Featured Resources
Looking Around the Corner: (Re) Imagining Power for a Healthy and Just California
A report prepared by the USC Equity Research Institute for The California Endowment summarizes a forward-looking project to envision what we can collectively achieve if we invest in movements.
Philanthropic Investment in People Power
The California Endowment is spearheading renewed interest in an approach that supports communities to be the architects of their own equity efforts. This article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (Winter 2023) examines the evidence generated by a decade-long effort that grew up around The California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities initiative and provides lessons to other philanthropies incorporating a power-building strategy.
New Manual Provides Guidance on Civic Health
The Civic Health Alliance, a nonpartisan group of health and civic leaders, published The Civil Health Compact, a new manual for health care systems to advocate voter participation and other civic responsibilities to patients to advance community health outcomes.
Explore Community Engagement and Empowerment Topics
Recent Items - Civic Engagement
Latest Resources
Want to See Lasting Systemic Change and Transformation to Build Health Equity? Invest in Power Building
Despite a commitment to transformation, equity, and rebalancing the scales of justice, philanthropy often operates in ways that undermine its very purpose. Historically, the philanthropic field has taken a siloed and narrow approach to change, offering investments in short-term funding cycles and attempting to create change from the top down.
Gregory Jackson of Community Justice Action Fund to Be Honored with the Andy Hyman Award for Advocacy
Gregory Jackson, Executive Director of the Community Justice Action Fund, will receive the 2023 Andy Hyman Award for Advocacy.
Looking Around the Corner: (Re) Imagining Power for a Healthy and Just California
A report prepared by the USC Equity Research Institute for The California Endowment summarizes a forward-looking project to envision what we can collectively achieve if we invest in movements.
Philanthropic Investment in People Power
The California Endowment is spearheading renewed interest in an approach that supports communities to be the architects of their own equity efforts. This article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (Winter 2023) examines the evidence generated by a decade-long effort that grew up around The California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities initiative and provides lessons to other philanthropies incorporating a power-building strategy.
New Manual Provides Guidance on Civic Health
The Civic Health Alliance, a nonpartisan group of health and civic leaders, published The Civil Health Compact, a new manual for health care systems to advocate voter participation and other civic responsibilities to patients to advance community health outcomes.
Activating the Potential of Residents to Lead Community Transformation, Collaboratively
In 2019, the Virginia-based Danville Regional Foundation (DRF) set a new strategic vision—to help more people believe in the transformation of the region and embrace their role in achieving it. A region formerly dominated by tobacco and textiles, the Dan River Region has made great strides toward reinvention. DRF recognized that increasing collaboration and building the civic capacity of the region would be critical to its economic transformation.
Reports and Publications
Policy Engagement by Local Health Funders
Policies made at the local level have a tremendous influence on people’s health. Our new publication explores how health funders inform and influence local policy decisions that play a critical role in shaping community health and well-being.
Beyond Grantmaking: Health Foundations as Policy Change Agents
This GIH report seeks to help the field of health philanthropy maximize its strategic potential and minimize the difficulties inherent in taking on new roles by both describing ways funders are directly engaging in policy change efforts and distilling the key lessons learned from these experiences.
Health in All Policies: What It Is and What It Means for Health Grantmaking
Health in All Policies (HiAP) is an emerging approach to public policymaking, grounded in recognition that the most important determinants of health are outside the reach of the formal health care system. This Issue Focus describes the HiAP concept, its history and evolution, and explores how this approach is poised to influence priorities and programs in the field of health philanthropy.