What started out two years ago as a simple “strategic plan refresh” quickly became a completely new direction for Blue Shield of California Foundation in our journey to make California the healthiest state and to end domestic violence. This post, which originally appeared on the Blue Shield of California Foundation's website, reflects on key lessons of listening, equity and humility.
Throughout my career, I have committed myself to service. First, as a community organizer, nonprofit practitioner and grantmaker; then, as a leadership coach, racial equity trainer and executive, I eagerly attempted to test and learn strategies for cultivating thriving communities. The cumulative impact of these experiences has informed a personal vision grounded in a strong desire to lead change in society in a manner that leverages the collective wisdom of each person, family and institution.
This is a cross-post of an article written by Scott Heimlich of the Amgen Foundation on learning, evaluation and measuring success. For the full article, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-do-we-measure-success-thoughts-soccer-goals-social-scott-heimlich
This post originally appeared on Fund the People's website and discusses white dominance in nonprofit professional searches. To read the full post, visit Fund the People's blog at http://fundthepeople.org/searchfirms.
As part of the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations Learning Conference 2019, Candid announced the inaugural recipients of the #OpenForGood Award, which is designed to recognize and encourage foundations to openly share what they learn so we can all get collectively smarter. The three winning foundations each demonstrate an active commitment to open knowledge and share their evaluations through IssueLab, an open repository that is free, searchable, and accessible to all. Selected by an external committee from a globally sourced nomination process, the committee reviewed the contenders looking for evidence of an active commitment to open knowledge, creative approaches to making knowledge shareable, field leadership, and incorporating community insights into knowledge sharing work.
And the winners are...
The Colorado Trust recently released a learning paper on their cohort model approach to advancing health equity. This blog post describes a multilevel framework developed by the Cohort’s Racial Equity Team (“the Team”) to build the field’s capacity to understand and advance racial equity. We briefly describe these capacity-building efforts and highlight lessons learned through their implementation. We encourage readers to consult a recently released learning paper for more information or join GEO for a webinar on August 29, 2019.
To retain employees long-term, we need to create cultures where people feel connected to both their work and their colleagues. We embrace “relationships are our work” as a guiding principle and ground our staff and grantee relationships from this perspective. This post shares three ways that foundations can help build a positive and supportive work environment.
Healthcare Georgia Foundation supports and funds capacity building. Learn more about how this approach helps the foundation advance the health of all Georgians.
"Engaging Boards and Trustees in Strategic Learning," a toolkit from FSG and GEO, provides a fresh set of resources for grantmaker CEOs, evaluation staff, and senior leaders to engage their boards and trustees in conversations about strategic learning.
