In rural communities with little philanthropic history and endemic, embedded poverty, Janell E. Ray has quickly established two foundations as leaders in health innovation and nonprofit capacity building. Janell serves as CEO of the Pallottine Foundation of Huntington and Executive Director of the Pallottine Foundation of Buckhannon, two foundations in West Virginia that continue the... Read More
As Executive Director of the Hill-Snowdon Foundation, Nat Chioke Williams is leading a family foundation to strategically move its assets to support racial justice. Nat’s passion and thoughtfulness on racial justice issues has had a deep impact on the board’s understanding of anti-Black racism, and how philanthropy can create change. He led the family board... Read More
As CEO of Knapp Community Care Foundation, Yvonne “Bonnie” Gonzalez applies forward thinking to bring more funding to better the health of Rio Grande Mid Valley communities in holistic and sustainable ways. The Knapp Community Care Foundation, a health conversion foundation created in late 2012, provides grants for services within the Rio Grande Mid Valley.... Read More
As practitioners, advisors and consultants to funders, conveners and conductors of community collaboration, we have observed collaboration and collective impact in communities across the country. From our on-the-ground experience, we have seen it done well, and not so well. In this first of a two-blog series, we’ll provide several guideposts about how funders can better... Read More
Forward-thinking philanthropy is by nature a gamble. With new ideas continually being tested, new fields discovered and new measurements created, it can be difficult to know when you are succeeding. We substitute the known to try and bring order. We count the number of people served. We measure the hours of service provided. We substitute scale... Read More
Taking on risky, large, or new projects when you are a small staffed foundation can be very challenging and seem aspirational. What if you could deploy a strategy to expand your giving, receive rapid and early validation to enable more confidence in your giving, all while investing in capacity- and relationship-building with your grantee partners?... Read More