COMMUNITIES FOUNDATION of TEXAS
2014 Impact Report
Case Study: Improving Leadership in the Dallas Police Department (DPD), continued staff development courses to large numbers of officers.” Options for addressing this lack of national impact include: developing a national best practices library, newsletter, publishing articles, and developing a website an social media presence for CPI. RAND also notes that CPI has not achieved its full potential when it comes to research and problem-solving. RAND attributes this in part to the “shift in the new DPD administration to train all new supervisory and mid-level personnel... .” This shift has “placed a substantial burden on the staff of CPI, diminishing the time available to focus on grants, consulting and conference planning.” The impact of this shift has been that “CPI became wholly focused on internal training needs, with little time for exploring the types of activities that would build national awareness and self-sustainability.” Having a key research vacancy has also hurt: “The failure to fill the position of CPI research director has meant that the research component of the Institute has been adrift.” RAND notes that plans to develop a CPI research agenda “have never materialized because CPI lacks the capability to carry out a comprehensive research program.” There has been “no high-quality sophisticated research, no effort to publicize research products, and no effort to compete for research grants.” Where Does CPI Go from Here? In terms of moving forward, the RAND report points out that “To increase its potential contribution as a regional and national resource would take money, and revenue has been a major issue for the Institute.” RAND notes that attracting external officers to its courses is CPI’s only significant source of revenue; however, this would require significant new investments to enhance the Institue’s reputation, to develop a broader range of courses and the means to deliver these courses. RAND suggests that potential solutions to ongoing financial issues are: using the balance of the original Caruth Foundation’s gift to fund CPI operations; dealing with constraints on charging DPD officers for taking courses; sharing tuition revenue with CPI’s university partners; cost sharing to cover CPI instruction expenses; and additional CFT support to assist with tuition reimbursement CPI officers taking courses for credit. In summary, RAND concludes that “CPI is at a choice point: It can continue to keep costs very low and, using endowment earnings, sustain its current efforts to train DPD officers exclusively and conduct small research projects at the chief’s request. Or it can make an investment in personnel in an effort to broaden its reputation and reach beyond DPD and enhance its revenue base.”
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