by Heather B. Weiss and M. Elena Lopez
Harvard Family Research Project

This article is abstracted from a report by the same title. Commissioned by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and authored by the Harvard University Family Research Project, the authors surveyed 19 foundations, including 17 of the top 30 funders for children and youth. The resulting report examines current grantmaking trends, emphasizing how many foundations are rethinking their roles as risk takers, partners, and supporters of innovation; describing strategies to improve the well-being of America's children; and laying out a series of difficult challenges and trade-offs as foundations chart their role into the next century.

1. What is the pattern of funding by age group, level, and sector?
   
   
2. What are the key lessons from past grantmaking that are informing future work?
   
   
3. What are the major trends in grantmaking strategies?
   
   
4. How are foundations reorganizing to develop their new strategies and accomplish their goals?
   
   
5. What are the gaps, opportunities, and challenges for those who want to improve the status and well-being of children and youth?

Past and Emerging Funding Patterns
As a backdrop for the examination of funding patterns and trends, we asked the respondents to provide rough estimates of their overall funding for children and youth and to give us their judgments about the stability of their foundation's funding commitments across a number of areas. Our findings suggest the following results:

• All 19 foundations expect to sustain or increase the high priority of funding for children and youth in the future.
  
  
• Several foundations have commited at least 50 percent of their resources to children and youth.
  
  
• None expect a decrease of payout for children and families in the next three years. Eight expect to increase it, and three of the biggest funders are uncertain due to major changes in leadership.

In dollar terms, the 19 foundations for which we have data together committed roughly $569 million in 1996.* Although this overall funding picture suggests some possibility of future stability and growth in the funding for children and youth, there is also potential instability, given the uncertainty about the priorities of several of the wealthiest funders who have made substantial contributions for children and youth in the past. Six important patterns emerge with respect to funding.

1 Foundations are emphasizing larger, longer, multi-component, often place-based, and community-driven initiatives designed to achieve more impact and more learning to improve outcomes for children and youth.

Both the national and regional foundations surveyed now allocate a very large percentage of their funding to the local level. Several have begun major local and/or place-based initiatives or seek to bring new and under-represented groups to existing place-based initiatives. This trend is having a wide and powerful ripple effect across programming areas.


2 Foundations appear to be placing less emphasis on the zero- to five-year-old period. This seems to be the case despite the feeling of many in foundations and in the early childhood field that there is a serious need to build the infrastructure for provision of quality early care and education--and that there are now significant opportunities to leverage change in this area.

Most of the foundations included in this study direct the majority of their funding to the 6- to 20-year-old age group. While most maintain some grantmaking in the zero to five group, our review suggests that much of the activity in this area is focused at the local, regional, or state rather than the national level.

3 Youth development is an area of substantial interest in and of itself, and because it is increasingly a bridge for more crosscutting work within the foundations. In the youth area, there is currently widespread concern about building the national infrastructure and intermediaries to increase public will and understanding, inform public policy, and strengthen the capacity for scale-up of the largely community-based work to date.

Most foundations surveyed have stable commitments to youth development, education, and school-to-work initiatives for youth ages 6 - 20. Several informants noted an unfortunate tendency to separate education and youth development grantmaking within and across foundations. However, a number are building bridges between their education and youth development grantmaking in an effort to build more comprehensive and integrated strategies that link schools and other youth-serving community organizations, and, thereby, improve outcomes.

As an emerging field, youth development has a shared set of operating principles emphasizing positive, asset-based youth development and youth participation in initiative design and community-building ("Community Youth Development"). Three examples of how this has infused grantmaking, include:

• Kellogg's long-term Youth Initiatives Program, including their current efforts to work with community foundations to involve youth in community grantmaking
  
  
• Ford's support for the Washington, D.C.-based Funds for The Communities Future Organization, a youth-initiated effort engaged in community improvement activities, school-based leadership training, and mentoring of young people
  
  
• Heinz's use of neighborhood youth advisory councils to build youth leadership into their new Youth Places initiative in Pittsburgh's highest-risk neighborhoods.

