More on ORIGINS: From 1965 through 1968, Community Action Agencies, CAAs, were established in nearly every low-income community as private non-profit corporations eligible to receive federal funding when they met certain governance criteria. The most unique criterion was, and still is, that their boards of directors be composed of not less than 1/3 representatives of the low-income communities served, and not less than 1/3 of representatives of the local governments in the area, with the remainder being composed of the private sector of the wider community (including the charitable sector and faith-based communities.) By 1966, local governments could choose to act as the CAA, and many large cities’ governments chose to manage the programs themselves.
More on CAAs’ Mission: Community Action’s approach to its mission, eliminating the causes of poverty, was designed to overcome the perceived shortcomings of past programs and conventional organizations from bureaucracy to settlement houses. Local agency direction was to be set in conjunction with community leaders. Local agendas were to respond to particular local conditions. Flexible funding was provided so CAAs could mobilize the wider community and its resources and coordinate a variety of programs and investments.
The clearest description of the purpose of the Community Action was issued in 1970 by the Office of Economic Opportunity‘s Director Donald Rumsfeld. It said in part:
"While the operation of programs is the CAA’s principle activity, it is not the CAA’s primary objective. CAA programs must serve the larger purpose of mobilizing resources and bringing about greater institutional sensitivity. This critical link between service delivery and improved community response distinguishes the CAA from other agencies…"
(We) recognize that a Community Action Agency has a primarily catalytic mission: to make the entire community more responsive to the needs and interests of the poor by mobilizing resources and bringing about greater institutional sensitivity. A CAA’s effectiveness; therefore, is measured not only by the services which it directly provides, but more importantly, by the improvements and changes it achieves in the community’s attitudes and practices toward the poor and in the allocation and focusing of public and private resources for anti-poverty purposes."
Those goals were carried into the 1981 Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) Act, which replaced the previous statues with a Block Grant to states. CSBG maintained the funding stream with the original unique purpose to the local Community Action Agency network. Its purposes echo the original mission and approach.
More on Today’s Network: The Community Services Block Grant now funds more than 1,100 agencies to maintain the leadership and capability for creating, coordinating and delivering comprehensive programs and services to almost a quarter of all people living in poverty.
The unique characteristics of today’s 1100 CSBG-funded Community Action Agencies are:
- GOVERNANCE - a tripartite governing board consisting of equal parts of private sector, public sector, and low-income representatives of the community being served. This structure brings together leaders from each of these sectors to collaborate on responses tailored to local needs.
- INNOVATION WITH LOCAL SOLUTIONS - CSBG funds give CAAs the flexibility to design programs that address needs specific to individuals and the local community.
- COMPREHENSIVE RESOURCES AND INVESTMENTS IN PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES - CAAs’ mission is to assist families and individuals in becoming more economically self-sufficient and to change their community so that it can support its residents, offering the resources they need to live in dignity and safety.
CAAs use CSBG funds for the activities and people that mobilize and coordinate resources and programs. They aim for integrated service delivery that opens opportunities appropriate to individual circumstances; they initiate projects that develop the community and its permanent ‘social capital’ so as to open more opportunities for all its residents.
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