You're the CEO of a community foundation, and your community faces one of the following situations: Regional anti-growth and pro-growth advocates are clashing, to the detriment of smart growth efforts. A prominent politician is trying to organize community leaders to address rising crime. Skirmishes between city and county officials have brought efforts to build a homeless shelter to a standstill. The region's economy is tanking and most players are too stuck in yesterday's grudges and skepticism to make any headway.

What is the role of the community foundation here?

Increasingly called upon to help address local needs, community foundations have been stepping into a new role: community catalyst. The phrase has found a permanent place in the community foundation world's lexicon. Many questions remain however about what catalyst activity looks like in practice and how to do it effectively. What skills and capacity do foundations need to do this work well? What are examples of successful efforts? How can such catalytic activity best be supported? To help address these questions, a new report, Community Catalyst: How Community Foundations Are Acting as Agents for Local Change (PDF file), is designed for community foundations interested in learning more about this work and for private foundations interested in supporting them.

Increasingly called upon to help address local needs, community foundations have been stepping into a new role: community catalyst.

By commissioning a broad evaluation of The James Irvine Foundation's Community Foundations Initiative (CFI)-a seven-year effort begun in 1995 to support seven California community foundations seeking to accelerate growth, build capacities and generally become more effective in serving their communities-to identify what worked, what didn't and why, everyone involved in the process learned how to enhance the impact of philanthropic work. Community Catalyst tells the story of how four local foundations helped their communities meet challenges and make progress, and it explores what they learned about how to do this important work.

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Statewide budget choices have a direct connection to the economic prospects and quality of life for all Californians, and especially for low- and moderate-income residents. Yet budget deliberations have become a closed and highly technical set of negotiations from which the public is largely excluded.

Californians, generally, appear to have little understanding of how federal, state, and local budget and economic issues and choices are related, along with an inadequate understanding of where State money is spent, and how local governments and school districts are funded. Moreover, there appears to be little understanding of where the leverage points are in economic and budget policy for improving the economic prospects for low- and moderate-income residents.

For example, nearly all economists agree that federal employment policies have the most impact on the wages and employment status of low-wage workers, yet this connection is often ignored in the ongoing debate about how to improve the economic prospects for low- and moderate-income residents. Since full employment policies benefit most residents through raising incomes and spending, greater focus on this connection could help build consensus across party and ideological lines.

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Today in California and across the United States, low-income students go to college at less than half the rate of high-income students. Why? Differences in academic preparation certainly account in large part for the disparity in college enrollment between low-income and high-income students. But its not the complete story. Low-income students who get As enroll in college at the same rate as high-income students who get Ds, and an organization called College Summit is trying to change that. Since most low-income students are first-generation college-goers, someone else has to fill the role for them that college-experienced parents fulfill for their children.

Our mission is to ensure that every student who can make it in college, makes it to college.—J.B. Schramm, founder & CEO

In an effort to help change this in California, The James Irvine Foundation has provided funding to College Summit, a national nonprofit organization that seeks to increase the college enrollment rate of low-income students. J.B. Schramm, College Summits founder and CEO, worked as a Freshman Adviser at Harvard University while in graduate school, and he knew that admissions officers were eager to identify talent for admission from low-income families. Yet every year, through his work at a local nonprofit organization, he observed first-hand how dozens of such youth were prepared for college but were not going. Schramm became determined to find a way to help admissions officers look at these students and see their untapped potential. So he enlisted the best writing instructor had met at Harvard and the finest youth worker he knew. Together they designed a system to help bright, low-income students, who, with the right support during the critical transition from high school to college, could propel their lives (and their communities) in positive directions and College Summit was propelled into action.

The College Summit Workshop is the organizations primary tool to catalyze change in the college-going culture of low- income communities. This intensive, four-day experience, repeated dozens of times each summer, brings students, schools, colleges, and community partners together toward the common goal of ensuring that low-income youth have the opportunity to attend college. Usually mid-performing students, these incoming seniors complete their college applications well ahead of deadlines and are trained to serve as peer leaders during their senior year. High school teachers are instructed in college application management, which they take back to their schools in the fall. Colleges get involved by hosting the workshops and showcasing their campuses to a new pool of talent. And community leaders serve as writing coaches, employing College Summits proven method to help students, who don't believe they can write well, to prepare well-crafted application essays.