Youth development funders agree that the field needs to "move to the next level," away from the bottom-up strategy to attention on infrastructure and capacity building, in order to sustain youth work and focus attention on positive youth development. Part of moving to the next level will entail building a positive youth development research base and reducing the fragmentation of this field. While much past research has been problem- or deficit-focused, there is now a substantial need for more research-based understanding of what promotes positive youth development as well as more evaluations of youth programs to increase the knowledge about best practices.

4 Past national foundation funding for education has focused on systemic school reform based on standards aligned with curriculum, teacher training, and professional development and accountability. Several informants argue that this should be followed up with a focus on practice, teaching, and learning; and the capacity building, knowledge development, and dissemination and public engagement efforts necessary to build on the standards, increase public support for education reform, and improve outcomes.

Several national foundations created the infrastructure that now underpins standards-driven reform (for example, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and the New Standards Project) and, as a result, they were successful in changing the nature of national and state policy discussions. Some funders suggest that this reform approach and funding strategy were less successful in changing what happens in schools and classrooms than in policy discussions, and as a result, are rethinking the future directions for their grantmaking in this area. Several are also investing in comprehensive place-based school reform, involving teachers, administrators, parents, and community.

Education funders are struggling anew with ways to create better connections among practice, research, and policy. Several point to a troubling gap in the knowledge-practice connection. They envision the connection ideally as a two-way relationship whereby researchers learn from, truly inform, and add value to practice; and practitioners enrich research and increase its relevance and opportunities for application. Many foundations are beginning to create a dialogue across the two cultures of research and practice, and their experiences and lessons will likely have implications beyond education grantmaking.

5 At present, relatively little funding is directed at the state level, and foundations are just beginning to consider the overall and direct implications of devolution for their grantmaking for children and youth. There are no clear strategies for how to build state-level and intergovernmental public, civic, and non-profit capacity to handle devolution of responsibility for key child, youth, and family programs and policies.

The vast majority of grantmaking for children and youth is directed at either the local or national levels. Nonetheless, foundations have provided grants in states to scale-up best practices and policies; to create leverage for substantial policy changes at the state level; and to build state capacity and leadership around devolved responsibilities in early care and education. Given political and administrative turnover and term limits for elected officials, several national and regional foundations noted the difficulty and complexity of working at the state level on major initiatives and reforms. They also stressed, however, the necessity of building public sector capacity because of the devolution of responsibility for child- and youth-related issues to state and local levels.

6 Foundations continue to invest in community-focused prevention and do not direct much funding to the deep-end of the service continuum (child welfare and juvenile justice). There is growing awareness that these latter services cannot be ignored in the broader movement toward more community-based work.

Due to the scale, complexity, and seeming intractability of child welfare and juvenile justice issues, funding for deep-end services has not been high in the past. Several foundations that have historically invested in these areas, however, continue to support efforts to strengthen or reform these services. As one program officer noted, children and youth involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems are among those that communities would most like to involve and serve more effectively in their youth activities. There is significant potential benefit to thinking through new approaches to community-based foster care and the preparation for the return of juvenile offenders within the philosophical framework and services offered by the positive youth development model. One example of funding in this area is directed to the Child Welfare League of America and the National Network for Youth, to work with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to infuse positive youth development, knowledge, and philosophy into child welfare practice. This strategy of infusing the youth development approach into new areas, along with experiences in community-based work, may change the nature and framing of deep-end services and suggest innovative ways for foundations to leverage change in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.

Key Lessons from Past Grantmaking That Are Informing Current and Future Work
The emphasis on strategic planning and the growing pressure to focus grantmaking for greater impact have resulted in increased efforts to learn from past successes and failures. Strategic planning has emphasized specification and clarity about goals and outcomes and the strategies to achieve them. Foundations are rethinking the organization of their grantmaking for children and youth and their theories for field building and scale-up of successful programs, policies, and practices. The four key lessons and emerging theories are described below.

