FORGE on PNN

Kjerstin's Blog

This is the blog of Kjerstin Erickson, founder and Executive Director of FORGE. See below for a short profile of Kjerstin and that of FORGE's Operations Director, Nicholas Talarico.

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At just 25 years old, Kjerstin Erickson has headed an international non-profit for over three years. In 2003, as a twenty year-old junior at Stanford University, Kjerstin created FORGE to serve a dire need that no other non-profit was tackling: transforming the lives of refugees through education, empowerment, and economic self-sufficiency.

After traveling in more than forty countries across the globe and making eleven trips to Africa, Kjerstin is convinced of the urgent need for FORGE to expand its supremely effective community development programs and operational efficiency to every country requiring post-conflict solutions.

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Nicholas' Bio

Nicholas Talarico, FORGE's Operations Director, oversees logistical, accounting, fundraising & PR, and provides strategic insight to the Executive Director. After getting to know FORGE in 2005 during a Boston-area fundraiser, Nick traveled to Zambia to aid FORGE project management in Meheba Refugee Settlement. While there, Nick was so impressed by the results of FORGE's operational model that not long after his return, he sold his home, left his job, and joined the non-profit full time to further increase its efficiency, awareness, and donor base.

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Forging Ahead

Kjerstin Erickson was 20 when she launched FORGE. She didn't have a business plan. She didn't have a revenue model. She didn't have connections. And she didn't have a penny. But she now works in three refugee camps in Zambia, helping 60,000 refugees build better lives. This is her story.

Updated: 09 Jan 08:30

Finding out if FORGE works

03 Jan 02:00

We have been reading about FORGEs situation in the blogosphere now for a few months, and, like many people, have hoped that FORGE will solve their fiscal problems and have the chance to carry on. But certain questions about whats happening with FORGE have dogged us so much so that we made our own offer of pro bono consulting. See Change is a research and evaluation firm, and after reading post after post about whether FORGE will make it, or whether donors will contribute to the organization, our question has been, Why not simply evaluate FORGE?

No doubt many donors are moved emotionally by FORGEs model, the plight of the African refugees who are their target population, and perhaps also by Kjerstin and her staffs initiative and pluck. These donors are probably already giving to FORGE, and will likely continue to, as long as FORGE staff can find them (such as by implementing Curtiss recommendations about developing a systematic and sustainable fundraising plan).

But there are potentially even more donors individuals and especially foundations who may be moved emotionally, but who dont let their emotions alone determine whether or not they write a check. For many of us though still far too few of us our pragmatism interacts with our emotions. We want to help a deserving cause, but only if our contribution of time or money will be used wisely and well.

Kjerstins experiment in radical transparency was risky in that it may have raised concerns among more pragmatic, even cautious donors about the fiscal and fundraising strategies that FORGE has employed. Though welcome, such honesty may have encouraged some donors to sit on the sidelines while more evidence is gathered. The subsequent consulting support the organization has received may have gone a long way to convince these pragmatists that FORGEs fiscal house can get stronger. But using money wisely and well in the social sector is only partly about good fundraising and money management. It also relies on the effectiveness of the intervention being used to create social good. Despite the solid face validity of the program model, we still dont know if FORGE actually works. Does it actually improve well-being for African refugees? Beyond improving well-being, does FORGE actually develop skilled refugee leaders who will use their skills in new situations? Even if FORGE is successful at creating these types of outcomes, what is the likelihood that these outcomes will make a significant difference in African communities over the long term?

Our interest as an organization is to provide evidence about effective interventions, so that donors can know how and where to deploy their resources for the greatest social return, and so that non-profit organizations can know how to improve their practices to get closer and closer to their goals. We believe that an essential next step for FORGE is to develop an evaluation strategy, so that they can begin to provide evidence about their effectiveness to the world, and so they can find out about ways to get even better at the work they do. We will work with FORGE to set up just such a strategy in the coming months.

FORGE is not a large enough organization, nor are data collection conditions on the ground adequate to support the most rigorous evaluation approaches, such as the use of randomized comparison groups. When we first suggested to Kjerstin that an evaluation would be a useful strategy for FORGE, one of the challenges she mentioned was the data-poor environment presented by remote refugee encampments. Indeed, collecting reliable data in such a setting presents significant challenges to systematic research. However, FORGEs situation is not that different from that of many non-profit organizations, even in the U.S. Getting good data is difficult almost anywhere, and designing a smart study is as much art as science. Most non-profits will never have the resources or logistical support to afford a methodological Cadillac. Yet there is still much that we can learn about FORGE and its program model from a wide range of research strategies.

There are four areas of work See Change will pursue with FORGE:

Developing a theory of change

Identifying priorities and methods for conducting a process evaluation

Identifying a small handful of best metrics for an outcome evaluation

Helping them use their stories as data

In the spirit of transparency, we will post regular updates about our work with FORGE staff, and ultimately, our findings. Up next: examining FORGEs theory of change.

