OBSERVATIONS - August 28, 2007

Issues of Social Equity: The Space Between

There is widespread agreement among social activists, researchers, policymakers, philanthropists, and even the public about the leading domestic concerns in this country – health care, education, housing, poverty to name a few. And considerable amounts of research, advocacy, and funding continue to be directed toward understanding and ameliorating these problems. But how much do we understand, or even acknowledge, the vast common ground between these issues and the ways they interact with each other? By actively addressing that common ground, can we develop strategies for research and action that emphasize collaboration between actors in these various fields?

These were some of the questions that motivated the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and The California Endowment to bring together a diverse group of funders in July. Some earlier work on racial and ethnic health disparities had led to conversations about the need to address the myriad influences on disparities – including factors like community environment and socioeconomic status, in addition to health care – through collaboration among organizations with expertise and influence in each of these areas. Given the role philanthropies play in framing and shining a spotlight on issues, directing funding to particular areas, and building thought-leadership and momentum behind specific approaches, we thought it would be useful to bring together a small group of funders for an informal conversation about cross-topic, multi-sector collaboration.

TThe group quickly agreed that the common ground between our different areas of focus, and the ultimate goal of any such collaboration, is essentially about social equity – equal opportunity to access good health care, to get a good education, to live in a safe neighborhood, and to make a decent living. Although the participating philanthropies approach the goal of equity through different frameworks, we recognized the impact that each of our areas has on the others (for example, the ability to attend and participate actively in school activities can be hampered by unmet health care needs). We also recognized that if funders – a critical source of financial, informational, and motivational resources for activity in these areas – were to support collaboration among ourselves and among our grantees, progress across all our areas of focus could be accelerated.

Of course, if this were easy to achieve, it would already be the status quo. And it is not. While collaboration across topics or sectors does take place at times, most philanthropies’ traditional approaches are specialized to certain niches, “branded” to ensure recognition of the individual philanthropy’s investment in and commitment to an issue, and often bounded by time limits too short to achieve significant progress against intractable social ills. In addition, depth may have greater credibility than breadth. Grantees’ own missions and structures may also not be conducive to collaboration across topics (which, in classic chicken and egg fashion, may be driven by the structure of the funding streams available to them). The problem is, because these issues are intimately intertwined, attention to only one piece of the puzzle will by definition result in an incomplete picture.

While this meeting just scratched the surface of potential approaches to or opportunities for collaboration across topics and sectors, it did reveal a great deal of interest in this notion among participating funders – and the need for greater incentives for and evaluation of collaboration efforts. We recognized that current progress is not adequate given the extent (or growth) of these problems, and that philanthropies and grantees alike may need to step out of our comfort zones – our silos – to realize real synergy and to accelerate progress.

A more formal summary of this meeting will be available on this website in September and will describe the most important themes and potential next steps identified by the participants.

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