Awarding Equitably: A Process design Framework for City Grantmakers

Internal processes such as hiring, procurement, and grantmaking are the hidden engine that power the delivery of local government services. My research begins with a case study on designing the City of Boston’s organization-wide grantmaking process to standardize procedures. This effort became a priority due to the influx of ARPA funding, among other drivers related to digital transformation and a new mayoral administration. Through interviews with grants program managers, I documented the steps in the grants process and codified shared best practices in a grants process user guide. This initial exercise was a mechanical one, which was limited as other considerations and values, namely equity, were integral to work but only implicitly embedded in grantmaking.

In my research to develop a more holistic process design framework, I discovered a gap in the literature on internally focused process design in public sector organizations. The process improvement discipline comes closest, but still lacks a systematic discussion of factors that influence process, including values, structures, norms, practices, and politics. In identifying these influences, I construct a framework that serves as an actionable toolkit for practitioners across government settings. I define five influences: philosophical values, organizational structures, cultural norms, operational practices, and political forces. For each, I outline definitions, principles, guiding questions, and complementary exercises. Then I apply the framework to analyze the Community Preservation Act (CPA), a Massachusettswide municipal grant program.

There are further opportunities to apply the “five influences” framework to other internal processes across organizational contexts in public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Most importantly, the framework application must be user-friendly and actionable, and thoughtfully integrated into internal operations.

Ipshita Karmakar

Thesis Advisors: Gabriella Carolini, Lawrence Vale, Mary Anne Ocampo

Disaster Diplomacy: The Spatial Impact of International Reconstruction Aid in the Aftermath of the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake in Nepal

This thesis aims to investigate the spatial implications of international reconstruction aid in the aftermath of the 2015 earthquake of Nepal, particularly in the urban municipality of Lalitpur.

I explore how emergency reconstruction aid, operationalized as support from international NGOs, bilateral agencies and multilateral organizations, has a spatial impact and imprint on cities. I examine the impact of the aid community on the rent, land values, and infrastructural/amenity distribution within the wards of their operation. Second, I examine the impact of post-earthquake reconstruction projects leveraging international funding on urbanization patterns in the wards in which they are situated. To understand counterfactual trends, I examine the overall patterns of neighborhood change in earthquake affected wards of Lalitpur where no international aid funded projects or aid personnel are located.

The argument advanced includes two suppositions that decipher the spatial implications of aid project presence and operational presence: 1) The increasing spatial cluster of physical outposts of international aid organizations’ headquarters, i.e. what I call here their operational presence, creates neighborhood change that is privileging the rentier class rather than distributing housing, amenities, and infrastructure equitably to the city; 2) The presence of international aid funded reconstruction projects, i.e their project presence, creates a change in both amenities and small business distribution within wards within which they are situated to create neighborhood change, which accelerates inequity, but in ways unlike that of operational presence. Two wards within Lalitpur show significant neighborhood change due to the presence of international reconstruction aid as opposed to the rest of the municipality i.e. Ward no.2 and Ward no.16.

Particularly, these wards saw an exponential increase in rent and housing values (in the case of Ward no.2), a change in the nature and function of locally owned small businesses, and a tendency to cater to a rentier class that comprises international aid workers and tourists, as opposed to the rest of the municipality (both Ward no.2 and Ward no.16).

Sarah Lohmar

Thesis Advisor: Lawrence Susskind