- See Change staff

www.seechangeevaluation.com

A hopeful ending to 2008

30 Dec 07:32

Wow, so much to report on at the end of the year. The chaos of the past few months has finally started to coalesce. I feel bad that I haven't posted any updates in the last weeks. They have been a roller coaster. My mother has been ill and away receiving treatment in Arizona, where I went to visit her the week before Christmas. Its been one of those crazy times that we all face at some point in our lives when the demands from all directions are coming at fever-pitch levels. And yet, contrary to expectations just a few months ago, FORGE is going to be closing out 2008 on a positive and hopeful note.

So where do I start? Firstly, I want to express how much of a pleasure and honor it has been to work with Curtis Chang from Consulting Within Reach. Curtis has great perspective and a simple knack for distilling goals into deliverables and distinguishing between priorities. If there is one thing Ive learned about Curtis, its that he believes in efficiency and prudence! As a nonprofit leader always trying to juggle a dozen balls, its been great to have his feedback and advise on what is and isnt the best use of my time.

As a management team and as a Board, weve had some time to digest Curtis recommendations and have already started taking action on many of them (for example, growing the board and finding a person to take admin/finance responsibilities off of my plate). Ill save the details for a further post, but we have a lot of promising organizational developments in the works.

Now, for the really good news in the past month, donors have stepped forward to allow us to effectively close the funding gap for 2008. In a surprise turn of events, a foundation has generously offered to provide us with a $20,000 matching grant followed by a $30,000 administrative support grant in 2009. In response to the challenge, many of our past supporters rallied with second and even third large donations for the year. We had until February to raise the $20,000 matching, but we were actually able to cross the threshold today. The foundation has been very progressive and generous with its terms, and in the spirit of transparency even published its reasoning for offering the grant.

Of course, this story is far from over. 2009 is going to be an unpredictable year for us all. We can proudly say that we made it through the thick of 2008 and will be able to send more funds to continue our programs into 2009, but well need to stay extremely cautious and diligent to ensure that we leave 2009 in a stronger position than 2008. That is what so many people have bet on when they decided to take a chance to invest in us in these risky times, and that is what we are committed to delivering.

Thank you to the whole social edge community for your support and feedback through this (ongoing) process. I am looking forward to many new conversations and explorations in 2009. Right now, our challenge as a sector is a great one: working together to develop creative and effective strategies that will keep those who are already most vulnerable from bearing the brunt of our economic reality.

-Kjerstin Erickson

www.FORGEnow.org

Road map for FORGE

10 Dec 17:16

This entry is from Curtis Chang, CEO of Consulting Within Reach (CWR). CWR has recently agreed to provide pro bono services to FORGE. As part of this experiment in radical transparency, Social Edge and Kjerstin have invited Curtis to regularly share about the experience in this context.

Introduction

In the beginning of November, I was engaged on a pro bono basis to provide FORGE with a road map towards long term sustainability. You can read here for more about how this process got started. The goal was twofold: 1) give FORGE actual guidance going forward and 2) give potential donors a sense of the organizations long term prospects if it survived its immediate financial crisis.

As has been true during this brief experiment in radical transparency, Kjerstin and I have agreed to release this document for the benefit of our sectors shared learning. You are invited to engage with your questions and comments. I would recommend first reading the full report to get a more comprehensive picture of the issues involved.

1. Overview: FORGE as a pathfinder

FORGE has found a new approach to African refugee camps that seeks to transform these warehouses of pity into opportunities for education, job training, and other forms of development. As far as can be ascertained, there is no other entity either as a NGO or formal government body (including the United Nations) that is pursuing this paradigm.

FORGE thus has already succeeded in the main task of a pathfinder. By pathfinder, I am referring to the way that a large convoy figures out where it needs to go when it finds itself lost in new territory and uncertain of how to proceed.

Two risks a pathfinder especially runs are a) running out of supplies; and b) losing touch with the main body. Ironically, a pathfinder can succumb to these problems even as it succeeds in its main task: the new route may be so far from the well worn path that the pathfinder ventures beyond the radius of safety.

FORGE has yet to learn how to manage these risks in an optimal fashion. It discovered its promising new route, but with the danger of a) running perilously short of funding and b) neglecting to network enough with more established parties.

Its immediate difficulties are traceable to its inexperience in balancing the rewards versus risks inherent in the path finding endeavor. I have elsewhere pointed out specifics of this inexperience, such as its messaging to potential donors, or the funding model.

However, it is important to reiterate that these difficulties only surface meaningfully for a pathfinder who is fulfilling its core mission: forging ahead far beyond where most felt it wise to stop. The ones who stay well within the radius of safety are rarely the ones who discover the new route.

2. Critical needs: fundraising and networking capacity

Now is the season for building FORGEs own financial supply line and its relationships with the main body.

This reorientation is especially critical for Kjerstin. She has spent the vast majority of her time on program issues. By her estimation, less than 5% of her time has been spent on networking, and only slightly more on direct fundraising. In the future, she needs to spend more than 60% of her time on these functions.

