Foundations have an important role to play in advocacy. Both private and public foundations may participate in the advocacy arena – through funding of nonprofits or their own advocacy efforts. Essential Resources, advocacy dictionary, publication, factsheets.
Social justice grantmaking is an important part of many family foundations’ strategies. These foundations use their reputation and financial capital for systemic reform by funding work such as nonprofit advocacy, community organizing and civic engagement. Yet, many family foundations also encounter hurdles when they consider a shift to strategic social justice giving.
This webinar, part of ABFE Third Thursday Webinar Series and co-sponsored by Funders for LGBTQ Issues and The Third Wave Fund, examines how leaders and organizations connect racial and LGBTQ identity to secure social justice for LGBTQ people.
During this webinar, we were joined by policy and communications experts who’ve been building and sustaining the Black Lives Matter movement for years. Through the lens of the Foundation Center’s landmark report, “Building a Beloved Community: Strengthening the Field of Black Male Achievement” we explored the capacity-building and systems-change strategies from the bird’s eye to the grassroots to learn what’s working.
Learn how CVH builds leadership development and collective power towards broader goals of government transparency and social justice. We explored case studies around three impact issues: welfare policy reform, public housing reform, and participatory budgeting. We also learned what it looks like to fund this work. Attendees learned how funding community engagement can fit into a broader social change grantmaking strategy.
This report argues that more money needs to go towards grassroots organizing and advocacy for the environment and climate change movements to regain momentum and win important legislative and regulatory battles. Environment and climate funders can become effective resources of a strong and successful movement for change by decreasing their reliance on national advocacy groups and increasing funding for grassroots communities that are directly impacted by environmental harms.
This article reports the results from Mathematica Policy Research’s evaluation of Consumer Voices for Coverage, a program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support the role of consumer health advocacy coalitions in 12 states. The authors propose that funders address three elements of coalition capacity: knowledge, infrastructure, and resources. Each requires different types of interventions.
This report looks at how 20 nonprofits in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi and their allies helped improved their communities and amplified the voices of underserved residents in the democratic process through policy engagement. These nonprofits leveraged foundation grants that generated a $114 return for every dollar spent.
The California Endowment implemented the Clinic Consortia Policy and Advocacy Program to expand grantee advocacy capacity to support the policy and operational needs of California’s community clinics. Funders of advocacy and policy change initiatives are encouraged to consider the resources needed to build and sustain advocacy capacity, including grantee technical expertise, partnerships with stakeholders, and time required to expand advocacy capacity.
A tool for measuring impact can reduce the barriers to funding advocacy and policy work. The tool draws upon the literature on evaluating advocacy and organizing, social capital building efforts, and return on investment approaches to evaluation. The tool was applied in two sites, where funders found it useful to understand advocacy impacts and learn how advocacy can enhance their grantmaking goals.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation is using the KIDS COUNT network in a new way: as a strategic communications tool in its focused efforts toward policy change, broad social change, and improved conditions for vulnerable children and families. Grantee activities surrounding the release of the 2008 KIDS COUNT Data Book led to the quantity and quality of media that Casey believes will help achieve its desired outcomes. Relationships with journalists, use of locally relevant information, use of locally relevant media advocacy strategies, good preparation, and a solution orientation were present in states demonstrating desirable media coverage.
The Diversifying Leadership for Sustainable Food Policy (DLSFP) initiative sought to build the advocacy capacity of ten people of color led organizations to address food and agriculture systems issues and broaden the diversity of the sustainable agriculture and food movement. Describes some of the findings of the initiative such as: limited civic and leadership capacities of their constituencies, lack of inclusiveness into the agricultural food sector. The lessons learned from the initiative suggest a new theoretical model for building advocacy in people of color-led organizations.
The California Endowment’s Community Action to Fight Asthma Initiative (CAFA) took a non-traditional approach to reducing asthma disparities that funded treatment programs. CAFA fostered community activity to effect change in the areas of education, housing and environmental policy. In this article, authors discuss the CAFA’s theory of change and grant making strategy included assistance in 1) Local, regional, and state-level coalition building 2) Prevention concepts, environmental asthma policies, policy advocacy 3) Evaluation, using continuous feedback to fine-tune strategy.
