Case #B
Sojourner Family Peace Center
http://familypeacecenter.org/
Mission
Sojourner Family Peace Center’s (“Sojourner”) mission is to transform lives impacted by
domestic violence. The agency’s primary goals are to ensure the safety of victims of
family violence and to provide a pathway out of violence for victims and abusers through
opportunities to make positive and lasting changes for themselves and their children.
Sojourner Family Peace Center is the largest nonprofit provider of domestic violence
prevention and intervention services in Wisconsin, serving thousands of clients each
year. Sojourner provides an array of support aimed at helping families affected by
domestic violence achieve safety, justice, and well-being.
History and Background
Dating back to its original founding in 1975, Sojourner Family Peace Center has been a
leader in providing not just care and counseling but education to those that are survivors
of domestic abuse and violence. Officially incorporated in 1978 under the name of
Sojourner Truth House, it opened the first shelter for battered women in Milwaukee.
Finding its quarters too small, Sojourner purchased its second location in 1980. In the
same year, the Agency published “Survival: A Handbook for Battered Women”. In 1981,
they established a 23-week program in response to help abusers change their
destructive behaviors. Sojourner organized the second national conference on domestic
violence also in 1981. In 1986, the City of Milwaukee Police Department implemented a
mandatory arrest policy for domestic violence battery incidents and designated
Sojourner to oversee and operate the 24-hour domestic violence hotline.
In 1993, Sojourner participated in a collaborative five-year domestic violence study,
entitled the “Safe at Home Violence Against Women Prevention Project”, sponsored by
the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The program targets abuser intervention
and education. Programs and services continued to expand including all parties
involved in domestic abuse (abuser, victims, and children). By 2009, the bed space for
the emergency shelter increased from 37 to 42.
Sojourner is set to move into its new and expanded, one stop facility in October 2015.
Sojourner is a vital part of the overall domestic violence movement within the United
States. To understand the underpinnings of domestic violence the following is provided:
Definition - Domestic violence and emotional abuse are behaviors used by one
person in a relationship to control the other. Partners may be married or not
married; heterosexual, gay, or lesbian; living together, separated or dating.
Examples of abuse include - name-calling or putdowns; keeping a partner
from contacting their family or friends; withholding money; stopping a partner
from getting or keeping a job; actual or threatened physical harm; sexual assault;
stalking; intimidation.
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Violence can be criminal and includes physical assault (hitting, pushing, shoving,
etc.), sexual abuse (unwanted or forced sexual activity), and stalking. The
violence takes many forms and can happen all the time or occasionally.
ANYONE CAN BE A VICTIM! Victims can be of any age, sex, race, culture,
religion, education, employment, or marital status. Although both men and
women can be abused, most victims are women. Children in homes where there
is domestic violence are more likely to be abused and/or neglected. Most
children in these homes know about the violence. Even if a child is not physically
harmed, they are more likely to have emotional and/or behavior problems.
While most often thought of as a personal matter between two people and/or various
members of a family unit, domestic violence has a broad reach throughout the entire
community, including the economy. Sojourner, since inception, has not only been
providing direct services to victims and their families but they also assist businesses in
understanding the economic impact of the issue and help with instances where domestic
violence spills over into the workplace.
Key Personnel and Budget
Carmen Pitre (Ms. Pitre’s bio is presented in full due to her extensive background in
domestic violence and her national reputation.)
Carmen Pitre is the Executive Director of Wisconsin’s largest service provider for
families dealing with domestic violence, Sojourner Family Peace Center. With a
multi-million dollar annual budget, Pitre leads a staff that provides crisis housing,
system advocacy, and individual support to thousands of women, men and their
children.
Today, she draws on decades of work in the DV field to transform the lives of
many. She has been a leader in the effort to improve the way the community
supports families impacted by domestic violence. This commitment led Pitre to
launch the creation of a new Sojourner Family Peace Center that follows the
international model of a Family Justice Center. Being constructed at 619 W.
Walnut Street, Pitre believes that bringing partners together to co-locate services
and work more closely together, our system will be more effective and efficient.
Pitre is the recent past Chair of the City of Milwaukee Commission on Domestic