While the priority of fundraising should be obvious, it is worth noting here why networking more broadly is also very important. There are three main reasons:

FORGE needs more outside validation and legitimacy. This lack is most evidenced by the absence of any established expert in the refugee field on the board. Addressing this problem requires that Kjerstin get out there regularly in the settings where thought leaders in the field congregate.
The organization needs to broaden its donor base, especially with foundations and high net worth individuals. This is only going to happen by developing a broader set of relationships than the ones FORGE currently owns.
Finally, the role of a pathfinder is to bring its findings back to the main body. It may very well be that in the long term, FORGEs most scaleable influence will not be in the number of refugees it directly serves. I am unsure given all its limitations about how high its numerical growth ceiling can be. But I am convinced it can and should diffuse its ideas. For instance, it may be that FORGE will make its ultimate contribution by getting the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (which oversees most of the relief work in the camps) to incorporate aspects of its developmental model.

3. Short run tactic: pulling back its programmatic commitments

Developing funding and partnership capacity will take bandwidth and resources. FORGE needs to think of the next 1-2 years as a season where it maintains just enough of a presence in the camps to continue refining the model and building legitimacy, but pull back how far it extends itself programmatically.

The full report lists some of the short tem steps FORGE can take in this regard.

FORGEs own calculations indicate that some combination of these steps could bring its operational budget to $265,000, about $135,000 less than this years budget. This will give them some more short term breathing room to build the capacity necessary for the long run.

4. Building the financial supply line

FORGE suffers constraints with three of the four main potential revenue streams:

Foundations: FORGE has experienced significant disappointment here. Despite devoting almost a full FTE to grant writing, it has made only minimal gains.
Government: According to Kjerstin, there is little available from the United Nations given FORGEs model of focusing on development versus relief.
Corporations: This kind of funding is most viable when the issue intersects with the actual business in some meaningful way, or it is a high visibility issue in the mass culture. Sadly, no company looks at African refugees as a market and the overall issue has low cultural visibility.

This obviously places great weight on FORGEs ability to do individual fundraising.

5. What FORGE needs for individual fundraising

It is in this area above all else that FORGE needs to obtain some immediate outside expertise. The staff team (including Kjerstin) and the board lack the necessary level of strategic thinking, experience, and/or bandwidth to conceive and execute a fundraising plan at the scale required. Organizational infrastructure needs to be developed in fundamental areas like donor management software and donor cultivation practices.

While providing an individual fundraising plan is beyond the scope of my work here, I will offer some guiding thoughts on a) the role of the board and b) playing to FORGEs strengths.

a. The Board

FORGE needs to reconstitute its board. The current board has served well its purpose in the initial launch phase as it has given Kjerstin a lot of room to maneuver. But the current board is missing three types of individuals critical for fundraising:

C-level executive business leaders
Refugee policy expertise
Nationally (or at least trans-regionally) networked individuals.

b. Playing to FORGEs strengths

I have written elsewhere that FORGE has an original fundraising soul, one that was born in the college student world. Clearly, it has to expand beyond that world. But it can still retain a connection to that student world in a way that actually fuels its expansion.

For instance, FORGE has a cadre of individuals who in the last five years took a year off of school to work in the camps, raised money for FORGE, and are now back at school or have recently graduated. This is an army of potential evangelists for FORGE. But they need to be led and equipped more proactively than they have been.

For a fuller analysis of these fundraising issues, please see the full report.

6. Conclusion: Will FORGE make it?

My answer to this question really depends on what one means by FORGE?

If the question is Can FORGE as an organization make it? then I must confess that I have no idea. Pathfinders do suffer a high mortality rate. FORGE faces some significant challenges. The plan outlined above requires some good execution, but truth be told, it also depends on good luck. For an organization at its life stage, a chance encounter with a wealthy individual here, a new government contact there could make all the difference.

If the question is Can FORGE as an approach make it? then I would answer, I sure hope so. The problem of African refugees is not going away and getting worse. Refugees are staying longer and longer in these warehouses of pity. And an entire generation of potential leaders in those communities is being wasted. A new route forward is desperately needed. So the paradigm of treating the camps as development opportunities where the refugees themselves lead the projects deserves a fair chance to gain wider traction. Personally, the second biggest reason I have invested my own resources is that I want that idea to be disseminated, regardless of what happens to FORGE as an institution.

Finally, if the question is Can FORGE as a group of individuals make it? then I would answer Of course. FORGEs greatest strength is the passion and commitment of its people, starting with Kjerstin but extending to the US and international staff and the board. Those assets are both enduring and what economists call fungible: easily transferred to other contexts. And in that vein, I have told Kjerstin on numerous occasions that FORGE is most likely just the first of several causes she will spearhead over the course of her career. There are few better long term investments, in my book, than giving an obviously talented individual like Kjerstin her first shot at social entrepreneurship. This is the biggest reason I have given of myself to FORGE for this season, and have been quite glad for it.

P.S. Kjerstin and I will wrap up this project in early January and I'll weigh in one last time with concluding thoughts on this experiment in transparency.

Kjerstin's Blog

Kjerstin's Blog

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Kjerstin's Bio

Kjerstin's Bio

Nicholas' Bio

Nicholas' Bio