This publication from Movement Tapestries offers insights and guidance for organizations navigating equity-embedded transformations, and the challenges that can come with embarking on such journeys.
Our local grant making collaborative, the Washtenaw Coordinated Funders, are examining our grant making practices and tools. Based on feedback from our grantees, we know our grant application could be improved. We also suspect that we aren’t asking the most powerful questions to understand the extent to which a grantee can advance on our priorities. Racial inequity and poverty are two important lenses through which we evaluate a grantee’s proposed work. I would welcome any examples of grant applications and evaluation matrixes that partners in the GEO network use.
If you have helped grantees to identify and/or recruit board members, please share what you have done and what you have learned. What worked? What didn’t work as you hoped?
We are interested in updating language in our evaluation contracts related to ownership of the knowledge generated through that evaluation work. Many of the entities who partner with us to evaluate our work are researchers on the topic we are evaluating (for instance, the evaluation partner for our Healthy Schools Healthy Communities work has a robust portfolio of experience publishing on conditions for promoting healthy behaviors in communities). As such, we view the evaluation as mutually beneficial, giving the Foundation information on the effectiveness of our work but also allowing our work to contribute to the broader field of knowledge and research on a particular topic. We recently realized that standard language in our contracts is at odds with the idea that our evaluations are not simply contracts for services for the Foundation but contributing to the broader field of research. Specifically, our contract language states that the evaluator must get permission and approval from the Foundation prior to publishing or presenting on our work. There are certain scenarios where this makes sense but, more and more, we are coming across scenarios where we want to give other entities freedom to work with our information.
As a Foundation we are committed to sharing what has and hasn’t been effective in our work, contributing knowledge gained to the broader field. That said, there is concern from a legal perspective of handing over all permissions to publish using data and information generated from our work. I am interested to know if anyone has created contract language that acknowledges the mutually beneficial nature of this work, protecting the Foundation’s interest and giving research partners the freedom necessary to pursue their work.
I am interested to know which grant makers use a peer review process (either internal or external) to review grants and make programmatic investment decisions. At the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), we have an internal peer review process that is core to how we review our work and make funding decisions. It is also core to our organizational learning. If your organization uses any sort of peer review process in this context, I would be interested to know that and learn a little about how you structure your process.
Northwest Area Foundation is entering into a new phase of being more intentional around diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI). I’m working with an internal team and we’ve developed goals, purpose, an initial work plan, and are capturing our current DEI practices, but right now what I’m seeking is “lessons learned” around engaging full staff and the board on a DEI effort. How did you think strategically about what input, when and why? I’d also love to see other examples of DEI “work plans” out there and if you have any dos/don’ts around org-wide assessments.
Recognizing the need for adopting and maintaining a learning culture in our organizations is just the first step. How do we go about addressing the challenge of actually creating and living out this culture in our daily work and across our organization? What does it mean to have an active learning culture in your organization?
Jon Schwabish’s Short Talk at GEO’s Learning Conference 2017 offered ways to expand how we think about about sharing information by considering the many ways to visualize data and how those visualization efforts help different audiences.
At GEO’s Learning Conference 2017, Rami Nashashibi, the executive director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), discussed how funders can engage with American Muslim identity, community activism and social justice issues for effective and truly transformative grantmaking.
As the managing director of Chicago Beyond, a philanthropic venture investing in ideas and programs to amplify impact for Chicago’s youth, Liz Dozier discussed at GEO’s Learning Conference 2017 how Chicago Beyond is bringing community voice into data collection to answer thorny questions and spur the innovation it seeks for the young people of Chicago.
