How Can Foundations Promote Impactful Collaboration?

Funders are increasingly looking to interagency and cross-sector collaboration as a strategy to solve complex, large-scale issues, but many collaborative groups fail to generate an impact with their work. This is due in part to funders’ own practices, such as pre-specifying the problem to be solved or limiting their grantees’ ability to adjust their strategy. The Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts has been intentional about facilitating the effectiveness of the collaborative groups it supports. Its Health Care & Health Promotion Synergy Initiative provides long-term funding and assistance with planning, evaluation and sustainability to groups that define the problems they want to solve. This article presents systems-change outcomes from 14 collaborative groups supported under the initiative since 2000. Interviews with representatives from four of the more successful projects indicate the key tasks involved in designing, implementing, refining, and sustaining impactful programs. Interviewees reported on the value of the Synergy Initiative model, but also emphasized that the model requires high levels of commitment and analytic capacity. One of the most challenging features of the model is the funder’s direct engagement in the process. Given the power dynamics that naturally arise when the funder engages directly, we recommend that this approach be used only in situations where the funder can build strong, honest, give-and-take relationships with the other participants in the process

Appendix - Program Officer Practice Profile - Using Implementation Science to Translate Foundation Strategy

APPENDIX Program Officer Practice Profil

Using Implementation Science to Translate Foundation Strategy

New strategies sometimes require foundations to shift their staffing, organizational structures, administrative processes, and, possibly, their culture. The field of implementation science offers guidance to foundations as they effectively implement strategies that depart from prevailing practice. This article focuses on two specific tools from implementation science: the practice profile and the Implementation Drivers Assessment. The practice profile answers the question, What does the strategy require of particular foundation staff? The implementation drivers analysis explores the broader question, What does the strategy require in the way of organizational change within the foundation?”. These two tools were used by the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust in implementing its place-based initiative, Healthy Places NC. In the process the tools brought to light a number of fundamental misalignments, which were resolved by shifting the organization rather than retreating on the strategy

Becoming Strategic: Finding Leverage Over the Social and Economic Determinants of Health

While a number of observers have offered advice to foundations on how to be more effective with the implementation, evaluation, and adaptation of their strategies, there is little guidance on how foundations should go about designing their strategies. This study fills that gap by analyzing the strategic thinking of health conversion foundations when they determined how they would address various social determinants of health. Based on interviews conducted with the leaders of 33 foundations across the U.S., we identified four strategic pathways: expanding and improving relevant services, creating more effective systems, changing policy, and encouraging more equitable power structures. In choosing a strategic pathway, a foundation is determining the type and degree of social change it wants to achieve. This choice should be aligned with the foundation’s mission, values, philosophy, resources, and sphere of influence

Reconciling Community-Based Versus Evidence-Based Philanthropy: A Case Study of The Colorado Trust’s Early Initiatives

One of the dominant tensions in philanthropy involves the question of whether foundations should focus their grantmaking on projects that come from the community versus projects that have a base of scientific evidence. How a foundation answers this question leads to different strategic orientations. This article describes how this tension was expressed and resolved during The Colorado Trust’s early years of initiative-based grantmaking. The community-based philosophy is illustrated through the Colorado Healthy Communities Initiative, while Home Visitation 2000 serves as an exemplar of the evidence-based approach. The Colorado School Health Education Initiative purposefully integrated the two philosophies. The community-based and evidence-based philosophies each have inherent limitations which can be overcome by incorporating the opposing philosophy. This finding is consistent with Barry Johnson’s (1992) Polarity Management model and potentially at odds with the principle of strategic alignment

Getting Real With Strategy: Insights From Implementation Science

Foundations are increasingly coming to appreciate the importance of strategy. But simply having a strategy – even an explicit strategy – does not guarantee that a foundation will actually achieve its goals. To implement a strategy effectively, a foundation needs to operationalize it in the form of specific functions that staff will carry out and needs to create an organizational infrastructure that supports the strategy. The field of implementation science offers a set of tools for helping foundations address these tasks. After introducing some general principles of implementation science, this article describes in depth the concepts of practice profiles, which translate programs or strategies into specific activities to be carried out by implementation staff, and implementation drivers, which point to organizational factors that determine whether a program or strategy is implemented well enough to achieve its intended outcomes

