Where Will You Be in 2015?

At the beginning of a new year, many people set resolutions or goals for what they want to accomplish in the upcoming year. At CANI, we set resolutions every three years for where we would like to be – these resolutions are called our Strategic Plan.

Last Thursday night CANI’s board approved our Strategic Plan, which will guide our efforts at eliminating poverty through 2015. One of my favorite things about working here is that we have a philosophy that we’ll accomplish a lot more if we are ambitious and come up short, versus being conservative and accomplishing everything. And as usual, we have adopted a very ambitious strategic plan.

We have six long-range goals:

1.      The first, in a nutshell, is to develop an integrated system of services that can meet any needs for any family we see. This goal includes providing a host of programs that we have traditionally provided as well as developing programs that are needed in the community but not provided by anyone else. For instance, a major objective for the next three years is to develop new homelessness prevention programs, as well as expand services to Veterans.

2.      The second goal is to increase the provision of services that build assets for families and individuals. In truth, most of our programs are aimed at building assets, but this goal might be considered to mean more direct, higher impact asset-building activities like increasing access to capital by expanding our lending programs.

3.      Our third goal is all about community development, because we know that we must work on the conditions that low-income people live in as well as their own individual issues. In addition to housing development and system-building, we will expand our advocacy efforts, expand our AmeriCorps program to better support other organizations, provide capacity-building assistance to other organizations, and be available to step up as a convener of community collaborations.

4.      We also recognize that to provide great service, we must be a great organization. We have a detailed plan to do just that - our Blueprint to Greatness. This plan includes a significant number of initiatives modeled after Jim Collins’ “Good to Great”. We will enhance our board and staff, continue to ensure excellent accountability and transparency, and increase our technology, to name a few examples.

5.      The fifth goal relates to increasing our public awareness and increasing our flexible financial resources. Increasing awareness of poverty is a key strategy for us, as this leads to better understanding across the community of issues low-income families face, which in turn leads to better advocacy, greater support for CANI and our partners, and even more people helping their neighbors. We also want to increase our fundraising efforts, expand our Energy Saver Consultants business, and expand our fee-for-service activities.

6.      Our last goal basically relates to most of the others to one degree or another. We need to increase the focus on our service area outside of Fort Wayne. CANI’s service area includes twelve counties in northeast Indiana. The majority of the low-income families in this area live in Fort Wayne, but there are thousands of low-income people that live outside of Fort Wayne. 

I am always excited after we complete one strategic plan and develop a new one. This is the fourth strategic plan I have worked on at CANI, and as I look back I can see the truly impressive impact of our process. We have never accomplished all that we set out to do, but we have always accomplished many great things in our plans. This plan will be no different, and we've already gotten started!

For much more detail, check out the plan for yourself at http://www.canihelp.org/WhoWeAre/Documents/strategic_plan.pdf

Employees Excel During Busiest Time of the Year

Every year, when winter starts to hit and the temperature drops, our utility assistance season kicks into high gear. This is a program that we value greatly, because it gives us the opportunity to reach thousands of households across northeast Indiana. But it is definitely our most difficult program to administer.

The heating assistance portion of the program provides financial assistance on heating bills to families who qualify. The amount they receive is based on a number of factors, such as income level, heating type, and more. It is a critical basic need for most of these families; without it they would struggle to keep their heat on during the winter. Quite literally, some individuals would freeze to death without this service.

This piece of the program runs from November through May this year, a shorter time frame than we have had in previous years. Because of this shorter window, the large number of families we need to serve and the limited funding provided to run the program, we definitely battle every year to make it all happen.

We have hundreds of people calling our office every day, and despite having three staff answering phones, the hold times are long. Despite an organized appointment system and staff working diligently, we have many people coming in with emergencies every day, further swamping the caseload.

The sheer volume is one thing, but the issues that our families face are also difficult, sometimes heart-wrenching. CANI employees work here because they want to make a difference in people’s lives, but that work can become overwhelming at times.

I know that this is our busiest, most stressful time of the entire year. That is what makes me even more proud of our employees during this time. The Family Support staff work extremely hard to get people their services. Other departments pitch in to help when we get overloaded. Despite the massive numbers, we always serve the most people that we can, as well as we can.

Because we are CANI and that is what we do here.

Fighting Homelessness - Fighting Poverty

I am really excited that CANI has launched two new programs in the last couple of weeks. Well, they are technically new, but are very similar to work that we've started over the last couple of years. The programs are very similar in nature. Both are modeled after the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Rehousing Program (HPRP), which CANI has administered for the last couple of years in our region.

HPRP was started as a pilot program across the country using ARRA stimulus funds through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Those funds of course have come to an end, but HPRP was so successful, that HUD has shifted some of its traditional funding into starting a new program using this model.

The goal of HPRP was to prevent long-term homelessness by rapidly rehousing homeless families (or preventing them from becoming homelessness in the first place) by providing short-term rental assistance. This is obviously an important stabilizing benefit, but of more importance was that the rental assistance was combined with intensive case management services. The goal of the program was to make families housing stable by the time their rental assistance ended, which was around nine months.

CANI has served hundreds of families with HPRP across eleven northeast Indiana counties. These families are basically the hardest to serve, because of their homeless situation, and the vast majority of these families left the program with stable housing. It was imperative that we find a way to maintain this program locally, and nationally as well.

I am excited to say that after a gap of about 10 months, CANI is once again serving families using this model. The program does not have an official name yet, although we have been referring to it as ESG (Emergency Solutions Grant) because of the funding from HUD that goes by this name. The program is smaller than before. We can only serve Allen County now, instead of all of the counties in our service area. And the funding mix is much more complicated, but still we consider it quite a victory to have been able to piece this program back together.

We have many partners to thank for this effort. Most notably, the City of Fort Wayne has combined funding from several of their programs to serve clients from inside the city limits. The Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority (IHCDA) is providing about half of the funding. Our fantastic partnership with Lutheran Social Services continues with this program, as they will be helping us provide the case management for the program.  Our local United Way, through its 211 program, will be providing initial screening on potential clientele. And we will be working with area housing shelters in close partnership, as they help families move from their crisis situation into our program.

In total, this is a unique collaboration that combines the services of many different organizations, and provides clients with two vitally important pieces in their quest to become self-sufficient: housing and case management. I am proud that CANI has a key role in providing this program in our community.

The other program that has started is nearly a carbon-copy of the program I've described above. It is called Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF). It too combines rental assistance with case management, but with less rental assistance and heavier emphasis on case management. I am really excited to be working with Veterans. I am a Veteran myself, and I feel that communities need to do much more to help these families with their very unique issues. We have long wanted to do more for Veterans here at CANI, and this is a significant step.

I have written many times about the need to help families meet their basic needs so they can focus on developmental goals. Shelter is at the top of that list. I also believe that case management, and especially CANI’s own Family Development model, is one of the most successful poverty fighting programs that we have. Starting two new programs that combine these vital services is a truly exciting step for our organization and the communities that we serve.