Non-profit Collaboration: Michelle Brophy – System Change Champion

What kind of person does it take to bring together nonprofits, funders, government and legislators to focus resources and time on a solution to chronic homelessness?

Michelle Brophy is that kind of person, and you might say that she has her eyes on the prize. The prize being bringing supportive housing – the concept of permanently housing chronically homeless people while wrapping around supportive service – to Rhode Island with the audacious goal of ending homelessness for the state’s 600 chronically homeless men and women.

Eyes on the prize requires:

• Focus on mission – systems change over institution building
• Patience
• Educating others through many avenues
• Relationship and network building
• Using resources and managing outside of the box
• And lack of ego

Michelle is the kind of leader who exemplifies the way many non-profit leaders will be working in the very near future: working across organizational boundaries and building the big tent to get things done. This is especially critical at the level of community impact and change in social conditions.

Relationship Building – Laying the Groundwork

Currently, Michelle is the New England program director for the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), headquartered in New York City. Before joining CSH, Michelle worked at Rhode Island Housing where she built relationships with people that would serve her well in the years to come. Michelle joined CSH when it opened its office in Rhode Island in 2003 and was charged with introducing the concept of supportive housing for the chronically homeless to Rhode Island – and getting it up and running.

A Friend in the Beginning

The seed money furnished by the Melville Charitable Trust to help bring CSH to Rhode Island was going to run out. The declining nature of this grant reinforced Michelle’s vision of changing systems, not building a local institution.

In 2002, Noreen Shawcross, then director of the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless (RICH), heard about supportive housing at a conference and also felt it would be a good idea to introduce to Rhode Island. This proved fortuitous, as Noreen became an important ally for Michelle.

To learn more about opportunities for collaboration, visit TSNE's Organizational Transitions Program and the Capacity Building Fund.

At first, Michelle extended some of the funds as loans and grants to homeless and community development organizations as a way of getting to know organizations and introduce them to the concept of supportive housing. She also gave the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless a $30,000 grant to develop a strategy for supportive housing.

This enabled the state’s two early supportive housing proponents to work closely together through an already established network of providers. Michelle could have retained this funding and conducted a more traditional feasibility study or invited stakeholders to sit through a strategic plan. However, she wisely embedded the funds in one organization with both an existing champion (Noreen) and a mission-match (ending homelessness) that also had the capacity to take on and sustain the work.

Sharing the money also extended her reach to Noreen’s network of providers, not all of whom were on board at the beginning. Shelter providers often cannot conceive of the chronically homeless going straight into permanent housing. However the research is showing that it works.

An Institutional Partner

CSH raised additional funds and continued to provide funding to RICH for 5 years. In 2007, RICH’s new executive director, Jim Ryscek, matched the $30,000 grant in order to bring in an associate director for RICH with a specialty in strategic communications. Both Jim and Michelle knew of Karen Jeffreys through her prior work in the domestic violence field and knew she could help put the issue of homelessness on the map. Michelle supported her salary on the condition that Karen also work to communicate about the effectiveness of and need for the supportive housing model in Rhode Island.

Increasing Reach and Harnessing Expertise

This position was one of several senior positions that the affordable housing groups in Rhode Island would go on to “share.” The strategic relationship Michelle developed with RICH enabled CSH to have a major partner for its mission and goals. RICH knew that beyond communications, advocacy was another key component for furthering supportive housing. So RICH began “buying” the time of the director of Housing Action Coalition, Brenda Clement, to assist with the advocacy related to supportive housing.

Michelle, Jim, Karen and Brenda also worked closely with the state’s CDC coalition – the Housing Network – and its director Chris Hannifan, knowing that many of the supportive housing units would be developed and/or managed by the CDCs. What is unique is that Michelle has a nose for people like herself who are natural networkers.

By bringing Karen and Brenda into the mix – two people with extensive and somewhat different networks – Michelle was able to again expand the reach of her campaign for supportive housing. She was able to form a team of equally well-regarded people across several organizations to not only collaborate, but to formally share staff expertise as needed to get the work done. Her networking skill forged the connections needed to build this team.

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