What's new at the Salem/Keizer Coalition for Equality?

Since Annalivia Palazzo-Angulo took over the Salem/Keizer Coalition for Equality in 2013, she's been working on building the infrastructure that the 16-year-old nonprofit needs to be sustainable.

The coalition aims to strengthen the community by empowering and educating minorities and English language learners. They do this by advocating for policies and by hosting workshops specifically geared toward the needs of these communities.

After starting the nonprofit with her husband, Eduardo Angulo, Palazzo-Angulo stepped away in 2008 to take care of her mother and work on a master's degree in philanthropy and nonprofit management. She took over the nonprofit in 2013 after her husband was arrested. He was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison in 2014 for a drunken-driving crash.

Since she had left, the coalition had made great progress, she said. A slew of three-year strategic planning grants were coming to an end when Palazzo-Angulo returned, giving her the opportunity to re-evaluate the nonprofit's future. She decided to focus on stabilizing the organization.

"You should never, ever stop improving," she said.

Palazzo-Angulo came up with three goals she said would make the organization more sustainable: undergo a professional evaluation of the coalition's programs; implement a fundraising database; and improve the financial and administrative infrastructure.

The Meyer Memorial Trust awarded the coalition a grant last year to work with ECONorthwest to build an evaluation system and to analyze four years' worth of data to identify specific outcomes, Palazzo-Angulo said.

It's expected they'll have a preliminary report completed in July that looks at literacy development, parent involvement and parent-child interactions. The consulting firm is able to access Oregon Department of Education data so it can compare the performance of students whose parents are involved in the coalition's programs with those whose parents are not involved, Palazzo-Angulo said

Currently, the nonprofit has short-term and anecdotal evidence of its programs' successes, she said.

Leyendo Avanzamos is a Spanish literacy program that teaches parents how to help their children read at grade level. Both parents and students attend a weekly class where parents help their children practice reading and writing while playing educational games, such as dominoes with words on the cards instead of dots.

Five-year-old Jaylene Oropeza Castro is only in Head Start, but she was able to read all her letter combinations and play the matching games that the kindergarteners were doing last Tuesday. Oropeza Castro started coming to the classes last year.

On average, children advance a half-year's reading level in seven to 10 weeks, Palazzo-Angulo said.

Evidence of a program's long-term success is something that both donors and grantors increasingly demand. In order to give them that, coalition staff are organizing the last 10 years' worth of files to give to auditors.

"I knew that we needed to prepare this organization for the next level," Palazzo-Angulo said.

Palazzo-Angulo realized the nonprofit needed to diversify its revenue streams. The nonprofit's financial model was too dependent on grants and government, she said.

In order to build up its individual donor base and increase donations from them, the organization would need a database to better track them.

With the database software purchased and workers trained on it, staffers and board members have been working on fundraising, she said.

Palazzo-Angulo is focusing on building relationships and strengthening the board of directors. A three-year capacity building grant awarded by the Oregon Community Foundation includes funds for board development, which will allow board members to learn from an advisory board made up of other nonprofit leaders in the community, Palazzo-Angulo said.

While Palazzo-Angulo has been reinforcing the nonprofit from within, the organization has continued to provide the workshops and advocacy work it is known for.

The nonprofit has 41 programs at Salem-Keizer schools that focus on parental involvement, Palazzo-Angulo said. They range from discussing cyberbullying to the rights families have in the educational system to how parents can get more involved in schools.

The biggest effect the coalition has is being able to make Latino parents feel like they have a growing voice in their schools and helping them realize that educators care about what they have to say, said Melissa Wisner, federal programs coordinator for the Salem-Keizer School District.

The more the district knows about what parents are thinking, the better it can serve their families, Wisner said.

"It's a valuable partnership and a great resource they bring to help our families," she said.

khessel@statesmanjournal.com, 503-399-6743 or follow on Twitter @KaellenHessel

Tickets are available for the Salem/Keizer Coalition for Equality's annual Raising the Bar for Oregon luncheon May 12. The luncheon takes place from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Salem Alliance Church's Cedar Hall, 555 Gaines St. NE. State Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Rob Saxton will be the keynote speaker. Shadiin Garcia, Oregon Education Investment Board research and policy deputy director, will speak, as well. Tickets cost $15 each or $120 for a table of eight. They can be purchased at http://bit.ly/1IwXnN7. Tickets can be reserved by calling 503-363-8130 and then paid for at the door.