Violence and Sexual Assault and is an appointed member of the State of
Wisconsin Department of Justice Crime Victim Rights Board. In addition, she is
a member of the Office of Justice Assistance Violence Against Women Advisory
Committee and a founding member of the VAWA Human Trafficking SubCommittee. She has served on the Medical College of Wisconsin Violence
Prevention Initiative Steering Committee.
Pitre was integral in the merger of Sojourner Truth House and the Task Force on
Family Violence in 2009 when she became Co-Executive Director of the new
agency, Sojourner Family Peace Center. Before the merger, Pitre was the
Executive Director of the Task Force on Family Violence from 2002 to 2009.
Prior to that leadership role, Pitre served as the Director of the First Judicial
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District Judicial Oversight Demonstration Initiative and the Coordinator of the
Milwaukee Commission on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.
Pitre has received the following professional awards: 2013 Sacajawea Award
from Professional Dimensions, the Business Journal 2012 Women of Influence
Award, 2008 WCADV Changer Makers Award, 2002 Wisconsin Humane Society
Kindness Award, 2000 I Am My Sisters Keeper Award and the 1999 Wisconsin
Coalition Against Domestic Violence Other Systems Ally Award, 1999 Governors
Award for Significant Accomplishment in Domestic Violence Award.
Pitre is a 1984 graduate of the University of Southwestern Louisiana, Bachelor of
Arts program. She comes from humble beginnings that include surviving abuse
as a child.
Jack Leff is the finance director at Sojourner and has held this position for
approximately three years. Before coming to Sojourner, he had a long and successful
career at Verizon Wireless as well as several other for profit enterprises. Jack brings a
strong business sense to the organization and assists in providing “translation” of the
outcomes/impacts into financial terms that businesses can better understand.
Current budget for the Agency is approximately $4 million.
Client issue
Sojourner is seeking to engage both the greater Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin’s
business communities in ending domestic violence. Understanding the cost of domestic
violence on businesses and the overall economy is a critical component to engaging
businesses in this discussion. The costs are many including but not necessarily limited
to:
 Absences and/or time taken off by employees
 Lack of productivity while on the job
 Abuse that happens in the workplace
 Retention/turnover issues
Sojourner is therefore seeking to development a framework that provides the economic
cost of domestic violence on businesses. In essence, the Organization is seeking a way
to explain the social impacts of domestic violence as well as the outcomes of the
services and education provided by Sojourner in a way that make sense to seasoned
financial business professionals and therefore will engage them into developing
workplace solutions and ultimately a stronger connection to Sojourner Family Peace
Center. Sojourner’s Fall 2014 newsletter provides a snapshot of some of the overall
impacts of domestic violence.
Reasons for Needing the Framework
In late 2014, Sojourner broke ground on the future site of the Sojourner Family Peace
Center scheduled to open in October/November 2015. The new facility will be a unique
partnership between Sojourner and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. Upon the opening
of the new Peace Center, families impacted by domestic violence and child abuse will
have integrated resources available all under one roof.
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The state of Wisconsin spends over $8 million a year to protect children from abuse and
over $670 million annually to repair the damage done by abuse. These figures only
represent the state’s costs associated with child protection. The costs to the state and
municipal governments is a larger figure when the cost of police, hospital costs, aid
provided to victimized women unable to work due to abuse, incarceration costs of the
abuser, etc., are added together. Nationally the costs associated with domestic violence
approach $6 billion annually.1 The State of Wisconsin-Annual Budget includes $200
million to supervise 3,000 offenders located in just two zip codes in the City of
Milwaukee. This equates to $66k+ per each offender.
The above quoted costs are costs that are assignable and easily tracked, such as direct
medical and mental health services. However, there are other costs that are not as
easily tracked and managed – those being associated with the loss of productivity by
employees who experience some sort of domestic violence.
Having the ability to provide the CFO’s/CEO’s of the local and state business community
impact that they can truly understand, i.e., the cost to their businesses, will go a long
way to engage the business community to understand the true impact of domestic
violence.
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT)
Strengths
 Sojourner has a long history within the Greater Milwaukee area.

