Oversight of County Funded Community Based Organizations Executive Summary

Some CBOs responding to an RFP have little or no outcome/output data. Others are renewed with no evaluation report and without a re-issued RFP. Decision makers are left without sufficient information to make sound judgments.

There are insufficient requirements in the RFP process to assess a CBO as to its staff training, development, and how people within the CBO are encouraged to innovate to accomplish the mission. This would ensure more confidence that the contracted CBO could efficiently and effectively fulfill its long-term goals and to adequately do the job. 69 2015-2016 Alameda County Grand Jury Final Report ___________________________________________________________________

The RFP process often limits the ability for CBOs to have innovative solutions for the provision of services.

The amount of funding and personnel devoted to the results-based accountability effort is insufficient for the scale of the task. The PERU group (Planning, Evaluation and Research Unit) reports on too few CBOs each year among all the CBOs under contract. When fully staffed, the group is only five people (out of the 2400 employees within SSA). A comparable group within HCSA is not yet fully operational. There are too few resources in both departments to effectively evaluate CBO performance.

Too few CBO contracts with Alameda County include results-based accountability requirements to measure effectiveness and to inform decision makers during the renewal process.

Output data (number of people serviced) provided by some CBOs can be unreliable.

Many smaller CBOs lack infrastructure to innovate and adopt new reporting systems that could lead to both incomplete and inaccurate data being provided to the county.

There are an insufficient number of on-site visits to CBOs during the term of the contracts limiting the ability of county officials to identify, evaluate, and address problems early on.

There is political pressure from the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to retain some under-performing CBOs. This undermines confidence in the contracting process.