The Community Leadership Project is a $10 million investment, made collaboratively by Irvine and the Packard and Hewlett foundations, to support the effectiveness and impact of a set of small organizations that are deeply rooted in low-income communities and communities of color. The project began in 2009, and more than 100 community organizations in three regions of California – the San Francisco Bay Area, Central Coast and San Joaquin Valley –are involved in this effort to enhance important aspects of their organizations’ operations and leadership abilities.

We recently received a progress report from Social Policy Research Associates, the team that is evaluating the project’s results, and we are excited to share some of the accomplishments, challenges and surprises of the project.

The evaluation shows that CLP is successfully reaching organizations and individuals that are not typically on the philanthropy radar because of some combination of their small size, their finite capacity, or where they are located. Two years into the project, it is still too early to document specific outcomes, but the evaluators also share their viewpoint that CLP investments are making a difference for participating organizations in a host of ways. We are finding that:

Dear Friends,

Last year, the philanthropic community was engaged in a vigorous debate about diversity and whether private foundations in California were investing sufficiently to support minority communities. This dialogue was prompted in large measure by a proposed California law which would have required large private foundations to collect and report race and ethnicity data about themselves and their grantees. Although Irvine and a broader coalition of private foundations opposed the bill for a number of reasons, the debate it generated identified some important underlying issues and, ultimately, led Irvine and others to take specific, constructive steps to address these issues. This quarter’s letter provides an update on our activities in this regard.

Most significantly, last year’s debate helped to surface a broad need to augment support to nonprofit organizations serving low-income people and communities of color across the state. The discussion also focused on the need for strong leaders and effective organizations in these communities. So, as an extension of our various efforts already dedicated toward this end, Irvine partnered with the Packard and Hewlett foundations to launch the Community Leadership Project, an $8 million commitment by our three foundations over a three year period. The focus of this collaboration is on strengthening organizations, building capacity and developing leadership in three regions of shared interest to our three foundations: the greater San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Coast and the San Joaquin Valley.

In June, our three foundations announced the first round of grants to nine intermediary organizations, totaling $5.7 million. The Community Leadership Project works through intermediary organizations, where possible tapping the expertise of community foundations because of their understanding of the needs of the targeted communities. During the summer, we requested letters of inquiry for a second round of grants. Not only did we receive a large number of applications, but the proposed ideas are creative and compelling, and the applicants have strong networks in the targeted regions. As a result, the three foundations have agreed to contribute an additional $1 million of funding to support some of these proposed projects, bringing the level of funding to $9 million. We expect to announce a new set of partners later this year.