Question: How and why is your foundation collaborating with others — grantees, other funders — to achieve a shared policy goal?

The Healing Trust
Meredith Sullivan Benton, Vice-President, Programs and Advocacy

In 2019, we decided to use the Trust’s influence to engage in advocacy alongside our grantee partners. This type of advocacy — an extension of our mission and previous advocacy grantmaking — came at the request of our grantee partners and peer groups. Engaging in advocacy allows us to focus on the root causes of the issues that our grantee partners work to address with support from our grants programs. (The Trust also supports advocacy via grantmaking and provides technical assistance to build grantee partners’ advocacy capacity.)

Jacob & Valeria Langeloth Foundation
Andrea Fionda, Director of Programs, and Scott Moyer, President

The Langeloth Foundation has found that investments in funder collaboratives in various issue areas have enabled us to learn more about an issue area, to meet other funders, and to be exposed to a greater array of projects.

For example, the Foundation is a member of the Fund for a Safer Future, a gun violence prevention collaborative, that has allowed our small staff to learn the lay of the land in what is a relatively complex topic. It has also given the Foundation much greater reach into the field than we would have if we were on our own.

Lumina Foundation
Jesse O’Connell, Director of Federal Policy, and Scott Jenkins, Director of State Policy

Collaboration is key because policy success greatly benefits from policymakers hearing a clear and consistent message from constituents.   By working together from a shared set of principles and simple set of evidence-backed actions, funders can give transparent guidance to both grantees and other funders, as well as policymakers themselves.

Read the full article about collaborating to achieve a shared policy goal by Naomi Orensten and Ethan McCoy at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.