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How Foundations Can Accelerate Health System Improvement

Grantmakers in Health Jan 11, 2019
This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
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How Foundations Can Accelerate Health System Improvement by Investing in Capacity Building Across Sectors Giving Compass
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Giving Compass’ Take:

• Grantmakers in Health explains how foundations can maximize their impact on the health care system by building capacity across sectors in the system to better leverage their other funding. 

• What other issue areas besides health care would benefit from this approach? How can funders decide how to best direct their capacity-building budget? 

• Learn why funding talent investment is key to capacity building.


At a time when the health care system is facing a host of challenges, many with attributes that are impossible to solve alone, we see organizations from across the health and social sectors combining their skills and expertise through interesting partnerships to crack the “impossible” together.

Just as the complexity of the challenges facing the healthcare sector demands a new strategy like cross-sector partnering, that strategy itself demands a new kind of intervention from the health philanthropy community. With growing attention being put toward the need for functional cross-sector partnerships, the gap is amplified between organizations’ good intentions for partnering and their suited capacities and skills to do so.

This presents an emerging opportunity for foundations interested in accelerating health system improvement: intervene early and commit resources toward stewarding capacity-building initiatives. This will be in service to the sector leaders that will ultimately need the skills to design and implement productive, long-lasting cross-sector partnerships.

When foundations layer capacity building on top of traditional funding, they position the organizations they support to make greater contributions to cross-sector partnerships and the goals these partnerships aim to achieve.

Ask a funder with a thriving portfolio of programs aimed toward improving health system performance, and they will likely tell you that the most successful initiatives are executed by organizations with the necessary skills and expertise to deliver. But the capacities required to deliver effective cross-sector partnerships do not always come naturally to organizations that have been operating in an environment that favors individual organization incentive versus whole system incentive, and it will take time to develop the culture and elements that translate into partnership readiness. And while it will take time for organizations to mature their partnership readiness, the funding approach to capacity building requires a rethink on the part of foundations.

Read the full article about accelerating health system improvement by Lori Peterson, Erica Snow, and at Grantmakers In Health.

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Since you are interested in Impact Philanthropy, have you read these selections from Giving Compass related to impact giving and Impact Philanthropy?

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
    Click here for more.
    Global Research Funders Need to Commit to Full Flexibility. Now.

    The value of evidence for effective policymaking is precisely the reason why many foundations and bilateral agencies have invested for decades in research in the Global South, carried out by in-country, regional, and international research organizations, as well as academic centers around the world. For example, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the U.K. Department for International Development, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and many more have been steadfast funders of excellent — and even Nobel Prize-winning — research. While biomedical and public health studies account for the largest share of that support, funding has also gone to research in the physical, environmental, agricultural, and social sciences. In this moment of crisis response, funders must act quickly to protect these key research investments and give them the opportunity to pay off. So how can funders help? The Council on Foundations’ COVID-19 Commitment Pledge is a great start, but, in my view, these are the most urgent steps funders should be taking right now: Loosen or eliminate restrictions on any existing funding. This crisis is changing daily, sometimes hourly. If you trusted the organization enough to give them a grant, trust them now to respond quickly. Communicate with funded organizations. Reach out to research organizations you fund and ask how you can help, including things as simple as making connections between organizations or other partners (such as experts, local officials, or professional colleagues) who might be able to work together. Communicate with the public. One of the reasons it is challenging for public funders like bilateral aid agencies to relax funding constraints is a concern about recriminations from the media and taxpayers around perceived lack of accountability. This risk can be mitigated by proactive communication about the value of the research — past, present, and future — for an informed pandemic response. There is now heightened awareness about the importance of expertise and how making investments in relevant research visible can bolster, rather than undermine, public support for this type of funding. If you have the capacity, make additional funding available — and optimized for speed. If you have a fund for experimental ideas, pilot funding, or a rainy-day fund, now is the time to use it. This is the rainy day. Read the full article about global research by Ruth Levine at The Center for Effective Philanthropy. 


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