April 30, 2003

City Non-Profit Contracting Task Force

April 30, 2003
10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Minutes

Present:

Representing Non-Profit Community:

Jim Illig, Project Open Hand

Jim Harstad, Progress Foundation (representing Salvador Menjivar, Hamilton Family Center)

Tony Michelini, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of San Francisco

Tiffany Mock-Goeman, Continuum

Sandy Mori, Kimochi, Inc.

Judith Stevenson, Baker Places, Inc. (representing Nancy Rubin, Edgewood Center)

Jonathan Vernick, Baker Places, Inc.

Representing City Departments:

Judith Blackwell, Office of Contract Administration

Gene Coleman, Mayor's Office of Community Development

Dave Curto, Human Services

Winna Davis, Dept. of Children, Youth & Their Families

John Haskell, Controller's Office (representing Ed Harrington)

Anne Okubo, Dept. of Public Health

Larry Ross, Dept. of Aging and Adult Services

Others: Staff:

Merrill Buice, S.F. Human Services Network Bob Davis, Dept. of Admin. Services

Artina Lim, Dept of Children, Youth & Their Families Henny Lee, Dept. of Admin. Services Michelle Ruggels, Dept. of Public Health

Winnie Xie, Dept. on the Status of Women

Co-Chair Judith Blackwell called the meeting to order at 10:05 a.m.

Consent Calendar

Motioned, seconded, and approved as amended the April 23 Meeting Minutes.

Report of the Co-Chairs: The Co-Chair had nothing to report.

Discussion & Possible Action Items:

Agenda Item 5, Recommendation #1: Implementation Plan - Report to the Board of Supervisors; review, prioritize and reorder recommendations.

The Task Force discussed and agreed on the following:

The Implementation Plan Report Committee will review, prioritize and reorder the recommendations where appropriate.

The Task Force will initiate discussions on the recommendations but will defer to the Committee to develop the specific implementation recommendations.

The Committee will summarize their discussions and recommendation from their previous meeting at each Task Force meeting.

The Task Force will defer to the discussions already taken place at the committee level and will vote either to approve or reject the Committee's recommendations.

Agenda Item 6.1, Recommendation #11: Whenever possible, coordinate one joint program monitoring visit per year per contract by a lead City department. Departments will provide timely written notice of 14 days as well as a timely written report within 30 days, if possible, but not beyond 90 days. Fiscal site visits should utilize other City department visits within a twelve-month period.

Motioned, seconded and approved at the April 16 & 23 meetings that each departmental representative will provide the following information to the Task Force for discussion:

Number of full time employees engaged in fiscal and program monitoring.

Number of professional services contracts with non-profits.

Number of non-profit contractors with professional service contracts.

Total dollar value of non-profit contracts.

Number of contractors for which the department is the one under contract and where the department is 1 of 2, 1 of 3, 1 of 4, etc. departments under contract with the same contractor.

Identify departments and number of contracts the department shares or co-funds.

Number of contractors where the department based on dollar size might and might not be the lead department.

Where it is not appropriate to provide the information across departments then provide it across divisions within your department, as in the case of DPH.

Staff engaged in conducting audits. If auditing is contracted out then annual amount spent on this function.

Any additional staff and/or cost for contract management.

The following departments submitted and discussed the above information:

Department on Children, Youth and Their Families, see Attachment A

Department of Human Services, see Attachment B

Department of Public Health, see Attachment C

Mayor's Office on Community Development, see Attachment D

[Dept. of Aging and Adult Services provided the above information at the April 23 Meeting]

The Task Force discussed the difficulties that may arise when applying only the provided information to determining the fiscal impact of consolidating monitoring activities across departments. The data does not adequately reflect the pre-existing conditions of staffing and workloads. Thus, any attempt to reduce and/or reallocate staff and assignments without additional analysis could result in unintended consequences.

Criteria for selection of lead monitoring entity - continued from last meeting:

Largest funding department

The Task Force provided the following comments regarding this subject:

Using the largest funding department may be unfair and problematic because it assumes that the department has the resources to assume the additional work.

Programmatically; where one department's contract may be a subset; lesser in scope of work, dollar amount spent and/or number of clients served, to another department's contract with the same non-profit contractor.

For larger departments such as Dept. of Public Health or Dept. of Human Services, the first step would be to consolidate contracting and monitoring within their own departments and across their divisions.

Smaller departments should work toward consolidating with other departments.

The Task Force requested the DPH representative to invite a representative from the AIDS Office to discuss their plans for consolidating contracts and monitoring.

Controller to provide a complete list of all non-profit contractors, the departments contracted, dollar amounts, and tiered by the type of non-profit contractors.

The Controller representative distributed two spreadsheets containing the requested information and provided the following comments - see Attachments E1 & E2:

The information was extracted from the Controller's financial asset management information system based on the vendors' business tax status - exempted non-profit organization, and another field in the vendor database used to identify "community based organizations.

The dollar amounts are what have been paid to the non-profit CBO contractors during this current fiscal year.

The information provided does not include any invoices not yet received or paid, the encumbered purchase order amounts, or the entire contract amount.

Agenda Item 8.2, Recommendation #16: Develop electronic submission for all reporting functions (programmatic and fiscal) to include electronic fund transfers.

The discussions of Agenda Item 8.4 below segued into a discussion regarding the use of an electronic interface by the Dept. Children, Youth and their Families with the Controller's automated financial asset management information system to facilitate payment of invoices to their contractors. Non-profit representatives suggested that this model could be used across all departments. Departmental representatives indicated that there is a cost to develop and maintain such as interface. It was agreed that this item would continued for further discussion

Agenda Item 8.4, Recommendation #18: Create a standard and simplified set of forms that: a) do not duplicate data from one section to another; b) are consistent, simplified, and non-duplicative; c) allows contractors to provide all needed data in a standardized format for all departments; and d) reflects the minimum requirements of the funding source.

The following summarizes the discussion of the Task Force regarding this recommendation:

• Commissions impose reporting requirements that translate into additional and/or non-standardized forms.

• DPH is undergoing an internal process of consolidating their forms. They have collected all their forms currently in use and have sorted them into three groups; A - narratives (monitoring), B - budgeting, and C - accounting. These documents are being reviewed for duplicative, extraneous, and non-standardized information by the appropriate staffs.

• DPH is also reviewing the use of and contents of their boilerplate contracts, the collection of commission driven information, and the consistency of instruction language.

• DPH is working to develop invoicing standards which will provide information that can be rolled-up to assist with cost accounting; fee for services and cost reimbursement.

• Other departmental representatives indicated interest in following the DPH model.

• Motioned, seconded, and approved by the Task Force that the departmental representatives shall meet with DPH staff to explore this further and to report back to the Task Force as to the feasibility of implementing the DPH model across departments consistent with the Recommendation #18.

Agenda Items: See May 7 Agenda

Public Comment: None.

Adjournment: 12:05 P.M.

Attachments:

A. DCYF, CNPCTF Meeting 4/30/03, Agenda Item 6.1

B. DHS, CNPCTF Meeting 4/30/03, Agenda Item 6.1

C. DPH, CNPCTF Meeting 4/30/03, Agenda Item 6.1

D. MOCD, CNPCTF Meeting 4/30/03, Agenda Item 6.1

E. Controller's Office, CNPCTF Meeting 4/30/03, Agenda Item 6.1, (2 documents)