How to distribute grant dollars for maximum impact is a key concern for any philanthropic venture. The Foundation devoted a great deal of effort to ensure that good data helped to drive grantmaking decisions. The Center for Health Training at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and the State Office of Family Planning were commissioned to conduct an analysis of birthrates among 15-to-17-year-olds between 1992 and 1994 for all California zip codes.(3) The 82 areas that were in the upper quartile were identified as hot spot communities and they became the focus of the TPPI. Parenthetically, this approach has continued to be used by the state of California to target its funding for other programs.

In addition to the hot spot analysis, TCWF commissioned other background research on criteria for site selection, best practices from effective and promising programs, and the public policy context for teen pregnancy prevention work.(4) These data sources provided the underlying structure of the competitive RFP process to select the Community Action Programs. When the readiness criteria were applied to the top-rated proposals, only seven met most of them. That’s when the decision was made to extend a second tier of funding to include hot spot communities that did not quite demonstrate the capacity to take on the challenge of communitywide mobilization. Those sites, selected partly for geographic diversity, became the grantees of the Community Support Program.

Another criterion in site selection was to complement existing state government funding rather than duplicating resources. Foundation and state staff were in regular communication to help foster appropriate synergies and to create an environment where each entity could track the other’s work. The state staff invited TCWF program staff to their meetings, and Foundation staff also included state staffers in their planning conversations on several occasions. That kind of public/private coordination of effort takes place too rarely—and both sides saw it as beneficial.

Despite the rigorous, data-driven nature of the site selection process, real-life constraints inevitably manifested themselves. It was very difficult to identify organizations in the hot spot regions that possessed the capacity and other connections that background research indicated were important for high-quality programming and effective community engagement. Vigorous debate ensued within the Foundation and with key TPPI support grantees on how best to proceed. Even though the TPPI had developed very explicit criteria for the kinds of interventions it expected to be most successful, it was clear that a “one size fits all” approach was not going to work and that the sites were going to require substantial individualized technical assistance (see next section on Building Capacity).

Another question that was debated was the appropriate grant size, or dosage, per site. It was decided that each Community Action Program would receive substantial funding ($300,000 per year over six and a half years of full implementation) in addition to significant resources for planning and technical assistance. In the name of equity, each site received the same amount.

With the wisdom of 20/20 hindsight, some observers have suggested that some sites could have profitably used greater funding, while others could have made do with significantly less. The effectiveness of annually distributing the same amount throughout the life of the project is another open question. While it made for maximum predictability for staffing and program planning, it’s also possible that all might have benefited from a somewhat more sophisticated disbursement procedure, perhaps based on achievement of benchmarks. That would have acknowledged the reality of disparities in capacity among the sites and also rewarded those who were proceeding more quickly to achieve their goals. Whether that would have been politically feasible and palatable to everyone involved is another question. But future multiyear initiatives might benefit from considering alternative methods for targeting resources on an annual basis.

No matter how well-informed and thorough the site selection process, another lesson is that the longer the lifespan of the Initiative, the higher the likelihood that the important elements will change. This is a dilemma familiar to any foundation that has supported place-based initiatives. It is impossible to draw a cordon around a neighborhood over a multiyear period to try to ensure that one’s funding has the desired cumulative effect.

Low-income communities, particularly neighborhoods like the TPPI’s hot spots, are constantly in flux. There is a high level of transience, and it’s not uncommon for 40 percent to 50 percent of the local school population to turn over in the course of a year. Likewise, key staff at grantee agencies will inevitably move on during the course of the grant, taking their newly acquired knowledge and networks, and program materials, with them. Keeping the attention of the leaders of grantee organizations over a multiyear period is also a challenge. As grateful as they might be for Initiative support, it’s only one of many funding sources for their agencies—and their energies are frequently spread quite thin.

By most standards of the field, TCWF approached the targeting of resources the “right” way. It collected appropriate background data and devoted substantial intellectual resources to select sites and calibrate grant amounts for maximum effect. Nevertheless, significant challenges emerged. Of the seven sites so carefully selected as Community Action Programs, two dropped out of contention during the planning process and a third lost momentum midstream in implementation when the two project coordinators left after a dispute with their sponsoring agency. Despite the Foundation’s best laid plans, the nature of these complex, multiyear grantmaking programs is that they are never a “done deal.” Rather, they are a continuously unfolding work in progress. A flexible and adaptable mindset is required of all participants, as well as ongoing attention to capacity building.

Despite all these challenges, it is important to note some significant outcomes of the Community Grants component. Thousands of teens received reproductive health education and contraceptive services. Perhaps more importantly, sexually active teen girls living in the Community Action Program (CAP) areas increased their use of family planning services more than did teens at similar communities in California, and births to teens in the CAP neighborhoods decreased more than in other hot spots in the state.