Strengthening capacity among civic organizations and public officials to foster inclusive public decision making.

Broad civic participation is critical for effective public policy decision making, particularly in a state as large and diverse as California. Yet California’s mechanisms for understanding and responding to public concerns have not kept pace with society’s growing complexity or with the best practices of effective civic engagement.

Public officials, community groups and residents can all exercise important roles in fostering more inclusive public policymaking. Toward this end, we fund projects to support public officials in implementing inclusive public decision-making practices. We also fund organizations that create opportunities for large numbers of traditionally underrepresented communities to engage in public decisions and shape public policies that affect their lives. We are particularly interested in establishing structures for ongoing involvement of residents in public decision making.

Our civic engagement grantmaking focuses on the following three areas:

• Public Decision-making Training and Support — We fund projects to support public officials in creating and implementing inclusive public decision-making practices. Such projects could entail trainings or technical assistance, research and dissemination about effective practices, facilitating connections between leading civic groups and public officials, as well as other strategies.
• Public Decision-making Inclusion and New Practices — We fund organizations working at a significant scale to involve residents in shaping public policies that affect their lives. We are particularly interested in supporting efforts to establish structures or processes for ongoing involvement of residents in public decision making. Examples of such structures might include resident advisory committees, forums for public deliberations and online opportunities for two-way information-sharing among public officials and residents. We also support efforts to enhance the capacity of leading organizations to create and work in coalitions and networks for greater impact.
• New Research and Communications — We fund research, analyses and surveys that improve understanding of the status of public involvement in decision making and strategies to increase effective public involvement. Additionally, we support the dissemination of best practices in civic engagement to civic organizations and public officials.

We have one ongoing initiative in civic engagement and two initiatives that recently concluded:

• The Families Improving Education Initiative supports San Joaquin Valley and Inland Empire organizations that are involving families — particularly those in low-income, ethnic and immigrant communities — in educational policymaking concerning their local schools. The initiative’s timeframe is December 2006 to June 2012.
• Strengthening Organizations to Mobilize Californians was an initiative to enhance the management and governance capacities of Irvine grantees who help underrepresented communities participate in public decision making. The initiative’s timeframe was June 2007 to December 2010. Read a report sharing highlights of the initiative.
• The California Votes Initiative was an initiative that supported organizations that encourage voter participation among infrequent voters in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino. The initiative’s grantmaking timeframe was January 2006 to June 2009. Read a report summarizing our findings about effective voter outreach practices.

Supported Activities

While full proposals are accepted by invitation only, we want to be clear about how we decide on which projects to fund.

We support projects throughout the state that:

• Create opportunities for large numbers of diverse residents to engage in public decisions and shape public policies that affect their lives
• Work with diverse residents to institute new structures for sustained involvement in public decision making
• Assess the impact of these new structures on public decision-making processes and outcomes
• Provide information and technical assistance to public officials to encourage more inclusive decision-making processes
• Communicate best practices about successful public involvement strategies with community-based organizations, public officials and others
• Document changes in public decision making practices
• Integrate with our Governance Reform efforts

Grant Inquiries

While we accept unsolicited inquiries from grantseekers, we are able to fund very few of them. Learn more about submitting a letter of inquiry. Full proposals are accepted by invitation only.