Scott Harshbarger and Amy Craft

 Publication Information:

http://www.proskauer.com/files/uploads/report2.pdf

pp. 1-47

This memo provides an overview of the organizational structure of ACORN as it pertains to the organization's ethics, effectiveness and sustainability.

Written in the aftermath of the investigations into ethics violations at ACORN, the authors were contracted to evaluate the management and governance reforms that were being undertaken by ACORN’s management.  Additionally, the authors were tasked with making recommendations for short and long-term changes to ACORN’s organizational structure.

Though not an evaluation of ACORN’s organizing work or its effectiveness, this resource is important in that it underscores the need for evaluators to pay attention to the health and sustainability of organizations so that they can support long-term organizing work, and addresses many of the areas of organizational health that are important to organizing evaluation.  The authors conclude that the legal and ethical problems faced by ACORN were the result of leadership that had not appropriately built in basic standards of governance and accountability. 

The authors deliver nine recommendations for ACORN’s reform:

1. ACORN should return to its core competency of organizing, and stop delivering social services;
2. ACORN should consolidate its local and national management and accountability structures;
3. ACORN should split its organizational structure between a membership-based 501(c)3 focused on fundraising, education, and advocacy, as well as a 501(c)4 with some independent membership base, focused on political activity;
4. ACORN should continue to develop its internal governance standards;
5. ACORN should hire an internal ethics officer, as well as develop a Board ethics committee;
6. ACORN should expand its financial governance staff, including a chief financial officer and auditing staff;
7. ACORN should expand its legal capacity to aid in the contraction of the organization as well as in the development of its governance reforms;
8. The national level organization should require certain standards and practices from its local affiliates; and
9. ACORN should establish a national advisory committee to report on its reform effort.

Many of these recommendations are specific to the current legal and publicity struggles of ACORN; others are only pertinent to an organization of the national size and scope of ACORN.  However, several of them are important organizational development guidelines that can help strengthen the capacity of other organizing groups.  These recommendations give potential organizing evaluators a sense of some (though certainly not all) of the necessary areas of organizational health and development that should be included in organizing evaluations. 

Organizational Capacity and Management
Ongoing Reflection and Innovation