SUPERVISION OF NON-PROFITS
A recent article in the San Francisco Standard was titled “After reports of botched homeless count, city ordered a redo—and then backtracked”.
Sigh. Could San Francisco’s situation with non-profit organizations (NPOs) be any more ridiculous?
I believe that the voters recently created yet another bureaucracy to provide some kind of oversight to the city’s galaxy of non-profit organizations.
That’s great – I guess. Or, maybe it’s just another way for the city’s elected leaders to avoid accountability? In any case, I will certainly do all I can to support that bureaucracy’s efforts.
Nevertheless, when it comes to the 600+ NPOs that the city is funding, as mayor I will go well above and beyond this bureaucracy’s efforts myself. As in personally.
For example, while I’m in office:
- Every single work week I will drop in, unannounced, and visit the office or working location of at least one city-funded non-profit. The NPO will be selected at random. Or, maybe not so randomly.
Because I will be dropping in unannounced, this means any and all of our city’s 600+ NPOs are at risk of having me visit at any time. - In addition, at least once every single work week, I will also meet with the management of at least one other city-funded non-profit. This will be a more formal meeting, scheduled in advance.
At this meeting I will expect to be presented with a concise written and also oral summary of the non-profit’s recent work accomplishments. This summary will include specific references to some of their clients or work product that my team and I can meet with or visit separately and independently sometime soon after this meeting. This will allow us to get a direct, first-hand feel for how effective the non-profit’s efforts are.
At this meeting I will also expect to be presented with a copy of the NPO’s latest quarterly financial report. This will be scrutinized first by me, then by my team and/or the City Hall financial review team.
The selection process for these meetings will not be random. - NPOs that are doing particularly mission-critical or time-sensitive work will be given more attention than this. For example, if a certain NPO is charged with something like, oh, say, performing a census of homeless persons in the city, they can count on having someone from City Hall on the ground with them, if not continuously, then at least quite often.
To understand the idea behind this, think of something like, say, a federal inspector at a meat packing plant. Or, ewww – maybe we don’t think about that particular example. But you get the idea …
I’ll have much more to say on this topic as we move forward.
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