From The Field J A N U A R Y 2 3 , 2 0 1 2 Healthy Places NC: Better Results through Place-Based Philanthropy KAREN MCNEIL-MILLER President, The Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust ALLEN J. SMART Director-Health Care Division, The Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust I f you were expecting company for dinner, you might decide to tidy up before your guests arrived. Your focus The power of Healthy Places NC is that we’ll be would likely be the living room and the dining room. responding precisely to the needs of a specific community Perhaps the front steps need to be swept. The bathroom – listening to the people, cooperating with the local cleaned. But you would not worry about the attic or the changemakers – then working with them to find ways to basement, even if those places could benefit from your improve the health and overall quality of life for people in attention, too. The orderliness of your closets would not that area. No more diluting our chances of success with be a priority either. You would apply your efforts where they were needed most immediately, and in doing so, accomplish an agenda that’s too wide and not deep enough. By your designated task with more success and speed than if you understanding what a community is facing, as well as spread your time and energy over every square foot of the what the community is capable of, we can bring focused house. efforts to its needs and thereby increase the likelihood that In very basic terms, this simple analogy helps illuminate the what we’re doing will have positive results that can be power and appropriateness of place-based philanthropy. At sustained. The Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust (KBR), we have been – Karen McNeil-Miller, President, evolving how we fund projects in order to have more effective The Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust and relevant impact on the communities we serve. Our new focus, called Healthy Places NC, centers on strategically con- and consequently spread our resources too thin. It is fair to say centrated investments in specific communities rather than that our good intentions, manifested in isolated, short-term following the more traditional approach of responding to grants, have often stretched beyond our ability to achieve broad and often unconnected agency-initiated proposals. By sustainable impact. tending to specific areas of need with deliberate and intensive For this reason we are excited to be shifting gears as we efforts, we believe we can do more good by doing it more launch Healthy Places NC. By rethinking how and where we precisely. allocate resources, we are now able to go deeper into commu- With guests coming for dinner, isn’t it more urgent to set nities as we help them achieve systemic and sustainable the table than to paint the hallway? change. This means more impact, more lasting improvements, and more easily replicable work that we can take to other areas HEALTHY PLACES OF IMPACT of the state. If only improving people’s health and quality of life in under- Foundations across the country (for example, The Annie E. served communities was as straightforward as neatening the Casey Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The William house! Indeed, our mission at KBR is forever complicated by and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Sierra Health Foundation, so many seen and unseen forces – social, economic, political, Northwest Area Foundation, Mary Reynolds Babcock and environmental – that we must be rigorously adaptive in Foundation, The Colorado Trust) have been developing place- our tactics, as well as our assumptions. With our move into based philanthropy initiatives for over two decades. The place-based grantmaking, we are responding to past lessons place-based approach typically brings together a wide range of learned. Like many other community-minded organizations, local actors around an ambitious community-change agenda, we have sometimes endeavored to do too much too broadly and then the foundation provides resources to implement key components in whatever strategy the community develops. carefully designing Healthy Places NC as an approach that will The overarching intent is to produce fundamental changes in allow us to contribute constructively to locally driven work – services, systems, and community problem solving – in ways in a manner that achieves the mutual interests of KBR and its that materially improve health and quality of life over the community partners. long run. How Healthy Places NC will manifest as a community strategy is likely to vary across the counties we serve as a A CLOSER LOOK function of the personalities of the people and organizations involved. Local politics, community culture, and KBR’s How does place-based philanthropy happen? Well, it is historical relationships with local actors will be influential, as important to understand there is no single formula. Each well. Also, grantor-grantee relationships are expected to evolve community and issue will dictate the best way to respond to over time. As KBR and the funded communities gain more its particular needs. Some foundations provide grants only for experience working with each other and learn more about the evidence-based programs, while other foundations encourage nature of local issues, it will become possible to hold deeper their communities to develop innovative strategies appropri- ate to the local situation. Place-based work also varies with regard to the amount and Place-based philanthropy is inherently evolutionary, with early developmental type of capacity building phases setting the stage for more refined, targeted, and bolder strategies later. (training, technical assistance, networking among grantees) and more open conversations, leading to new ideas for com- that the foundation supports. munity change. Depending on the county, we might use local But there are some all-purpose guidelines that or regional intermediaries, and our program officers will organizations engaged in place-based work should keep in absolutely depend on different, more engaged approaches to mind: their work. • Understand the unique context of the communities in Place-based philanthropy is inherently evolutionary, which you work. with early developmental phases setting the stage for more • Engage trusted community changemakers in every part of refined, targeted, and bolder strategies later. To understand the process. and capitalize fully on emerging opportunities, KBR will use various mechanisms for evaluation and real-time learning. • Set clear expectations (including objectives and evaluation This will help us recognize what has been accomplished in metrics) with your community partners. each community while also pointing out advances in thinking, • Make the focus “how much change” not “how much leadership, and relationships that allow for deeper layers of money.” work. Based on a selection process that was both statistical and • Scale matters – do not reach too far at the expense of evaluative – analyzing populations, health needs, the local going deep. economy, and existing organizational capacity – KBR has • Plan carefully to put the right resources in the right places. identified 11 counties across North Carolina that we feel are • Think long-term and about sustainability. best positioned to benefit from Healthy Places NC. From these 11, we will choose three to five counties as pilot communities, • Take risks, but manage them carefully. starting small with this initiative and growing it carefully as we learn what works and what does not. These generally poor Naturally, some place-based initiatives have proven more and/or rural counties all have the benefit of effective local successful than others. High-profile disappointments can be problem solvers who are managing to do well organizing instructive to organizations intending to venture into this around and responding to some primary community health highly focused and responsive grantmaking. One lesson that issues while struggling with others. Since KBR has past stands out, almost ironically, is that too much money or too experiences of success within each of the selected counties, many resources all at once, and without a clear directive for we feel confident undertaking a new strategy there as we implementation, can actually overwhelm a community to create peer comparison groups both inside the state and the point of hindering its progress. It is advisable to consider nationally. carefully what a community can handle against what it needs. Imagine trying to wash the dishes from your dinner party with a fire hose. It would be an ambitious approach, but clearly problematic. Taking into account the hard lessons that other founda- Views from the Field is offered by GIH as a forum tions have learned about place-based philanthropy, KBR is for health grantmakers to share insights and experiences. If you are interested in participating, please contact Faith Mitchell at 202.452.8331 or fmitchell@gih.org.