Healthier Information Ecosystems: Strategies for Health Philanthropy

Our information environment is transforming—including the places and people who help us make decisions about our health. Those health information ecosystems are fragmented; filled with information from a wide range of expertise and sources; and platform algorithms exert tremendous and unseen control over what messages are seen, shared, and amplified. These changes have many of our traditional health information sources racing to learn new skills to ensure they remain trusted and relevant.

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Beyond Innovation: How Philanthropy Can Strengthen Systems to Improve Rural Health Outcomes

Sometimes innovation in philanthropy is associated with breakthrough technologies or new medical discoveries. But some of the most impactful investments fund something less visible: the coordination of people, protocols, and institutions already in place so they work together seamlessly to save lives.

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A Philanthropic Tree of Life: Seeding Health Equity through Influence and Innovation

Philanthropy can function as a living ecosystem for change rooted in equity, nourished by trust, and bearing the fruits of community well-being. The Direct Relief Fund for Health Equity (DRFHE), launched with $50 million in initial investments, exemplifies a transformative philanthropic model supporting nearly 200 community-based organizations across the United States. Acknowledging DRFHE as a “Tree of Life” offers a framework grounded in community-led, trust-based, and unrestricted giving that challenges traditional philanthropic paradigms. Therefore, this article describes the fund’s origins, strategic priorities, and outcomes, and introduces the DRFHE Tree of Life framework as a replicable model for equity-driven philanthropy.

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GIH Health Policy Update Newsletter

An Exclusive Resource for Funding Partners

The Health Policy Update is a newsletter produced in collaboration with Leavitt Partners and Trust for America’s Health. Drawing on GIH’s policy priorities outlined in our policy agenda and our strategic objective of increasing our policy and advocacy presence, the Health Policy Update provides GIH Funding Partners with a range of federal health policy news.

Reimagining a Patient-Centered Health Care System

NYSHealth’s approach for putting patients at the center is to support efforts–at the individual, system, or policy level—that empower patients to be drivers of and partners in their own health and health care.

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The Power of Collaboration for Environmental Health and Justice

Eboni Cochran knows when there has been a chemical release from one of the manufacturing facilities near her home in west Louisville, Kentucky. Not because of a warning siren, but because she smells it, then feels the symptoms almost immediately: sinus pain, headache, trouble breathing.

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Maximizing Our Investments: Five Ingredients for Accelerating Impact in Health Philanthropy

The 2016 Terrance Keenan Institute fellows gathered to discuss leadership, collaboration, and best practices in grantmaking. Several prominent issues emerged, including how to effectively demonstrate the impact of philanthropic investments.

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Peer Review: A Reflective Look at Our Grantmaking Operations

The Phoenixville Community Health Foundation (PCHF) was approaching its 20th anniversary and a leadership succession via CEO retirement. The foundation’s board and staff thought that it was a good time to take stock in where we started, where we were, and where we were going.

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Beyond Goals and Strategies

Once a foundation decides on a goal and develops a strategy for achieving it, the next order of business is to implement that strategy and to monitor progress toward the goals. While foundations tend to spend a good deal of time developing their strategic plans, implementation often gets short shrift.

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Stanford PACS Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society RFP: May 2017

igital Impact, an initiative of the Digital Civil Society Lab at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (Stanford PACS), opened the 2017 cycle of its now global grants program to advance the use of digital data and infrastructure for social good.

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