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Latest Developments
- Smaller and innovative nonprofits typically lack the computerized information systems they need to manage their work over time. With them in mind, software developers at Vera created a generic program management application that can be customized to support almost any service and evolve as services change.
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Overview
Demonstration projects allow reformers to test and refine solutions to difficult problems before applying them to a large government system—whether it be policing, juvenile justice, or school safety. The advantages include being able to quickly adjust the design of a reform, measure its potential impact, and win over skeptics while working on a small scale. At Vera, we partner with government officials to develop innovative, practical, and affordable programs that aim to make a difference in the lives of individuals. We then help government implement those programs in real-life, yet carefully monitored, environments and use rigorous research methods to measure their impact.
Demonstrating solutions is not always possible or appropriate. Where the interest in reform is transitory, the fact that the process usually requires more than a year to show results is a disadvantage. We have learned that demonstration projects are most useful when they address persistent problems that have resisted quick solutions, when they are testing new roles (not just new rules), and when they are carefully planned to address the political and financial constraints that will face officials who try to implement them on a wider scale.
What do we mean by "new roles"? In the 1960s, bail reform required more than legislative change: it required a new role for pretrial services officers to verify the community ties of defendants so that the use of money bail could be reduced. In the 1970s, improving services to victims of crime required a new kind of advocate and counselor. In the 1980s, the development of community policing required officers to learn the new role of neighborhood problem-solver. In the 1990s, reducing detention of non-citizens facing deportation required supportive community supervision.
Today, Vera’s demonstration projects are still testing and refining new roles. Therapists at Adolescent Portable Therapy provide consistent drug treatment for juvenile delinquents as these kids move through multiple justice agencies; staff at Esperanza/Hope narrow the use of custodial placement of delinquent youth by changing how placement decisions are made and testing a new home-based program for them; and police monitors at the Police Assessment Resource Center help law enforcement agencies deliver effective and respectful services.
Creating roles like these is more than a matter of naming the job. A public or private agency employing people in new roles must know whom to recruit, how to train them, how to supervise them, how to measure their performance, and how to structure incentives to reward their best work. Vera plans and operates its demonstration projects so that our government partners learn these lessons while they test the benefits that the new role can bring.
Vera has always approached its demonstration projects as partnerships with government. Because our aim is to help government officials institute reform on a large scale, we want those officials to own these demonstration projects, taking the ones that work to scale. That means involving our government partners in planning a project from the start; it means persuading them to invest their own resources in the demonstrations; and it means giving our government partners the credit they deserve as the real champions of reform. Once a demonstration has proven itself, our operational role ends and we turn the project over to government agencies or to nonprofit organizations working under government contracts.
[ last modified 11/30/2006 3:38:49 PM ] |
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::: View a short film about Vera. [Go]