Sojourner has a strong national reputation and involved in various highly
regarded research white papers on the subject of long-term abuse and its impact
on society.

The recent partnership with Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin is providing
Sojourner a stronger profile within the domestic abuse movement.
Weaknesses/Challenges/Threats
 Approximately 1 out of every 3 or 4 women will be the victim of abuse. This
statistic has not significantly changed in decades.
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
Domestic violence has been seen to be a self-perpetuating process. The son
sees his father abuse the mother; the son gets to majority and begins to abuse
his wife or significant other.

The government’s approach to the issue is to incarcerate and rehabilitate – which
as seen above is a costly endeavor.

Businesses do not see this as their problem – they view it as a social service
issue paid for by government funds.
http://www.ncadv.org/files/Wisconsin.pdf
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
The U.S. considers domestic violence as a crime between two people whereas
internationally domestic violence is considered a human rights issue.

While domestic violence is traditionally the man as the abuser and the woman as
the abused, domestic violence includes the opposite relative to the abuser and
abused.

Elder abuse is on the upswing and with the ageing of the baby boomers, many of
whom are still in the work force, the cost to businesses will continue to increase.

Wisconsin like most of the United States is experiencing an ever-increasing
ethnic population. Some of these populations have cultures that require more
education relating to the equality of women.
Opportunities
 Milwaukee, as well as Wisconsin, has a thriving economy and the time is ripe to
educate the business community about the costs of domestic violence.

Governments are seeking ways to reduce the cost of government and are getting
significant pressure from the business community to reduce taxes. Providing a
direct link to the business community of the public cost of domestic violence and
what they can do to reduce the cost of government would reduce the cost to their
businesses since taxes would not have a need to increase to cover the costs
associated.

Data exists that provides for the costs to businesses but no one has effectively
summarized it in a way that will reach the CFO’s where it counts – their
checkbooks.
Call for proposals
Because of Sojourner’s desire to create a framework to quantify the cost of domestic
violence to the business community, the client has issued an RFP for consulting
services. You are one of the six competing “firms” that have been asked to provide them
with useable take-a-ways which will enable Sojourner to approach the business
community with impact results they can understand. Sojourner sees this a three-part
analysis:
 Reviewing the research already conducted which is in the public domain
 Analyzing the research
 Putting it in a framework that is easily digestible for CFOs
The parameters of the RFP are as follows:
 How best to engage the business community and make it realize that it has a
huge stake in the costs of domestic violence.

How to best communicate with the CFO community
 This is critical to the RFP. The method of analysis for program
professionals about the “cost” is very different that the method of analysis
completed by CFOs.
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



The former (program professionals) will tend to see the cost in
terms of the cost to the abused or children of the abused – so
more of an intrinsic cost.
The latter (CFOs) will tend to see the cost in dollars and cents
While the two are not mutually exclusive, they are very different –
almost as if they were two different languages.
It is essential that the intrinsic cost be translated to hard dollars
and cents.

Hard suggestions and clear take-a-ways. This is not a “what if” presentation.
(Sojourner expects to be able to use materials provided by the “competing “firms”
as part of their planned communications to the business community.)
 “Firms” that provide ancillary documents as part of their presentations will
have an edge.

How to effectively use social media to transmit information

How the data can be easily updated and documents/media revised, as needed,
by Sojourner staff.
Information to be provided in June 2015
Various documents will be made available to the consulting “firms” by June 2015.
Documents that will likely be provided will include, but not necessarily limited to:
 Links to existing research on the subject matter
 Data associated with domestic violence – including its costs broken down to the
level available
 Links to white papers produced by Sojourner
 Current financial statements of Sojourner
 Annual Reports (past three years)
 Agency Program Brochures
Judging criteria
Each proposal will be judged on the following criteria:
a. Simplicity of the model designed
b. Most effective translation of the social impacts to the financial impacts
c. How easily the data can be updated by Sojourner staff
d. True take-a-ways, including graphics of the costs, executive summaries, etc.
e. All required items are addressed
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Note – This case will clearly require front-end research by those selected to work on this case. Sojourner is
seeking a way to engage the business community and believes that a group of college students majoring in
accounting/finance/AIS can provide the organization the necessary tools to create the necessary bridge
between the social impacts and the financial impacts.
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