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Accomplishments:

• California now has some of the strongest gun control laws in the United States. In the past decade of the VPI, there has been tremendous success in statewide and local firearm policy, which is attributable to the policy advocacy efforts of the Pacific Center and other VPI grantees. Firearm policy successes include a ban on cheap, easily made, dangerous firearms called “junk guns.” Other firearm bills signed into California law include: limiting handgun sales to one per month; expanding the definition of banned assault weapons; requiring that state-approved, gun-locking devices are provided at the point of sale; and licensing promoters and broadly regulating vendor and attendee activities at gun shows. Additionally, local firearms policy measures included the adoption of more than 180 ordinances regulating firearms in at least 60 cities and six counties in California. Thirty-three cities and four counties banned the cheap handguns most often used in criminal activity, known as Saturday Night Specials.
• California has significantly increased the level of state spending to support youth violence prevention programs. The annual state budget allocation for preventing youth violence increased from approximately $8 million in FY 1992-93 to approximately $370 million in FY 2002-03. This documentation, completed by Commonweal, demonstrates an exponential increase since the inception of the VPI.
• The policy advocacy efforts of the VPI policy grantees, public education grantees and Pacific Center helped push forward the violence prevention agenda statewide and locally. Many of the VPI policy grantees were heavily involved in advocacy work, which complemented the work of the Pacific Center and public education campaigns, and helped to strengthen the reach of the VPI policy messages through its communications to various constituencies and service networks. A loose-knit group of policy advocates, service providers, community activists and clinicians has been developed through the VPI, and is now considered a movement affecting policy change throughout California. Funding organizations that had a Sacramento presence and ongoing communications and relationships with policymakers helped increase understanding and dialogue about youth violence prevention.
• Using many mediums and messages, the VPI public education grantees were successful in developing user-friendly information that helped to reframe the issue of violence in the public sphere. Images and terminology such as “…there are more gun dealers than McDonald’s in some communities” were a good use of “social math” to paint the picture of the problem of handguns in clear, simple language. Additionally, the public education grantees employed various strategies including a youth mapping project, youth surveys and a county scorecard to illustrate the case for increasing public investment in violence prevention programs and supporting firearms legislation.
• To increase its communication reach, the VPI public education grantees developed and maintained a database of key policymakers and opinion leaders. Early in the VPI and continuing throughout, the public education grantees have maintained a database of local and state elected officials and related opinion leaders, such as school districts and juvenile justice experts. This database, now totaling more than 10,000 contacts, has become an influential roster. In an era of term limits when many state legislators begin their political career as local elected officials, it has become very beneficial to have local officials included in the database.

Challenges:

• Pacific Center was not established as a traditional policy center where the main goal was research, publication and dissemination of public policy. While Pacific Center was responsible for achieving some of these activities as outlined in its grant objectives, the role of integrating the components of the VPI Policy Program possibly detracted from its research and dissemination efforts. In reporting its progress, the Pacific Center frequently reported convenings as dissemination accomplishments. Pacific Center maintained an extensive library of resources; however, these materials were not widely utilized and its website was often outdated.
• The Pacific Center’s focus was on the goal of reducing access to firearms. Pacific Center staff became very involved in the Bell Campaign and Million Mom March, both national gun control initiatives, which crystallized Pacific Center’s focus on firearms. While these campaigns provided an opportunity to highlight the firearms issues and connect with the VPI grantees, these activities distracted Pacific Center from the other two policy goals of the VPI.
• Grant amounts for some of the policy grantees were significantly smaller than other VPI grants, and perhaps insufficient in some cases to undertake the level of work and involvement in the VPI. Many of the policy grantees were small organizations that might have benefited from both technical assistance and support to participate in VPI activities.
• The turnover of key staff at Martin & Glantz, LLC had a significant negative impact on implementation of the VPI public education campaign. When the principal staff member implementing the VPI grant left the firm, there was a tremendous loss of institutional memory and the quality of the public education campaign suffered. As a result, a competitive RFP process was released to select a grantee to conduct the final two years of the VPI public education campaign.

Lessons Learned:

• It might have been more prudent for TCWF to frequently co-sponsor activities with the Pacific Center to ensure that the VPI policy center was not acting unilaterally or on behalf of the Foundation. The Pacific Center’s convening objectives are not consistent with publication and dissemination of policy papers. Expecting that an entity can serve as both the policy center and convenor can result in blurred responsibilities and in many cases an identified “convenor” is viewed as an extension of the Foundation. On the other hand, the advocacy experience of the staff at the Pacific Center probably helped achieve major public policy outcomes.
• Using TCWF as the spokesperson for the VPI public education campaign proved to be effective and kept the Foundation at the forefront of the discussion about violence against youth. As a result, the Foundation was able to highlight the work of grantees, serving a benefit to grantees and furthering the goals of the VPI. Also, because the Foundation was seen as a neutral voice, it lent credibility to the messages of the public education campaign.
• Policy grantees outside of the Pacific Center’s activities were involved in numerous projects and these successes were not documented and communicated in a systematic way. This information could have been posted on the Pacific Center website or mailed to policymakers and opinion leaders with other mailings in coordination with the Pacific Center or public education campaigns.
• Conducting and using the findings of market research is essential for the effectiveness of the public education campaigns. Since 1996, each public education grantee has conducted extensive annual voter polls and focus groups. This information has not only provided opportunities for media attention and timely information for the state budget process, but also informed the message of the public education campaigns and the targets for those campaigns. A side benefit was the ability to track public opinion over the life of the Initiative.
• Politics plays an influential role in entertainment industry decisions and most assuredly impacted the Entertainment Industry Project. Due to the nature of this type of project, more emphasis should be placed on evidence of buy-in or, at minimum participation, of intended constituencies.