1 Recognizing that the interconnected problems of children, especially disadvantaged ones, require comprehensive solutions, and frustrated with the limited impacts of piecemeal approaches, several foundations within our study are now concentrating many of their resources on long-term, comprehensive, place-based community strategies designed to improve outcomes for children and youth.

Arguing that categorical and fragmented approaches will not work, and that it is critical to understand and support development in the context of neighborhood and community, these foundations are developing complex and multi-faceted local initiatives to maximize learning and impact. Foundations are moving away from categorical to more holistic and comprehensive approaches in their grantmaking. Further, some are reshaping their internal organizational structures, grant solicitation processes, and review procedures to facilitate these approaches. Diagram 1 illustrates the way this grantmaking appears to be changing.

 

Diagram 1 Organization of Grantmaking for Children and Youth

The first approach (Diagram 1, Figure 1), "multiple and categorical services," refers to the simultaneous funding of different and unconnected program areas. Each area develops its own strategy but remains isolated from other program areas. Key informants recognize that this pattern of grantmaking can have limitations because the issues concerning children and youth are complex and often interrelated, and therefore require more linked or integrated policies and services.

As a result, some foundations are moving to the pattern of "multiple and linked services" (Diagram 1, Figure 2), which represents an attempt to build more comprehensive approaches and services to support child and youth development. This may take the form of linking program areas (for example, youth development and arts), or developing continuous and thematic grants (for example, linking home, school, and early childhood education), or adopting place-based strategies.

An even more comprehensive pattern of grantmaking (Diagram 1, Figure 3), the "integrated infrastructure" pattern, is designed to build the infrastructure for field building, scale-up, and sustainability. It consists of creating linkages among service delivery, knowledge development, communication and dissemination, and public engagement components essential for long-term, scaled-up initiatives. Several foundations have begun to reorganize to facilitate this more integrated approach.

2 In order to facilitate more comprehensive approaches, a number of foundations are reorganizing in major ways.

This reorganization takes the form of realignment of staff to facilitate more crosscutting and integrated grantmaking, and to encourage more substantive and functional linkages as illustrated in Figures 2 and 3 (see page XX).

3 Foundations emphasize that knowledge development, dissemination, and continuous learning are crucial elements for effective grantmaking for children and youth.

With one exception, every foundation reported that evaluation is now a more important element of their grantmaking for children and youth than was the case in the past. At the same time, many reported frustration that available knowledge is rarely used to inform policy or practice. Therefore, many foundations are building communication and dissemination into their grantmaking strategies.

4 Foundations are reassessing their own theories of what is necessary to scale-up and sustain effective programs, ideas, policies, and practices. Many are moving from a linear or sequential to more complex theories of scale-up and sustainability.

Over the past decade, foundations have struggled with issues at the heart of their grantmaking, around the scale-up and sustainability of effective programs, practices, or policies. All are working to become more strategic and intentional with respect to how they use their limited resources to build the will and capacity to scale-up and sustain effective programs, ideas, policies, or practices.

Foundations are also rethinking their basic ideas and assumptions about how to create and sustain change in order to improve the status and well-being of children and youth on a more widespread basis. In the past, much grantmaking was based on the common theory of linear sequential change.

Now, however, many foundations are rethinking this linear model, as described in the following section.

Major Trends in Grantmaking Strategies
Based on their own critiques of their past grantmaking experiences and their strategic planning work, foundations are building larger child and youth initiatives around more comprehensive and simultaneous theories of change. They are more likely to try to factor in elements they believe will increase the chances of learning, scale-up, and sustainability. These larger, complex strategies are illustrated in Diagram 2.

 

Diagram 2 The Simultaneous and Multicomponent Theory of Field-Building and Scale-Up in Grantmaking for Children and Youth

The theory shown in Diagram 2 is that simultaneous and multi-component strategies (X1) will lead changes in the operating environment (X2), which will create the demand, conditions, and capacity for scale-up and sustainability of programs, policies, and problem solving (X3).

