Ideas and suggestions: Shaping Casas strategic mission

This post is meant to prompt reaction and comments on this blog site to help the Casas organization think through its 3-5 year plan.

Idea:  Review the current mission that focuses on some of the  neediest families, many with six or more children.  Shift emphasis to families with a higher probability of lifting out of poverty over time.  

Suggestions:   

(1)  Future criteria may include families with fewer children; families committed to education; or those already involved in some way in government support programs. 

(2) Casas may consider asking for a commitment from the parents to continue to participate in the community to help others, to support the education of their children, etc.  

Idea:  Casas should continue to invest effort in tracking the progress of families over time and may want to consider additional ways to help these families lift themselves out of poverty.  It is important to show results to continue to see support from donors.   

Suggestions:  

(1)  Profiles of success stories for families whose lives were changed  by Casas

(2)  Learn from the leaders in the field how to change strategy over time to maximize effectiveness.  For example, the Gates foundation has a process for judging the effectiveness of its approach.  It is a cycle that includes:  develop strategy-make grants-measure progress-adjust strategy.

Idea:  Increase Casas visibility and connectedness to other charitable organizations and non-profits with shared vision and mission. 

Suggestions:

(1)  Develop a clearer understanding of the hierarchy of charitable activity and giving within Guatemala.  At the top of the pyramid would be GSOs , the Gates Foundation (Access to Learning/Libraries, River blindness, etc.), Habitat for Humanity (in Guatemala since 1979), the Clinton Global Initiative,and large corporations (Nestle, Merck, etc.).

(2)  Build relationships and bridges to these organizations to explore possible partnerships.  For example:  how might Nestle sponsor Casas efforts in the region?

(3)  Smaller organizations like ConstruCasa.org (Carolina van Heerde) may be willing to pool resources every year to co-develop larger-scale projects (e.g. schools).   

(4)  These relationships across new entities and new partnerships with other organizations may be useful to support longer-term succession planning as well.