Achieving Communitywide Impact by Changing the Local Culture: Opportunities and Considerations for Foundations

With place-based initiatives foundations generally seek to engage a broad set of local stakeholders in developing high-payoff strategies and to build their capacity. However more fundamental changes may be needed to bring about the ambitious impacts that foundations have in mind. This article explores the idea of changing community culture as a means of achieving large-scale impacts. In trying to shift a community’s culture, a foundation is inherently seeking to change how residents think and act, as well as how the community defines itself. This raises both practical and ethical questions, particularly when the foundation is based outside the community in question. Possibilities and challenges with this line of work are illustrated with the Community Progress Initiative, which sought to build an adaptive culture to revitalize the economy in central Wisconsin following massive dislocations in the papermaking and cranberry industries

The Yin and Yang of Equity-Centered Philanthropy

Foundations face two competing imperatives when they commit to advancing equity. On the one hand, they are counseled to support and follow the lead of community-based groups that are on the front lines of social change. On the other hand, they are also being challenged to use their power and influence to act boldly to change inequitable structures, policies, and institutions. These two orientations, yin and yang, can take a foundation in different directions and thus cause confusion and internal conflict. The challenge for a foundation is to balance and integrate the two orientations into a comprehensive and effective approach to advancing equity. Drawing on the experience of six foundations that have embraced equity, we provide guidance on how to manage the yin–yang polarity. These foundations recognize that they have different spheres of influence than do action-oriented groups on the front lines of change, and thus adopt strategies that complement those of their grantees. One of the most important and challenging aspects of centering equity in philanthropy involves the foundation’s relationships with the groups it funds, especially community- based groups and groups that are led by people of color. We argue that foundation staff need to bring both a yin and a yang orientation when engaging with grantees. Strong working partnerships with open, honest, give-and-take conversations allow for reciprocal learning and collective strategizing, which in turn sets the stage for innovative, breakthrough solutions

The Cultivation Approach to Place-Based Philanthropy: Evaluation Findings from the Clinton Foundation’s Community Health Transformation Initiative

Cultivation is a decentralized approach to place-based philanthropy where the foundation seeks to activate local stakeholders and assist them in translating their ideas into action. Rather than convening a strategic planning process, cultivation presumes that the seeds of high-payoff solutions are already circulating somewhere in the community. The foundation’s role is to support local stakeholders in developing and implementing their own ideas in ways that produce meaningful impacts. This article describes the cultivation approaches taken by the Clinton Foundation, Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, and The Colorado Health Foundation, and presents findings from an evaluation of the Clinton Foundation’s Community Health Transformation model. Building on the results of this evaluation and our experience with all three foundations, we assess the potential of the cultivation approach and indicate how it complements collective impact. We also introduce a taxonomy of the six roles foundations play in place-based philanthropy, which is useful in clarifying intent and theory of change

Collaboration networks of the implementation science centers for cancer control: A social network analysis

BACKGROUND: Multi-center research initiatives offer opportunities to develop and strengthen connections among researchers. These initiatives often have goals of increased scientific collaboration which can be examined using social network analysis. METHODS: The National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded Implementation Science Centers in Cancer Control (ISC RESULTS: Of the 192 invitees, 182 network members completed the survey (95%). The most prevalent roles were faculty (60%) and research staff (24%). Almost one-quarter (23%) of members reported advanced expertise in IS, 42% intermediate, and 35% beginner. Most members were female (69%) and white (79%). One-third (33%) of collaboration ties were among members from different centers. Across all collaboration activities, the network had a density of 14%, suggesting moderate cohesion. Degree centralization (0.33) and betweenness centralization (0.07) measures suggest a fairly dispersed network (no single or few central member(s) holding all connections). The most prevalent and densely connected collaboration was in planning/conducting research (1470 ties; 8% density). Practice/policy dissemination had the fewest collaboration, lowest density (284 ties\u27 3% density), and the largest number of non-connected members (n=43). Access to the ISC CONCLUSIONS: Results establish a baseline for assessing the growth of cross-center collaborations, highlighting specific areas in need of particular growth in network collaborations such as increasing engagement of racial and ethnic minorities and trainees or those with less expertise in IS