Question: What are some policy wins your foundation has contributed to?

Brainerd Foundation
Keiki Kehoe, Co-Director

As a limited life foundation dedicated to protecting the air, land, and water of our region, engaging in public policy has been core to our mission. From our inception, our trustees understood the importance of policy and never wavered in their commitment to be bold, visionary, and persistent. Looking back on 25 years of grantmaking, the achievements of our policy grantees give us hope for what is possible in the years to come.

Community Foundation Boulder County
Chris Barge, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives

Our education advocacy work has led to winning school funding campaigns that have helped double full-day kindergarten and preschool opportunities across our county. Our advocacy for nonprofits has also led to ballot issues that have secured funding for safety net services and for capital projects for nonprofits.

Haas, Jr. Fund
Cathy Cha, President

One great example is our work on marriage equality. When we started investing in that issue in the early 2000s, many people thought progress wasn’t possible. But over the following 15 years, we worked with other funders and partners in the movement on a state-by-state campaign that changed hearts and minds across the country. The result was a historic Supreme Court ruling affirming marriage equality from coast to coast.

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

Our local school district in Nashville, Tennessee had trauma-informed-school staff positions that were all grant funded. When the grants were ending, however, the positions needed to move to the district’s operating budget. But chronic underfunding was preventing that from happening. So, we convened other funders to create a joint fund that provided a one-year match to transition the positions over two years into the district’s operating budget. We rallied public support for the work and communicated directly with School Board members and Metro Council members for the financial support. We were successful in securing the match funding and this year, all of the positions were funded in the operating budget without private support.

Read the full article about policy wins by Naomi Orensten and Ethan McCoy at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.