A free webinar on September 10 will share findings and recommendations from a report we recently released about the benefits of dual enrollment courses, which allow high school students to earn college credit. Although historically geared toward high-achieving students, the report found that dual enrollment courses can also benefit underachieving students and those underrepresented in higher education, especially when these offerings have a career focus. The webinar will outline recommendations for education practitioners and will also address policy matters related to dual enrollment programs.

If the demonstrated benefits of career-focused dual enrollment are to reach more disadvantaged students and have lasting impact on California education, state policymakers and community leaders will need to reduce current barriers to program development and student participation. Based on the experience and outcomes attained in high schools and colleges across California, here are three high-value policy recommendations:

One of the most fundamental values we hold at Irvine is to share what we’re learning. We want our colleagues — both nonprofits and other funders — to be able to apply the most promising ideas, approaches and strategies to their work – and to also avoid the ones that aren’t working. We will be putting this value into action at the upcoming Council on Foundations 2012 Fall Conference for Community Foundations.

We know that all community foundations want to grow assets and create positive changes in their communities, and Irvine will be hosting a special workshop to share strategies on how to make this happen. The workshop is built around the lessons and approaches developed over six years of intensive work to help a set of emerging community foundations in California become stronger leaders in their communities as part of our Community Foundations Initiative II. Between 2005 and 2011, this group grew their collective assets 12 percent annually (from $73 million to $131 million), compared to 7 percent for their peers nationwide. At the same time, they increased their grantmaking, awarding $4 million more in grants each and every year for projects in their communities.

We began sharing some of the lessons and tools from this work in 2007, with our Growing Smarter report, and over the years, we have hosted sold-out webinars and conference programs in partnership with the Council on Foundations to disseminate this knowledge to the field.

A persistent tension in philanthropic work is balancing a long-term commitment toward key programmatic goals with the need to remain sufficiently agile and adaptable in a rapidly changing environment. In our experience at Irvine, striking the right balance between these two potentially conflicting approaches can ensure we are having the greatest impact with the resources we are privileged to steward.

Eight years ago, when Irvine’s Board of Directors adopted our current grantmaking programs, we agreed that the Foundation needed to be committed to these core programs for the long term, which we defined then as at least a decade. In view of the ambitious nature of the goals in our Arts, California Democracyand Youth programs, we knew that a long-term orientation was essential. At the same time, we believed then — and still do today — that, at some point, reflecting on our progress, taking stock of the changing California landscape and considering the implications would be prudent.

As we plan for 2013 and beyond, Irvine’s board and staff are engaged in this important process. We have resisted characterizing our work as a “strategic planning” process because we are not intending a wholesale shift in priorities and focus, nor do we plan to divert significant attention from our current activities. Indeed, as a result of an institutional commitment to ongoing learning and refinement, each of our programs has undergone thoughtful, strategic reviews in recent years, and we have adapted our strategies accordingly. At the same time, approaching a decade of work in these three areas affords us an opportunity to ensure that Irvine remains responsive in the face of rapidly changing opportunities and challenges in California, all with an eye toward maximizing impact.

I have written before about the importance of developing an honest and engaged partnership between nonprofit boards and staff leadership. Unfortunately, we sometimes see stark reminders of the tragic costs when such a partnership is lacking. The Penn State tragedy is such a case. I recently authored an op-ed in the Chronicle of Philanthropy to encourage nonprofit leaders to learn from this tragedy and do everything in their power to ensure that it never happens again. The full text of that op-ed is reprinted below. You can read it on the Chronicle website here. I welcome your comments.

Posted on The Chronicle of Philanthropy website on July 16, 2012

Damage Done by a Culture of Deference: Leadership Lessons From the Penn State Tragedy
By James E. Canales

The child-abuse scandal that unfolded at Penn State University over the past decade and half is a tragedy of epic proportions. Nobody can disagree with that after the report last week by the former FBI director Louis Freeh provided clear evidence that the crimes committed by Jerry Sandusky could have and should have been averted.

What is particularly distressing in reading the 267-page report is how the lessons nonprofit leaders should have learned from previous scandals continue to go unheeded.

Building leadership is one of Irvine’s core values, and one of the ways we try to realize that value is through the Fund for Leadership Advancement. Started in 2005, the fund supports the development of individual leaders as a way to increase the impact of existing Irvine grantee organizations. Although the fund has been on hiatus while we conducted a program review, we are restarting this leadership development initiative and sharing what we’ve learned from our work in this area.

As we reached a critical mass of more than 50 FLA grants, we decided to take stock of FLA and consider updates that would insure that the program takes into account the economic and social circumstances our grantees currently face. In order to review the impact of FLA, we commissioned Harder+Company Community Research to conduct an external assessment of these grants and help us understand where and how FLA has had the greatest impact.