TO: Esther Chávez Cano SUBJECT: Recommendations for Casa

FROM: Glam Consulting Amiga

Casa Amiga is an organization caught in a complex web of power relations which have,
in the past, resulted in alienating important stakeholders. In addition, Casa’s own events have
done much to alienate stakeholders from the organization. To be able to respond to community
need and stay stable, Casa should engage and empower family groups by reallocating resources
and getting more community feedback about events.
Analysis
Casa Amiga, like many nonprofits, has a variety of stakeholders each with unique
degrees of power and interest. What is particularly precarious about Casa’s situation is its
alienation of certain stakeholders, while not unintentional, still hurts the organization. This
alienation results in key stakeholders becoming hostile to the organization’s mission, and
advocates and potential supporters become detractors and “competitors”. This is best exemplified
in how efforts to get the shelter built have been stymied. While individually these family
organizations do not have the resources to hold power over Casa, with the media and together
they gain significant power. As a result, rather than continue this trend of alienation and hostility
Casa needs to consider how it can repair relations with these organizations.
In addition to better engaging stakeholders, Casa needs to be more reflective of its
fundraising and events practices. The V-day event, while bringing increased attention to the
area, alienated the community further. In addition, it is important to be mindful of how
international donors who do not come from the community and who might not even understand
the complexities of the issue, end up dictating parts of programming. As a result, this can further
alienate the organization from the communities it is supposed to be serving.
Recommendations
Recommendation #1: Casa Amiga should build a coalition with family groups and assist in
distributing resources to the organizations working in Juárez
To rebuild trust with family organizations Casa needs to now not only make a symbolic
gesture but also reallocate resources in a way that can support these family organizations. Since
the organizations do not provide overlapping services with Casa, this would be considered an
expansion of services. It is important to also make sure family groups have a say in how these
funds are distributed either by having members of the family groups on Casa’s board or through
some other formalized procedure. Otherwise there is a concern resources will be distributed in a
way that the family groups perceive as unfair which could potentially further alienate the groups.
Models that Casa could look at include the Day One networki in Minnesota which shares
technical knowledge and referral support and as a result has seen success.

Recommendation #2: Casa Amiga should give stakeholders a chance to provide feedback
and help design subsequent fundraising and awareness events.
Casa’s past events have had mixed success in the community. Going forward, Casa
should create avenues for key stakeholders to provide feedback and help design events. Doing so
will give stakeholders the opportunity to become invested in the project. In addition, this could
be more lucrative for Casa if it can use its new coalition in recommendation 1 to help pressure
businesses to sponsor the events. These events would also have to be appropriate for the
community and highlight successes as well as need for future work which could assuage business
concerns about tourism.
TO: Dr. Carrie Oelberger SUBJECT: Logic Memo
FROM: Glam Consulting

When I first read this case, the importance of power become incredibly obvious. This was
clearly a situation where some groups had power and access to resources and change in some
contexts but not others. For example, Esther had resources and international support, but was
powerless to the media, the city council, and business leaders. It was clear that power relations
here were “unbalanced” (Emerson 1962). In this case then it might seem odd to recommend
partnering and reallocating resources to a weaker group (in this case, family groups) when an
organization is already being dominated by others. However, family groups retain a level of
community legitimacy that Casa does not as well as having access to the media.
Partnering with family groups and redistributing power on one axis (resources) can help
with redistributing power on another (legitimacy). Additionally, the media access that these
groups have would also be incredibly important in fighting the narrative war that has emerged
which paints Casa in a negative light. If power is redistributed it seems much more possible that
a coalition could create a more “balanced” system of power relations. It is hopeful that with this
power distribution, domination might not be present even though the groups exercise power. An
additional concern with this recommendation is ensuring family member groups are not
tokenized and that the coalition and the funding decisions it makes are inclusive (Shore et al.
2011), by which I mean ensuring that family group voices are honored and allow to dissent and
remain distinct from the Organization.
The issue of events and fundraising might seem petty in the grand scheme of issues
facing Casa, but it is essential to understanding how power, and even identity influenced past
event choices. The concerns about the light-hearted nature of the V-day event and the response
could have been averted if Casa had simply asked community members how they felt about the
event. In addition, the cross, which is a powerful and symbolically important thing to have,
might have been welcomed in Juárez if Esther had worked with business owners and or family
groups to determine a good place. The unilateral decision making and lack of consulting with
stakeholders in these events arguably caused a lot of the alienation that the first recommendation
is trying to solve. This notion behind the reputation and identity of Juarez was also something
that Esther had not considered, while it is important to recognize and fight against systemic
injustice, focusing only on the deficits of a community is ineffective in getting buy-in. An asset-
based approachii, such as a positive deviance approachiii, where the community is integrated into
fighting against the problem, would be ideal.
My recommendation then was simple, since the problem seemed to be a lack of
awareness of how the community would respond to events and activism, allowing community
input into events as well as seeking avenues for collaboration and sponsorship on events would
help avert subsequent media scandals. While doing so, the organization should also be
integrating a mission of anti-violence and the sentiment of “Ni una mas” into the city’s cultural
fabric. This can be done by giving stakeholders the ability to collectively decide how their
community would raise awareness and fight violence against women.
 Works Cited

Emerson, R. (1962). Power-dependence relations. American Sociological Review,

27(1), 31-40

Shore, L.M., et al. (2011). Inclusion and diversity in work groups: A review and model for future

research. Journal of Management, 37(4), 1262-1289. doi: 10.1177/0149206310385943

i
https://dayoneservices.org
ii
http://www.memphis.edu/ess/module4/page3.php
iii
http://www.betterevaluation.org/en/plan/approach/positive_deviance