The Blue Shield of California Foundation is partnering with the Center for the Health Professions at the University of California, San Francisco to design and implement Clinic Leadership Institute (CLI). CLI is an 18-month leadership program designed to prepare the next generation of community clinic leaders for executive leadership positions in order to sustain a strong and vibrant community clinic system in California.

BTW informing change is conducting an ongoing evaluation of CLI. “The Pathway to Leadership: Lessons from Clinic Leadership Institute” highlights evaluation findings based on the experiences of the first two cohorts and offers key ways in which those in the community clinics field can support CLI participants and other emerging clinic leaders.

In 2008, The Community Clinics Initiative (CCI) launched their Networking for Community Health (NCH) grantmaking program. The program was designed to support California community clinics in strengthening their working relationships with both traditional and non-traditional partners. Over the past three years, CCI has supported clinics’ projects that work on a wide variety of issues, including improving access to nutritious food, engaging youth and coordinating health services, among others.

This report examines the ways in which the NCH program has enhanced the capacity of clinics and their partners to improve community health. It describes the conceptual framework of the NCH program, presents evaluation findings to date and offers practical suggestions for other funders and communities interested in pursuing a similar approach to improve community health.

Social Web sites have rapidly grown into large, sophisticated networks that can span the globe.This brief provides a snapshot of one nonprofit online community—the Community Clinic Voice. The Community Clinics Initiative (CCI) supports the Voice to aid health care safety net professionals in building stronger, healthier communities.

The brief explores the Voice model, including its structure, evolution, members and the benefits that they gain from utilizing the Voice. It also summarizes CCI’s approach to online community management and considerations for those who are interested or involved in developing or maintaining online communities as a tool to support the work of the nonprofit sector.

Community health workers, public health aides, promotores and peer educators are all terms used to describe the role of community health promoters. These workers are recruited from communities to apply their knowledge of the area and their personal connections with residents to promote the public’s health. The Community Clinics Initiative requested that BTW examine the role of community health promoters in their Networking for Community Health grantmaking program. This brief documents the role and effectiveness of community health promoters in the program.

In 2008, The Community Clinics Initiative (CCI)’s launched their new Networking for Community Health grantmaking program. The program provides California community clinics with two-year grants to strengthen networking efforts with other organizations to promote the health of the communities they serve. Grantees’ networks have addressed a variety of community health priorities, from exposure to toxins to access to healthy food and regular exercise to disaster planning.

At a mid-point during the inaugural cohort, BTW informing change created a “visual summary” that describes the program’s key findings and learnings in a visually appealing, easy-to-use and condensed format.

From 2003 thorough 2007, the Community Clinics Initiative (CCI) invested more than $17 million in community health centers to undertake capital projects and enhance their fund-development capacity. BTW has worked with CCI over the past few years to evaluate the MCCG Program.

As the Program comes to an end, BTW has produced a brief report that provides grantmaking considerations for funders who are thinking about, or already involved in, capital funding programs for nonprofit organizations. The report, “Building for the Future,” also provides a short description of the MCCG grantmaking approach and key impacts that resulted from the program.