William Wubbenhorst on Serve, West Dallas and FBO Evaluation

tonygill — Sun, 01 Mar 2015 09:00:03 +0000

How effective are faith-based community organizations and alleviating poverty, crime, health problems, and other social ills? William Wubbenhorst, co-founder of Social Capital Valuations LLC along with Andrew Gluck, talks about a unique collaborative effort to bring several faith-based organizations together in the community of West Dallas, Texas. He also discusses how his firm specializes in evaluating programs such as this one for their overall effectiveness and community impact.

Our conversation begins with a discussion of the West Dallas neighborhood and the various social problems it has faced over the decades. We then discuss the Serve, West Dallas program that consists of integrating the efforts of a variety of faith-based organizations that are sponsored by local and outlying suburban churches. William provides us with the history of this effort, tracing it back to Arrvel Wilson who grew up in the neighborhood, left it for his military service, but was called back by God to help improve the community. Mr. Wubbenhorst highlights a number of component parts to this program, including Service Optimizing Academic Reach (SOAR), Mercy Street Mentoring, Advocates for Community Transformation (ACT), and Brother Bill’s Helping Hand Clinic. He discusses some of the specific efforts undertaken by each of these individual organizations, including the importance of cupcakes (which immediately catches the attention of Tony).

We then spend some time talking about the collaborative efforts of Serve, which seeks to coordinate the activities of each of these organizations so that the causes and symptoms of poverty are addressed in a more holistic manner. We discuss the funding of the program and whether there have been any tensions between the different faith-based organizations in vying for financial resources and territory. Overall, William notes that the program has been successful in helping different organizations realize what other activities are going on in the community.

We then talk about William’s business and how he had a vision of providing evaluative services to faith-based organizations to help them determine whether the resources they were expending were working. He chronicles his education and idea for creating the company, and the methodological tool that they use — the Expected Value Return on Investment model. We discuss some of the methodological difficulties in measuring outcomes for many of these programs, including ones that have goals such as improving emotional and social learning. He notes that his company works with these organizations to determine their definition of success and attempts to build the best metrics possible.

The final portion of our interview is spent examining the success of the different component parts of Serve. The ACT program was the easiest to measure as crime statistics and property values were easily determined. They found that this program, which aims to clean up abandoned houses and remove drug dens, had a huge impact, returning $5.79 to the community for each dollar spent. Brother Bill’s Helping Hand Clinic, which is targeted and health education and preventive care as well as monitoring diabetes, also had a very favorable return at $6.64 to $1 ratio. We finish with William’s thoughts on the nature of this new collaborative model in the world of faith-based organizations and the importance of continual evaluation to see if resources are being used wisely. Recorded: February 11, 2015.

Robert Sirico on Markets, Morality, Faith & Freedom

tonygill — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 08:00:55 +0000

Religious leaders are often quick to criticize free market economics because of the belief that it harms the poor, creates greater inequality, and relies upon the base motives of selfishness. However, can a moral case be made for capitalism and free markets? Rev. Robert Sirico, co-founder and president of The Acton Institute, explores this question in depth. We begin our discussion by reviewing Father Sirico’s personal journey from his idealistic youth in the 1960s and early ’70s to his transformation into a proponent of free market economics. His intellectual development is all the more interesting in that it occured as he was simultaneously drawn back to the Catholic faith of his youth, eventually choosing to enter the seminary and become an ordained priest. During this discussion we review his thoughts on Ayn Rand and other libertarian thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek and Frédéric Bastiat. We then venture into a discussion about greed, selfishness, and self-interest with Rev. Sirico laying out the difference between these different concepts and noting how the pursuit of self-interest can also be good for others as entrepreneurs attempt to benefit themselves by making others happy. Greed, on the other hand, is defined as the pursuit of desire with the intent of subordinating others. Father Sirico then makes a case that socialism tends to promote greed more so than capitalism. This discussion allows us to review early communal experiments by the Pilgrims and Fr. Sirico explains why liberation theologians and others are mistaken to interpret the social organization of the early Church Fathers as an example of socialism. We then discuss the role of profits, the gap between the rich and poor, the nature of envy, and the importance of voluntarism. Our discussion closes with an examination of President Bush’s faith-based initiative (which Rev. Sirico gave some early input on), how government policy (even if pursued with good intentions) may inhibit the important social role of individual charity, and a discussion of the recent controversy surrounding the health care mandate and the Catholic bishops. With the latter issue, we review the tension between a corporatist worldview and the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, a nice review of our earlier discussion with Prof. Phillip Muñoz. Finally, Rev. Sirico details the origins of the Action Institute and his role with that institution. Recorded: May 29, 2012.

Research On Religion » faith-based initiative

William Wubbenhorst on Serve, West Dallas and FBO Evaluation

Robert Sirico on Markets, Morality, Faith & Freedom