The Smart Nonprofit

CHAPTER 1Becoming a Smart Nonprofit

INTRODUCTION

Leah Post has a keen sense of other people's pain. As a program manager at a Seattle social service nonprofit, she uses her gifts to help people who are homeless, or at high risk of homelessness, enter the local support system. An integral part of the intake process is a required assessment tool with the tongue-twisting name VI-SPDAT.

Every day, Leah asked her clients questions from the VI-SPDAT and inputted their answers into the computer. And every day the results didn't match the picture of despair she saw in front of her, the results that should have made her clients top priorities for receiving emergency housing.

Leah knew the basic statistics for the homeless population in King County, home to Seattle. Black people are 6% of the general population but over a third of the homeless population. For Native Americans or Alaska Natives that ratio is 1 to 10. Most of Leah's clients were Black, and yet time and again white applicants scored higher on the VI-SPDAT, meaning they would receive services first. Leah knew in her gut that something was wrong, and yet automated systems are supposed to be impartial, aren't they?

With over a decade of experience as a social worker, Leah knows that asking people who are scared, in pain, may have mental illness, and are at your mercy to self-report their personal struggles is not likely to yield accurate results. Similarly, victims of domestic violence were unlikely to self-report an abusive ...