Solving Colorado's Shortage of Health Professionals: Final Evaluation Findings and Recommendations

This report shares evaluation findings from The Trust's Health Professions initiative, and recommends strategies to increase and sustain Colorado's health professions workforce. For example, creating awareness and readiness for health professions training; providing flexible training options and reaching out to students in rural areas; supporting faculty development and clinical training opportunities; expanding the reach and content of training programs; and strengthening community partnerships for recruitment and retention of health professionals

Solving Colorado's Health Professionals Shortage: Initial Lessons Learned From the Health Professions Initiative Evaluation

Gives an overview of the trust's 2005-08 Health Professions Initiative to address expected shortages in all healthcare professions, its impact so far, and the strategies grantees are implementing to help strengthen the training infrastructure

Evaluating Social Innovation

The philanthropic sector has been experimenting with innovative grantmaking in the hopes of triggering significant and sustainable change. FSG's latest research report, collaboratively written with the Center for Evaluation Innovation, challenges grantmakers to explore the use of Developmental Evaluation when evaluating complex, dynamic, and emergent initiatives

Advocacy & Public Policy Grantmaking: Matching Process to Purpose

Over the past five years, advocacy and public policy grantmaking has moved away from supporting individual grantees to achieve their particular policy goals toward a more targeted, proactive approach designed to achieve the funder's policy goals. More recently, some funders have begun to explore new ways of designing advocacy and public policy grantmaking to achieve longer-term and more substantial changes in the policy landscape at large. As foundations consider how to approach their advocacy and public policy grantmaking in the future, a better understanding of this variety of approaches, and pros and cons of each among foundations with a long history of policy work, may provide options for framing and focusing such efforts.Building on research conducted in 2007 by Coffman and Campbell, this brief summarizes advocacy and public policy grantmaking approaches and their implications for grant portfolio composition and management, auxiliary supports and evaluation. "Advocacy and public policy grantmaking" refers to grantmaking in support of a wide range of advocacy activities that are intend to trigger, block, maintain, support and/or monitor changes in public policy at any level of government. The findings below emerged from an extensive literature review, as well as interviews with staff at 14 foundations and three independent consultants with in-depth policy experience. Interviewees were selected to represent an array of foundation sizes, content areas and structures, all with mature policy portfolios. Foundation staff were asked to describe their foundation's approach to advocacy and public policy grantmaking, including:The foundation's goals for its advocacy and policy grantsWhat the foundation has learned about how best to structure grantmaking and construct a portfolio to achieve its goalsWhat auxiliary supports (e.g., convenings, technical assistance, etc.) the foundation provides that have proven indispensable to its workHow the foundation defines the role of its policy staff, and how these staff interact with other staffHow the foundation designs reporting and conducts (or would like to conduct) evaluationHow the foundation thinks about its role in the larger field of "actors" in the advocacy field and in relation to other funders.The assessment revealed two approaches to advocacy and public policy grantmaking for which foundation practices and processes are fairly well established: a policy target approach to achieve the passage, successful implementation and maintenance of a funder's specific policy goal; and an advocacy niche approach to strengthen the presence or influence of a particular strategic function (i.e., policy analysis and research or grassroots mobilization) within the policymaking process. In addition, the assessment identified an emerging approach to advocacy and public policy grantmaking that has yet to be well defined: a field-building approach to develop the stability and long-term adaptive capacity of a group -- or field -- of advocacy organizations. Many funders choose a combination of these approaches, and some prefer to be more strongly positioned within a single approach. Approaches are not mutually exclusive, and may even be mutually supportive; but each approach has unique implications for grantee selection, organizational processes, program officer roles and evaluation.This report frames a series of options for advocacy and public policy grantmaking and explores implications for foundation practices by drawing on the best experiences from the field. It presents a particular focus on what it means for foundations to design their grantmaking to build the capacity and influence of a field of advocates to tackle a wide range of policy challenges over time. As such, this brief can help foundation staff and leadership establish a common language and understand trade-offs among the different advocacy strategy paths

A Model for Multilevel Advocacy Evaluation

· The Colorado Trust provided three years of general operating support to nine advocacy organizations working to increase access to health through policy change work. · The nine grantees had a variety of goals and strategies and had different levels of organizational capacity, but were evaluated using a uniform evaluation approach. · The evaluation was designed to build grantees’ own evaluation capacity to incorporate real-time feedback, monitor progress toward goals, and to assess growth in the overall health advocacy community in Colorado. · Individual grantees identified short- and intermediate- term outcomes related to The Trust’s intermediate outcomes, which were in turn related to the long-term outcomes developed by The Trust and the grantees. · Challenges include aligning outcomes across levels, defining the baseline of the current “health advocacy community,” and identifying the time involved in managing the multitiered data collection effort

How Shortcuts Cut Us Short: Cognitive Traps in Philanthropic Decision Making

Foundations need to build new ways of thinking and interaction that help to combat cognitive traps, support rigorous inquiry, and foster more deliberative decision making. This brief highlights several common cognitive traps that can trip up philanthropic decision making, and suggests straightforward steps that strategists, evaluators, and organizational learning staff can take to address them

How Do You Measure Up? Finding Fit Between Foundations and Their Evaluation Functions

As the number of foundations has grown, the philosophies and ways of working across the sector have diversified. This variance means that there is no one right model for how a foundation’s evaluation function should be designed. It is imperative for a foundation to think carefully about how the structure, position, focus, resources, and practices of its evaluation function can best fit its own needs and aspirations. This article focuses on questions foundations can ask to assess that fit, and the specific considerations that can inform these decisions. It draws on 2015 benchmarking research conducted by the Center for Evaluation Innovation and Center for Effective Philanthropy to demonstrate how foundations across the sector are approaching these issues. This article also identifies common areas of misalignment between what foundations need and how they are spending their evaluation time and resources. For foundations that are new to evaluation, these are misalignments to avoid. For those experienced with evaluation, they are reminders of what to heed as practices are examined

Strategy Design Amid Complexity: Tools for Designing and Implementing Adaptive Funding Strategies

Increasingly, foundations recognize the importance of designing adaptive strategies that can respond to complex environments and problems. Recent articles have cautioned against practices common in strategic philanthropy that hinder the ability of foundations and grantees to account for changing contexts and adapt their strategies accordingly. But understanding the importance of and barriers to adaptive strategy is not sufficient. Foundations now need processes and tools to create and implement adaptive strategies while also addressing the core dilemmas such strategies create: managing accountability in the context of adaptation, adapting at the right level, and responding to changes in context without creating too much instability for grantees. Using a case study from the Colorado Health Foundation\u27s advocacy funding strategy to increase health care coverage, this article presents a set of tools to help foundations design adaptive strategies and ideas for balancing accountability for achieving goals with adaptability throughout the course of an initiative

Swimming for dementia: an exploratory qualitative study

Swimming is a non-weight bearing form of exercise that can be enjoyable and promote physical fitness. This qualitative study investigated a local group established as part of a national dementia swimming initiative. Semi-structured interviews with people with dementia (N=4), carers or companions (N=4) and the organisers and facilitators of the group (N=6) were analysed using thematic analysis. This revealed four main themes: (1) the pleasure of swimming and its benefits as a form of exercise and for building confidence and empowering participants; (2) the importance of insight and empathy in creating a safe and secure experience; (3) the impact of dementia; and (4) how participants valued being part of a group ‘all in the same boat’. ‘Dementia friendly swimming’ appears to be a valuable form of exercise but it requires considerable preparation and support to make it happen