Week 12: The report comes together

This week’s big question

What do the visit, the filing, and the comparison, read together, reveal about your organization? Monday you draft the final report; Wednesday your team plans who will do the startup’s work in year one. Module 6 · builds LO2, LO4 (synthesis & values) · thread: both.

Readings

Session 1 · Mon Nov 9: Final-report clinic (TBD)

A writing clinic for the final report, due Sunday. It opens with a short case for your funding story; most of the session is drafting time.

The case is Rojas Durazo’s own example on p. 167. In 1995 she wrote an op-ed for the Latina program of a domestic-violence organization, and the director said the board would never allow it. Discuss these questions with your neighbours and record brief notes on sheet 1:

1. What happened: what did Rojas Durazo want her program to say, and what reason did the director give for refusing?
2. Her explanation: antiviolence organizations, she argues, are “paid” to turn their eye “solely to what is deemed the legitimate and fundable social problem” (p. 161). What else could explain the refusal, and what evidence would show which explanation is right?
3. Your organization: who pays for its work, and does that shape what it does or says? Cite one revenue line from its 990 and one thing from your visit or its website. If her critique does not fit, explain why.

After eight minutes we compare four explanations: the law (what a U.S. charity may say, from Week 10), the money, who decides, and fear of the rules. Three are hers: the law, through nonprofitization, a “government-controlled process that regulates and prohibits a nonprofit’s engagement with politics” (p. 161); funding (p. 161); and, in the paragraph after the case, white supremacy structured in organizations through “decision-making power” (p. 167). Her account shows the refusal and the reason given; it cannot show which explanation is right.

Then the clinic. On sheet 2, write the report’s four claims, one per job, each with evidence a stranger could find. Start from what you already have: Week 9’s Monday sheet 2 for job 1, Week 6’s Monday sheet 2 for job 2, your A3 table and Week 11’s volunteer price for job 3, and your visit notes for job 4. Circle the least-sure claim, note another explanation a reader could raise, and draft that section on your laptop. A neighbour then checks your sheet and section: findable evidence for every claim, and a funding story traced to the filing and set against your A3 comparison. Visit still ahead? Draft jobs 1 to 3 now; the visit has to happen before A4 is due on Sun Nov 15.

Both sheets are Monday’s in-class work and are collected, so photograph sheet 2 first: it is your outline for A4. Bring a laptop, your A4 draft, your organization’s 990, your A3 table, your visit notes (or the filing and website if your visit is still ahead), and your photos of Monday’s sheet 2 from Weeks 6, 9, and 11.

Session 2 · Wed Nov 11: Staffing studio (TBD)

A Rail B studio: your team designs the year-one people plan for its new nonprofit. Existing organizations give you practices to learn from and adapt; a source can show that a practice exists without showing that it works.

We open with two readings. The giving-circles piece notes that circles, where members “pool their donations and decide together where to allocate them,” are not “always easy to run,” “not least because they rely heavily on volunteer time.” Rojas Durazo, drawing on Suzanne Pharr, describes how funders of antiviolence shelters came to prefer “degree-bearing professionals instead of community organizers” (p. 168).

Then we watch Austin PBS’s “How Las Promotoras de Salud are keeping their neighbors healthy” (2025, 6:36) in class: promotoras (community health workers) at Austin Voices for Education and Youth help families sign up for a county health program. Discuss these questions with your team and record brief notes on sheet 1:

1. Problem and response: what keeps the families in the video from getting care, and what do the promotoras do about it?
2. Who does the work: what can a promotora do that a doctor cannot? What does the video leave out about pay, hours, and how long each promotora stays?
3. Your startup: choose a staffing practice your team could learn from. Which role would it fill, and what would you keep or change for your community, and why? If it does not fit your mission, explain why.

After eight minutes, we check the video against Austin Voices’ own pages on its family resource centers and its promotora training (the video does not say whether promotoras are paid; one of these pages does), then compare a hypothetical startup that adapts the role.

Apply the same questions to your startup on sheet 2. For each of the three roles your program cannot run without in year one, decide the pay (paid, stipend, or volunteer), the hours, who fills it, and how long they stay; cite the existing practice behind it (legal name, EIN if in the US, source page or section), and say what you would adapt and why you expect it to work. A teammate’s visited organization counts as a source. Check the paid hours against your B2 funding sketch, circle the least-sure row, and name an assumption to test. Teams swap sheets to check the source, the adaptation, how long each person stays, and the assumption. The B1 instructions explain how to cite U.S. and international examples.

Both sheets are Wednesday’s in-class work and are collected, so photograph them first; sheet 2 feeds the Volunteers and staffing section of the B3 Assembled draft. Bring your B2 funding sketch and your photo of Week 10’s program sketch.

What’s due / prep

• Rail A · A4, Final report (20 pts, rubric) due Sun Nov 15: four pages at most (tables don’t count), single-spaced, plus its AI process log. See Site Visit & Analysis.
• Wednesday’s studio builds your year-one people plan, the Volunteers and staffing section of the B3 Assembled draft, due Sun Dec 6.
• For Monday, read Rojas Durazo, pp. 154–168. For Wednesday, read the giving-circles piece and the Latino Giving Circle Network page.

Looking ahead

• A4 is Rail A’s last deliverable. Next Monday’s impact-measurement lab needs your B1 theory of change and your photo of Week 10’s program sketch; Wednesday is the live ethics debate (ungraded); then Thanksgiving and the last stretch of the startup plan.