Why is Networking Important to You and Your Foundation? What Specific Strategies Do You Use?

Joy Vermillion Heinsohn, program officer at the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation: We’ve had an advisory panel for over 25 years. There are fifteen members, and five of them are selected and five rotate off per year. The panel is a way to get to know a number of communities by bringing people together from around the state who can help us learn more about what’s happening in their towns, cities, and regions. North Carolina is a state where half the population resides in 15 counties, and the other half in the remaining 85 counties, so we’re kind of spread out. The panel meets three times a year. We share with them the list of proposals, so if they’re familiar with any of the organizations they’re free to submit comments. Since they are not a decision-making body, we also let them know that we appreciate their input but the board ultimately has the say on what gets funded.

Mary Kaplan, vice president of program at the Endowment for Health in Concord, New Hampshire: We’re a healthcare conversion foundation. That means our assets literally came from the premium checks people paid for their health insurance to Blue Cross Blue Shield. We look at these people as our shareholders. Each year we visit communities throughout the state over a one-month period for listening sessions. We try not to go in with an agenda; we don’t mention topics until people bring them up. We publicize the sessions pretty aggressively and work hard to get media attention. We say we’re inviting people to participate in a community conversation about health and health care systems. We let them know that our board, president, and staff will be there to listen. Advocacy organizations also routinely tag along: the American Cancer Society one year, a Medicaid ombudsman another time. So we’re providing a built-in structure that other people can use without investing time and money.

Pat Brandes, senior advisor of the Barr Foundation: Boston is a majority-minority city, plus it’s a newcomer’s city: 32 percent of the population is immigrants. So keeping up with that kind of change in terms of demographics requires a certain vigilance. Our fellows network, which has been going since 2005, helps us do that. The program was set up not so much for the foundation as for the city of Boston. It was explicitly created to be diverse, representing the arts, environment, human services, housing, and education. We now have 24 fellows who are proven leaders in the city, and many of them come from immigrant communities. We give them a three-month sabbatical and then keep them together for three years. They also become part of an alumni network, which is another set of eyes and ears for the foundation.

Anne Vally, special initiatives officer at The James Irvine Foundation: One of the unique things about The James Irvine Foundation is our philosophy of sticking with our partners long term. However, an unintended consequence of this approach is that, over time, grantees can begin to look very much like an insider’s club. During the foundation’s strategic planning effort a few years ago, we realized that we needed processes to support our value of being open to new ideas and partners. This led us to create the New Connections Fund in 2004. It’s an exciting small grant program — with individual grants up to $50,000 — that has an open application process and two rounds of grants per year. One of our goals for the Fund is to identify and fund organizations that are new to Irvine. Through the fund we’ve been  introduced to interesting organizations doing innovative work in our program areas. These are for the most part community based organizations with small budgets — usually under a million dollars a year. It’s a demographic of organizations that we don’t usually reach with our regular program portfolio.

Susan Jenkins, executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation: In North Carolina, we have “community clubs,” which make up an infrastructure that most communities don’t have. Some clubs are nonprofits, but most are just informal organizations of people who come together once a month to overcome the isolation of rural areas. They’re a bit like the garden clubs that were once popular in the South. Community clubs are a built-in network for us. They help us find out what’s going on and what’s needed in the community. For the last five years, we’ve funded a community development coordinator who works with the clubs to help them come up with ideas for grant proposals and also helps them with reporting on their grants.

Takeaways are critical, bite-sized resources either excerpted from our guides or written by Candid Learning for Funders using the guide's research data or themes post-publication. Attribution is given if the takeaway is a quotation.

This takeaway was derived from Scanning the Landscape 2.0.

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