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Americans have always felt ambivalent about the role of religion in public life, yet its influence in shaping policy can be traced from the beginnings of the Republic. Although the Constitution provides a framework for debate about the role of religion and public life, it leaves ample room for interpretation. Today we live in a time when more and more Americans feel alienated by or excluded from public life. After decades of secularism, religion is now recognized as a powerful force in public life, for good or possibly ill, from Iraq to the White House.

Recently, a growing number of policymakers have noted the potential of faith-based organizations to provide social services, heal lives, and strengthen communities. According to a 2001 report prepared by the Urban Institute for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, more than half of all congregations and many other faith-based organizations provide some form of human services. Religious beliefs, teachings, and values prepare and support people in civic life. Yet that is only part of the movement. Faith-based institutions also offer concrete resources such as facilities, funds, and pre-existing social networks. From a secular perspective, therefore, religious faith and religious institutions are useful for increasing and sustaining civic engagement.

Written by Rainbow Research, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization specializing in evaluation and effectiveness products and services, What's Faith Got to Do With It?, the initial report on the Irvine Foundations experience with its Organized Religion portfolio suggests that faith-based institutions can make significant contributions to the broad field of civic engagement. Faith-based civic engagement projects, working with congregations and their leaders, offer promise to renew the idea of mediating institutions for the twenty-first century. Unlike social service agencies based on program delivery models, congregations have "unprogrammed" space in which participants or members can decide together what ought to be done. In the first instance, people tend to see themselves as clients or recipients. In the second, people more easily see themselves as people with agency, influenced by shared values, acting together in public.

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Imagine for a moment that you are a staff member of a community foundation, and a program officer from a private foundation calls with a tantalizing offer of funding for a special community initiative on after-school programs. Or, that you are approached by a group of community members who are concerned about problems facing the local economy, and they ask your community foundation to take on the issue as a major community project. How do you choose the best course of action?

Many community foundations find it hard to resist such opportunities and run into trouble because they rush into initiativesrather than approaching these opportunities with more care and purpose and reflecting on their readiness and commitment to carry out such efforts.

"Eyes Wide Open" provides simple guidelines and a helpful checklist.

"Eyes Wide Open" presents a simple tool in the form of guidelines and a helpful checklist for community foundations to use in the important due diligence that should come before giving any initiative the green light. The third in a series, this report comes from the experience and evaluation of The James Irvine Foundation's Community Foundations Initiative (CFI), a multi-year effort that has supported participating California community foundations seeking to accelerate growth, build capacities, and generally become more effective philanthropies.

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Politics in California has never been a hotter topic, and it is more important than ever that all California citizens vote. The Easy Voter Guide project is based on the simple premise that all people should have access to user-friendly information to help them get involved in our democratic process. The community-designed guide provides nonpartisan information about how to vote and what is on the ballot for traditionally underserved audiences as well as for the general public.

The guide is clear, concise, and easy-to-read, and makes complex material understandable to a broad range of Californians. It is translated into multiple languages and contains information about candidates for statewide offices; simple explanations of statewide ballot measures; and basic information on registering and voting.

The community-designed Easy Voter Guide is clear, concise, and easy-to-read.

Our research indicates that new voters and busy voters need a simple nonpartisan orientation to what is on the ballot. We believe information in accessible language is a right for all voters, says Susan S. Clark of Common Knowledge, who is director of the Easy Voter Guide project. The guide is one of several community-designed tools we provide to community organizations and educational institutions across the State to help address the why, how, and what of voting.

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The James Irvine Foundation has a long and distinguished history of supporting the arts, and the importance of continued arts funding in California became evident through the Foundations in-depth research and evaluation of statewide needs during its recent strategic planning process. Irvine is emerging from this process with a renewed commitment to expanding opportunity for Californians and a strong desire to achieve increased focus and impact in its grantmaking moving forward. It has selected three areas of concentration: Youth, Arts, and California Perspectives (which will focus on research and information about significant issues facing the State and its regions). Each of these focus areas builds on Irvines experience and prepares the Foundation to augment its service to the people of California now and into the future.

