Editor’s note: The following is a Power Moves toolkit Power in Practice example.
“We need more humility from TCE and less arrogance; we need more true partnership and less top-down; we need more input into decisions – and not merely communications about decisions that have been made; we need more of an emphasis from TCE on building our capacity to lead change and less ‘doing and directing’ from TCE staff. Finally, we need a combination of stronger alignment of efforts, improved communications about efforts, and more private sector resources rallying to the vision of BHC.” (TCE 2017).
The California Endowment (TCE) collects extensive feedback from grantees and communities, including through Center for Effective Philanthropy Grantee Perception reports, NCRP’s Philamplify initiative and, with FSG, USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) and other consultants.
TCE also models openness and transparency by sharing the results of gathering feedback with grantees and the public. In its 5-year evaluation and reflection on its place-based initiative, Building Healthy Communities (BHC), TCE noted the importance of listening to community members and grantees.
In September 2017, TCE reflected that feedback from the community showed TCE needed to improve its collaborations with community stakeholders. Listening to feedback led to several new commitments: to make more multi-year support grants; improve alignment, coordination and collaboration of BHC goals; and strengthen community participation in funding discussions, while retaining primary responsibility for grant decisions themselves.
Expanding the community role in funding discussions and providing multi-year grants are important steps that will take TCE farther down the road to sharing power.
Are you ready to begin building, sharing and wielding your power to maximize impact on issues and communities you care about? Take this Power Moves readiness assessment to find out.”
Lisa Ranghelli is senior director of assessment and special projects at NCRP and primary author of Power Moves: Your essential philanthropy assessment guide for equity and justice. Follow @NCRP and @lisa_rang on Twitter, and join the conversation using #PowerMovesEquity!
This post is part of a series of case examples on building, sharing and wielding power for NCRP’s Power Moves toolkit.