The Foundation equips community change leaders with the tools they need to build strong families and thriving communities. We foster transformative change by supporting local organizations in learning, growing, collaborating and moving their missions further.
Collective Impact
Community
Engage the community
Collaboration
Facilitate collaboration, a shared vision and alignment of resources
Learning
Leverage data and research to drive decisions
community capacity
mobilize resources and knowledge
to lead change
Systems change
Champion environments, policies and systems
that support wellbeing
Real change happens when a core group of community leaders come together using a collective approach to create a clear, common agenda with measurable results.
Collective Impact
Everything we do starts with community, and we work to set a long table that is welcoming to all. Our Every Child Thrives network is an active, inspiring partnership of 60+ Dodge and Jefferson County partners.
Picture a room packed with local leadership from across sectors as wide-ranging as law enforcement, public libraries, and Head Start programs. Add in leaders from our local healthcare system, public schools, and the county’s WIC (Women Infants Children) program. And don’t forget local nonprofit organizations that work with immigrants, housing and uninsured families.
In the past, how often do you think these leaders sat together in the same room?
Learn more about our Every Child Thrives collaborative members.
As a facilitator and convener, we use a Collective Impact framework to work across sectors, identifying and achieving shared community goals.
Bringing a broad range of community leaders together through Collective Impact is the ultimate game-changer, allowing our community to move from a focus on programs to a focus at the systems level.
BEFORE: Agencies focused on individual programs
Solving complex problems (think “poverty” and “child abuse and neglect”) lacks clarity and seems abstract. These social programs have unclear causes and their influencing variables are difficult to isolate. Typically, organizations are treating symptoms of the problem, but not addressing root causes.
AFTER: Aligned for systems change
In order to meet our communities' health needs and make long-term improvements in health and health equity, we must see and leverage the entire system.
Our roomful of cross-sector leaders (or smaller workgroups) sift through the data together, build trust, and openly communicate. When we develop a common agenda that addresses the root causes of a community challenge:
Shared priorities and concerns emerge.
Everyone in the room gains a deeper understanding of the role each partner plays.
Leaders gain fresh insight into their own role within the community system.
We learn and dream together.
New, more innovative solutions become possible.
We create a safe space for learning and innovation.
Our Every Child Thrives network supports a culture of continual learning, using data to inform our priorities and drive decision-making. We utilize a process called Results-Based Accountability, where collaborative workgroups establish a shared vision (i.e. All Children Ready for Kindergarten), identify “what works” and ultimately execute action plans to address root cause barriers to wellbeing.
A small number of population-level indicators guide our work, and program-level performance measures track incremental progress, helping us stay accountable and nimble.
Learn more about how the Results-Based Accountability process works.
The Foundation equips local organizations with the tools they need to lead transformational change.
We build our community's collective capacity to achieve policy and environmental change that creates wellbeing. As a catalyst for change, our goal is to inspire partners to push their missions further: providing research, shared mental models, technical assistance, thought leadership, and–most of all–the courage and support to dream big, be bold, and take risks.
This includes deploying our existing funding and also leveraging the power of our collaborative network to attract additional local, state and national investment. We attract funding from public and private sources, facilitating multi-sector grants and acting as trusted stewards of private philanthropy.
We work strategically–through grants and other investments–to create measurable impact in our priority areas of Strong Families, Kindergarten Readiness and School Success. These investments may include strategic grants, learning communities, technical assistance and more. Investments are prioritized by the Every Child Thrives Transformation Council and directly support Every Child Thrives action plans.
We fund responsive grants in three areas. We accept most grant requests year-round so that opportunities are available to our partners when the time is right for them. View our Grantmaking Guidelines to learn more about fundable projects, allowable costs and evaluation criteria.
Science teaches us social connections improve physical health and mental and emotional wellbeing.
Community Collaboration Grants support collaborative efforts that build a sense of connectedness between people or create/enhance community spaces where individuals can be active together.
These grants will support up to 33% of a proposed project budget with a maximum grant value of $20,000. Applicants must have solidified financial support from at least two other community organizations for no less than 67% of the project cost.
View our Grantmaking Guidelines to learn more about fundable projects, allowable costs and evaluation criteria.
Capacity Building Grants help local organizations further advance their impact. Grants can support:
Research and development, needs assessments, feasibility studies and strategic planning
Quality improvement to help organizations become more efficient and effective, including Board and leadership development, technical skills, and fundraising strategies
Grant writing for multi-sector initiatives that support children and families
Funded projects will:
Create ongoing and sustainable impact
Strengthen the agency and/or community’s ability to improve outcomes for disadvantaged populations
View our Grantmaking Guidelines to learn more about fundable projects, allowable costs and evaluation criteria.
Our Health Equity Grants were created to support equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives focused on removing obstacles to health for populations not well served under current systems and policies.
Funded projects will:
Create at least one sustainable change in policy, system or environment
Deepen an organization’s understanding of the fundamental principles and effects of EDI
Strengthen the organization’s ability to improve outcomes for marginalized populations
View our Grantmaking Guidelines to learn more about fundable projects, allowable costs and evaluation criteria.
Impact investments leverage Foundation assets, through loans and equity ownership interests, to meet our social change goals. Always part of a comprehensive social change action plan, impact investments are catalytic in nature and require partnerships with co-investors. While impact investments may deliver modest financial returns (which we then redeploy into the region for charitable purposes), our primary focus is on the social returns each investment delivers.
$17M+ investment in the Collective and surrounding campus (80+ adjacent acres along the Rock River on the south side of Watertown) to further early care, housing and community capacity building.
80+ acres along the Rock River will become a model neighborhood that provides a full continuum of housing to bring people at all stages of life together in one thriving community.
A public-private partnership overseen by the Dodge County Housing Authority that has attracted $10 million in state grant funding along with contributions from Dodge County, the Foundation, Specialty Cheese and the municipalities of Juneau and Reeseville.
The Foundation has invested $2M toward the Live Local Development Fund, which provides gap financing to attract developers. We are supporting ThriveED's evolution to serve as our regional housing technical assistance provider.
Every Child Thrives partners create a shared agenda to address the root cause barriers to health and wellbeing in our community.
We are not chasing temporary solutions or quick fixes for symptoms of the underlying challenge. We are focused on changing the conditions that hold problems in place, including systems, policies, and practices.
Systems change is a process that happens over time. Research into systems change provides a roadmap of milestones, or phases, we can use to understand our progress.
A Roadmap of Systems Change
Phase
Milestone Activities
Signs of System Change
1. Initiating Action
Problem definition, best practice research, system mapping, and vision development
Shifting mental models as shared understanding and initial strategy is shaped
2. Organizing for Impact
Production of shared goals, agreed upon strategies, indicators, measures, and the resulting common agenda
Relationships and connections form; power dynamics come into play
3. Early Execution
Launch working groups with aligned action plans to begin implementation
Shifting policies, practices and resource flows
4. Sustaining Impact
Evolve methods for working in alignment as the effort matures, refine strategies as needed, and communicate the ways in which lives are changing for the better
Shifting policies, practices and resource flows
Our Promises
to our partners
We invest where community momentum exists and meet partners where they are at, creating space for learning, exploration and testing of transformational practices.
to our co-investors
We are accountable for results and nimble in how we achieve them.
inspiration, announcements, and impact updates... monthly.