Irvine is dedicated to enriching an artistic and cultural climate which promotes an active and healthy participation in the arts.

As one of the largest statewide funders in the arts, Irvine will continue to play an important role in the field by retaining a relatively broad scope. The main advantage that Irvine brings to grantmaking in the arts is that, after 66 years of funding in the State, the Foundation has gained a thorough understanding of the field. Irvine hopes to achieve the greatest leverage through a strategy that strengthens key elements in the interrelated arts system, particularly at a time when the field is fragmented, under-resourced, and undergoing significant change. Arts organizations, responsible for providing the institutional capacity to create, preserve, and present cultural programs for the publics benefit, are in a constant struggle to raise funds, attract audiences, and secure the best artists and work. At the same time, individual artists who may require years of dedicated training have tenuous institutional affiliations with little guarantee of the sustainability required to support their ongoing artistic work. And, as we have seen recently, government funding and public policies supporting the arts are often responsive to economic conditions.

This challenging context only underscores the importance of the Irvine Foundation maintaining a vigorous and engaged presence in the California arts field.

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In a tough economic climate, regions like California's Central Valley are seeing fewer dollars than they did a few years ago, and local nonprofits are struggling to support services and related capacity-building efforts critical to the infrastructure in rapidly growing areas. The Center for Philanthropy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California recently released a report detailing the philanthropic activity in the Valley over the period 1996-1999.

Philanthropic Activity in California's Central Valley: 1996-1999 is the first part of a larger study examining philanthropic trends in the region over the six years from 1996-2002 in an effort to document philanthropic resources into the region as well as the region's own philanthropic capacity. The purpose of this study is to inform those who are investing or might invest in this important region of California, as well as those within the region working to build the capacity of the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors.

The Central Valley experienced a significant increase in philanthropic activity over the 1996-1999 period. The growth in the number of grants awarded into the Valley and the expanding philanthropic capacity of the area are welcome by-and new to-local nonprofits. The struggle is in how to sustain and increase these funding efforts. The trends in the region mirror, in general, those within the State and across the nation.

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Most philanthropic organizations, such as foundations like The James Irvine Foundation, exist primarily to award grants, but there are additional resources that they may provide to the communities they serve and to advance their mission and programmatic priorities.

As an extension of Irvine's grantmaking approach and mission to serve the people of California, the Foundation has designated 2000 square feet of its offices in San Francisco to meeting space (the Foundation also has offices in Fresno and Los Angeles). Named in honor of former long-time Chairman Morris M. Doyle, these conference rooms were designed to provide maximum flexibility and accommodate groups up to 50 people at a time. While the facility is used for meetings initiated and planned by the Foundation, it also is available for use by Foundation grantees and other outside groups. More information about the Doyle Conference Rooms and the policies that govern their use are available in the brochure "Conference & Meeting Space at The James Irvine Foundation: Sharing an asset with the community" (pdf file | 292 KB).

Another benefit is that the space allows the Foundation to help organizations and projects that we would not otherwise be able to support given our focused areas of funding and finite resources. In 2003, Irvine provided the space to both grantees and non-grantees, such as:

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The following article was written by Estela Mara Benisimon, Ed.D., Director, Center for Urban Education and Professor of Higher Education, and Donald Polkinghorne, Ph.D., Professor and Fahmy and Donna Attallah Chair in Humanistic Psychology. The article first appeared in the inaugural issue of "Urban Ed," the magazine of the Rossier School of Education at USC.

The Diversity Scorecard project is a process for developing awareness of inequities in educational outcomes developed in partnership with 14 urban colleges in Southern California and with the support of The James Irvine Foundation.

Participants in the Diversity Scorecard Project.

The Diversity Scorecard came about from the realization that the "diversity agenda" has been primarily about access to predominantly white institutions. Yet in California, as in many other states, urban colleges, private and public, two- and four-year, have served as the main entry point into higher education for students of color. For institutions like California State University at Los Angeles, Whittier College, and Los Angeles City College-all institutions that are part of the project-the challenge is not how to become more diverse, because they already are. The challenge for these colleges is how to translate diversity in the student body into equity in educational outcomes.

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