Regional Performance and
Innovation Consortia
Oregon’s Road to Change
Presented by Tom Clancey-Burns, Executive Director
Community Action Partnership of Oregon
Region 8/10 Conference
May 13-15, 2014
Boise, ID
Oregon’s Road To Change
 Public Will, Public Action & The Role of Government
 Messaging Recommendation to CAPO
Public Will, Public Action &
The Role of Government
Community Action Partnership of Oregon
March 10, 2010
Patrick Bresette - [email protected]
Public Works: the Dē mos Center for the Public Sector
Dēmos: A Network for Ideas & Action
www.demos.org
• Understand how dominant cultural stories,
perceptions and frames effect public will to
address social problems
• Explore the dominant public attitudes
toward government & poverty
• Learn key elements for creating a more
productive public conversation about these
issues
• Discuss and Practice new approaches and
how to apply the lessons to your work.
We Need to Build Public Will
Public sentiment is
everything. With public
sentiment, nothing can
fail; without it nothing can
succeed. Consequently, he
who molds public
sentiment goes deeper
than he who enacts
statutes or pronounces
decisions. He makes
statutes and decisions
possible or impossible to be
executed.“
- Abraham Lincoln
The Great Disconnect, Circa 2006
How Public Confusion Impedes Political Solutions to Some of
Our Biggest Problems
Condition #1: public cynicism, negativism, and
skeptic ism about government . . . at the highest
levels in 30 years of doing quantitative and
qualitative research in Oregon.
Condition #2: decreasing awareness and knowledge
about government . . . about 30% of the general public
cannot name a single tax that is used to help pay for
public services.
- Adam Davis, City Club Speech, May 12, 2006
The Triumphant Individual
The Benevolent Community
“Self-Made Man” – Irene Ritter
Independence
Dave Kolpack / AP
Interdependence
THE PROMISE OF COMMUNITY ACTION
Community Action changes people's lives,
embodies the spirit of hope, improves
communities, and makes America a better
place to live. We care about the entire
community, and we are dedicated to helping
people help themselves and each other
Poverty Story
•Each individual is
responsible for his or her
own success or failure;
•With hard work comes
reward;
•The goal is equal
opportunity, not equal
outcome; and
•Anyone can achieve
the “American Dream”.
Source: Meg Bostrom, For and Economy that Works for All
Some Public Beliefs work for us…
• Hard work should be valued and rewarded
• Working people are struggling
• The country needs to act to impact the
economy
• People tend to judge the economy based on
their perceptions of how they and people like
them are doing.
• We can all work together to find solutions
“. . . a talent for
speaking differently,
rather than for
arguing well, is the
chief instrument of
cultural change . . .”
- Richard Rorty
Messaging Approved by CAPO Board of Directors
• We all want to live in communities where all people can be
successful and families can thrive.
• We remove barriers to opportunity and build upon strengths
so that families can succeed and lasting change is possible.
• We work with our communities to address common
concerns, improve systems and influence policy for the
benefit of all.
• We know that every life we impact improves our lives
together.
From Theory to Action
 Theoretical Framework of Poverty
 OSU Project Update
 Next Steps
 Theory of Change Models
STRUCTURAL CAUSES OF POVERTY
Economic Growth:
decrease is absolute poverty
Economic Processes
Economic Restructuring
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Skills mismatch 
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Technological
Changes
Economic Inequality:
increase in relative poverty because
only some to be better off
Globalization
Depressed
Wages
Jobs available to low
skill workers do not
support family above
poverty line
Joblessness
Poverty Typologies/
Conditions
Transitory: In and Out of Poverty
Chronic: Continual state of poverty
Lifecycle: Poverty Due to stage of life
High vulnerability to
unanticipated life events
Exclusion/Inclusion:
Based on gender, race,
ethnicity, class, etc.
Social Policies/Programs
do not adequately address
the needs of the poor
Social Stratification
L o w Political Capital:
Makes it difficult to
influence policy that
directly impacts them
TYPES OF POVERTY
Transitory:
In and Out of Poverty
This group includes individuals and
households who occasionally dip
below the poverty line. Examples
include working families facing
unanticipated events such as medical
costs, households experiencing the
loss of an income earner, households
gaining an income earner, individuals
who experience a decrease in pay, etc.
Chronic:
Extended State of Poverty
Lifecycle:
Poverty Due to Stage of Life
This group includes individuals and
households who are extremely
marginalized and therefore often
cannot or do not earn wages.
Examples include individuals with
disabilities that prevent them from
working, individuals with
drug/alcohol addiction, individuals
with mental health issues, or even
individuals living in an area with
scarce resources and limited access
to low-skilled jobs.
This group includes individuals and
households who experience poverty
during a certain stage of life and is
usually connected to limited human
capital and assets. Examples include
young adults working in entry-level
jobs, young adults still attending
school, seniors with insufficient
assets, new parents facing the
increased costs associated with
rearing children, etc.
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The proposed Theory of Change should more explicitly reflect
CAPO’s sphere of influence. Since Community Action Agencies
are geared toward stabilizing and moving households out of
poverty, emphasis should be placed in these areas (versus
addressing structural causes of poverty).
While indicators should rise above the level of individual
programs or funding sources--they should ideally be sensitive
enough to capture client "progress" regardless of starting or exit
points. For example, one idea was to employ a scale that would
measure how much "better off" a household is as a result of
CAA services.
We continue to scour the national landscape for
existing anti-poverty outcomes and indicators that
could be incorporated into CAPO’s Theory of
Change. This includes paying special attention to
indicators that might potentially measure the
movement or progress of households receiving
various Community Action services.
We are also spending time on the ground to investigate existing Community
Action Agency program reporting and data collection requirements. Using
Community Services Consortium (Albany) as our “home-base”--the goal of this
research is:
• To assure that our recommended outcomes and indicators account for
existing required reporting elements (in an effort to streamline data
collection and reporting).
• To isolate common, cross-cutting outcomes among various programs.
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To identify what data are currently available, as well as areas where further
data collection may be valuable.
• To better understand current data collection and reporting systems.
Here’s Where We Are Today
 Theory of Change Models
With gratitude to the Washington
Community Action Partnership
and the Community Action
Partnership of Oregon,
for providing inspiration and insight
into this
theory of change model
For More Information Contact: