With this announcement of a second phase, our goal over the next three years is to increase the sustainability of a set of small, community-based organizations serving low-income people and communities of color in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Coast, and San Joaquin Valley. We want to help selected organizations develop more resilient leadership, adapt to change more fluidly, and become more financially stable.

To launch this new phase of work, we have released the following Request for Proposals.

We are now seeking three-to-six regionally focused regranting intermediaries and four-to-five organizations that provide leadership development and technical assistance, and expect to award $8 million in grants in 2012 to these intermediary organizations. In addition, the foundations will be considering up to $2 million in challenge grants as the initiative concludes in 2015

Community-based organizations will be able to apply for funding through the chosen intermediaries starting in early 2013. Details on that application process will be available here once intermediaries’ regranting processes have been finalized.

We invite you to explore the RFP, the evaluation reports and the CLP website to learn more about the Community Leadership Project, and we welcome your thoughts and feedback. Grants to intermediaries will be announced in December, and our next evaluation report will be delivered in 2013.

Kathy Reich, Director of Organizational Effectiveness Grantmaking, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Anne Vally, Senior Program Officer, Special Initiatives, The James Irvine Foundation
John E. McGuirk, Director of Performing Arts Program, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

-Dawn Josephson, Mom, MomsRising blogpost

In partial thanks to a $35,000 Organizational Effectiveness grant, journalists, activists, public policy makers and even the President of the United States can now, with a simple mouse click, read a real  story from a local mom fighting for the economic security and healthcare of her family.  Not only that, those wanting to make a difference for families can quickly mobilize the advocacy power generated by the nearly 1.2 million email members and a reach over 3 million social media and blog readers of MomsRising. 

MomsRising – a grantee of the Packard Foundation’s Children, Families and Communities Program –advocates for family economic security and children’s health.  The very “virtual organization” has campaign directors, mostly moms, working out of their home offices located across the US. In 2009, MomsRising’s members took over a million online actions in support of family-friendly policies, and were covered in the media over 1,000 times. 

The ease of the story collection page has resulted in thousands of stories from families across the country struggling with health care challenges.  MomsRising displays these stories in an interactive map that the media, leaders, and the general public can easily access.  This map of stories offers decision makers clear picture and personal testimony of what families are struggling with across the country.  It also allows other moms and family members to comment, connect, organize and advocate for each other.

Stuck in the middle-class rut
I am in the midst of searching for childcare for my 3 year old daughter. My husband was laid off, and though I make enough to sustain the home, I do not make enough to pay for high quality childcare. Also, because my income is above poverty (62k for a family of 3), I do not qualify for any subsidies. Currently, my husband is home with her, but she is missing out on valuable socialization skills as well as fundamental educational basics. It saddens me, but we do the best we can with our version of “home pre-schooling” her.

—Kristin, CA

 Charlie
My son Charlie was born at 27 weeks (almost 3 months early) weighing only 2 pounds, 10 ounces. Because of the amazing high-quality medical care he received at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, he is now a healthy, thriving 4 year-old exceeding all of his developmental milestones… I am so grateful and only wish all parents and children the same results. Don’t cut funding to our teeniest, most vulnerable citizens!

—Jennifer, CA

Where has our money really gone??
In my family, there are three children who have had serious auto-immune diseases. Two of them have had to rely on Social Security Disability benefits and Medicare/Medicaid because they were completely unable to work and care for themselves. Additionally, my sister gave birth to a little boy with hypo-plastic left-heart syndrome. He would have died immediately, had it not been for the intervention of the Governor’s office in Nevada to help him get the care he needed through Social Security and Medicaid…

—Michelle, UT

The new strategic shift toward storytelling and text messaging has already paid off.  According to Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, the executive director of MomsRising, “the stories tool is the backbone of our many campaigns, and through the use of new cutting edge technology, the stories built a groundswell of public support and helped change the public narrative around the health care issue.  Over 500 stories from 43 states helped to influence public opinion and educate leaders in a way that protected Medicaid from proposed cuts.” 

While not all OE grants result in a grantee volunteer meeting the President of the US or even a substantial public policy victory, most are like the MomsRising grant in that they build a new organizational capacity that enables the organization to better achieve its social change mission.

Read more stories about Packard’s Organizational Effectiveness grants in action.

In keeping true to our values of transparency and openness, we plan to share our efforts as they evolve. Many of you are already familiar with our OE wiki site, and now we’ve also created a new experimental strategic planning site using WordPress.  The whole process will be documented and coordinated through this site.

We’re also using this site to solicit input about some key areas we’re considering in our program design. In particular, we’re hoping to learn more about what others do around:

1) The use of intermediaries
2) Participation in peer learning communities
3) The use of consultants for capacity building
4) Building capacity building infrastructure in underserved areas abroad, such as South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa
5) The use of organizational assessments

Please follow any of these links to see our questions and to share your experiences, thoughts or advice on any of these areas. This feedback will help us as we consider any changes we might make to our grantmaking philosophy, requirements, and possible areas of exploration.

To help inform our process, over the next months we will:
1) Reach out to our colleagues within our Foundation for feedback on how the OE program can best work with their programs and grantees.
2) Highlight key questions about our program on our strategy refresh site, as noted above.
3) Interview other funders with similar programs to see how they conduct their OE work.
4) Engage grantees, consultants and other stakeholders, possibly through interviews, focus groups and webinars.
5) Continue to assess our grantmaking, including building on the Goldmine Research Project and Monitor’s Network Learning to look at case studies of making multiple grants to a single grantee.

We’re really excited about this process and we’d love your feedback!