Funders’ Role in Promoting Collaboration to Improve Equity for Children, Families, and Communities

July 18, 2007, Princeton, New Jersey

Co-Sponsored by:
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The California Endowment, and Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy

Meeting Overview:
This meeting brought together a small group of funders from diverse fields to explore how organizations – individually and collectively – can cross the boundaries of topic-specific work on education, poverty, community development, and health to maximize impact. The overall aim was to discuss the common ground between these issue areas and to consider how collaboration between funders and among grantees could accelerate improvements in social equity and well-being among the nation's underserved communities.

Goals:

• Share perspectives, ideas, and experiences on opportunities for collaboration among organizations with diverse areas of focus (i.e., education, poverty/community economic development, and health).
• Understand successes and limitations of funders' current approaches, addressing different issues without frequent cross-topic or cross-sector collaboration.
• Identify concrete opportunities for organizations to "cross borders" across topics and sectors to reach common goals – and what would help support this.
  

Materials:

Meeting Summary

Agenda