembering

Marguerite Casey

Marguerite Casey Foundation · 1425 4th Avenue, Suite 900 · Seattle, WA 98101-2222

www.caseygrants.org · Phone: (206) 691-3134 · Fax: (206) 286-2725 · TYY: (206)273-7395

Nell Bernstein - WriterCathy Johnson - EditorVanessa Ushio - Designer

Marguerite Casey Annual Report

Documents

Transcript of Marguerite Casey Annual Report