This newly emerging theory of change draws from our informants' descriptions of the strategic thinking behind some of their recent or new initiatives. While this simultaneous and multi-component model is an amalgam of several foundations' strategies, we believe that it both represents and can be used to further specify the particular combinations of activities that many of them are developing to increase the impact of their grantmaking for children and youth. In fact, specification of the model in the first draft of this paper has stimulated several foundations to articulate their own theory and further refine the model presented here.

How Are Foundations Reorganizing to
Develop New Strategies and Accomplish Their Goals?
Many foundations now make some effort to do more crosscutting grantmaking. These efforts range from abolition of subject area domains in favor of reintegration on functional or thematic lines, to the institution of more brown bag lunches to stimulate "cross-talk" within categorical organizational cultures. Most foundations are looking for natural areas of overlap to begin to break down what several called the "fief mentality." Foundations are also exploring ways to better integrate their evaluation and communication staff and work from the outset into their strategy development and grantmaking.

Foundations are trying a number of approaches to create more synergy and crosscutting work across the major substantive areas of their grantmaking. Examples include links between youth development and philanthropy and volunteerism units, emphasizing youth service as a key in both community and youth development; explorations of links between domestic and international youth work to prepare youth for world citizenship; and growing emphasis on communicating lessons learned to multiple audiences--including foundation staff, practitioners, the public, policymakers, and researchers.

The shift from linear to more simultaneous and multi-component theories of field building and scale-up is challenging foundations to develop complex, integrated, and continuous knowledge development, evaluation, and communication strategies. The simultaneous and multi-component approach explicitly emphasizes the continuous development and use of more types of knowledge for a broader group of stakeholders and a greater ranger of purposes.

What Are the Current Gaps, Opportunities, and Challenges for Funders Who Want to Improve the Status and Well-Being of Children and Youth?
Foundations are raising the bar both with respect to the goals and impacts they hope to achieve with their grantmaking and their own learning and self-scrutiny. As a result of this process, they identified a number of tensions and questions, which are listed below.

1 There is growing tension between the need to focus grantmaking, develop multi-component initiatives, and articulate and stick to an overall theory and strategy for change on the one hand, and the need to be flexible, opportunistic, and responsive to lessons learned, new problems, and to the emerging needs of fields or communities, on the other.

2 Foundations moving to more intensive, local, place-based grantmaking identify the potential benefits of deeper learning and improved outcomes. They also note the potential risks of the lack of generalizable lessons, and, given their limited resources, possible trade-offs in building the capacity for scale-up of successful efforts.

3 Uncertainties and tensions arise as foundations emphasize learning and crosscutting work within their own cultures and attempt to encourage more productive interchange and information flow among researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and the public. The theories of change underlying much of the current work, including the simultaneous and multi-component one described earlier in this paper, depend on better connections among research, practice, and policy. However, no one underestimates the deep differences among the cultures of those who undertake these activities, nor the difficulty of creating productive relationships among them.

4 There is a need for foundations interested in increasing the well-being of children and youth to begin conversations on how to work together on a strategic, not just project basis, while at the same time, maximizing the benefits of different points of view and avoiding a "monopoly of ideas."

Foundations are one of the few American institutions that can step back from the immediate fray, take the long-term view, and look at the ways in which larger trends are likely to influence the next generation of children and youth. They also have the power to convene diverse groups for discussion, as part of their public education role. As such, they are well positioned to play a critical leadership role identifying new issues and doing the exploratory work necessary to surface and frame them for public discussion, for research, and for action. This leadership and think tank role should not be forgotten as foundations work on their chosen areas and strategies; it is critical both to guide their philanthropy and to provoke much-needed national discussion about what we want for our children and youth. The knowledge that foundations have accumulated and can stimulate is also a strategic resource for this discussion. It is vital to understanding past lessons and for generating new perspectives on recurring issues. Equipped with this knowledge, foundations can work together to initiate, inform, and build the broader national conversation about the issues facing children and youth--locally and globally--in the twenty-first century.