Giving Compass' Take:

•  Kyle Legleiter and Jake Williams explain how the Colorado Health Foundation created and endowed Healthier Colorado to advocate for health policy changes. 

• How can other foundations use this model as a starting point? What are the most impactful policy changes to improve public health?

• Learn how philanthropy can make an impact on public health through catalytic grants. 

The Colorado Health Foundation’s unprecedented journey to creating and endowing Healthier Colorado —a nationally unique 501(c)(4) organization—arose when the Foundation began its transition from a public charity to a private foundation in 2011. The foundation’s new report, Creating a Healthier Colorado, shares this journey.

When the Foundation conducted its own gap analysis of health advocacy in Colorado and similar states, its policy staff found three significant gaps that a potential 501(c)(4) organization might fill:

Target: While health advocates were engaged on state-level issues governed from the state capitol, few resources were available to track or influence health policy made through local entities like county commissions, school boards, city councils, or county health departments.

Focus area: There was little political advocacy focused on advancing health issues beyond the domain of health care and health insurance, such as school nutrition, youth physical education, or public recreation.

Tactics: Few groups were using grassroots tactics for lobbying, such as those employed effectively by both sides of issues like gun regulation.
Through the gap analysis, Foundation staff identified the need to support more organizing at the grassroots level in order to amplify the voice of the people of Colorado in policy debates influencing their health.

Recognizing this opportunity, the Foundation pushed to be bold and creative with deploying its resources. This willingness to stretch beyond the conventional led the Foundation to form Healthier Colorado, a separate and independent 501(c)(4) political organization that was free to actively engage in direct lobbying with policymakers and free to organize and activate Coloradans to speak up about important health policy issues.

Healthier Colorado, established in 2013, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to raising the voices of Coloradans in the public policy process to improve the health of Colorado residents and a mission to build grassroots support for health policy.

Read the full article by Kyle Legleiter and Jake Williams about health policy from Grantmakers In Health.