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Doing More with Less

BY MODESTO E. ABETY
Published in The Miami Herald

At The Children's Trust, we are intent on using the public's money to do the most good for the largest number of children and families in Miami-Dade County. In 2010, our board led us in a rigorous planning process that engaged partner agencies, providers, parents and the community and that resulted in the development of a new five-year strategic plan. This flexible, living document now guides our efforts to generate the results and benefits we seek for the community's children and families.

This plan, guided by a Results-Based Accountability framework, identified four major results we seek to achieve in collaboration with community partners: That children are healthy physically and emotionally; supported by safe, nurturing families and communities; ready to succeed when entering school; and succeeding in school and society. The programs and initiatives detailed in our 2010 annual report have performance measures in line with these funding priorities.

This year, our overall budget was down $26 million because of a significant depletion to our reserves that were no longer available to sustain investments made before the economic downturn. As a result, we intensified our efforts to reduce program funding in the fairest and most equitable way. We trimmed internal costs and, as always, kept management and administration costs low -- 7.7 percent, ensuring that almost 90 percent of funds collected by The Children's Trust go directly to contracted programs.

Despite these financial challenges, we frequently did more with less. For example, 95 percent of the children in our after-school programs strengthened their reading skills, and 89 percent increased community service and improved their leadership skills. Our Quality Counts initiative, designed to improve the quality of child care in Miami-Dade County, expanded its reach and now benefits 445 child care programs and 28,500 children. Our teams of HealthConnect nurses, social workers and health aides attended 97,000 children in 131 public schools. We stretched our dollars, while emphasizing quality to maximize impact.

To those agencies that fell short of our quality standards, we continued to provide capacity building and training services. We managed to lift a good number of these to the level the community deserves, and those that were unable to do so were no longer funded. A significant amount of our technical assistance and support continued to be directed at building the capacity of agencies to serve and include children with disabilities; we redoubled our efforts to ensure that all the services we provide are indeed accessible and available to children with disabilities.

We leveraged a considerable amount of funding, over $15 million, with our resources, much of which was also matched by other community agencies. These matched dollars helped secure expanded resources from federal, state and local government, and also from private foundations.

With the well-being of children and families at the forefront of our hearts and minds, and despite economic setbacks, in 2010 The Children's Trust once again was able to fulfill the charge with which the community has tasked us: improving the lives of children and families in Miami-Dade County.

Modesto E. Abety is president and CEO The Children's Trust.