The Colorado Health Foundation has a vision to make Colorado the healthiest state in the nation. As they set out on a new strategy to create healthy schools, they knew from experience that they needed to work differently to engage communities across Colorado. With this understanding in mind, we had an opportunity to partner with Spark Policy Institute, The Civic Canopy, and the Foundation to support an emergent approach to design and implement the foundation’s Creating Healthy Schools funding strategy. A new article in the Foundation Review describes the tools that we used in the process, including:
- A neutral facilitator who protected and strengthened relationships among stakeholders, and brought accountability into the process
- An approach to reviewing applications for funding that adds input from community consultants to traditional foundation staff assessments
- A series of collaborative meetings with the funder, applicantsgrantees, and facilitator to create an open venue for information sharing and support
The article “Insights From Deploying a Collaborative Process for Funding Systems Change” is available in the current issue of the Foundation Review at http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/tfr/vol9/iss2/9/ .