Health

The Community Clinics Initiative (CCI), a joint project of Tides and The California Endowment, is a partnership designed to strengthen the capacities of California community clinics and health centers. Since 1999, CCI has provided their grantees with funding and support in six focus areas:

1. Information technology
2. Technology-enabled quality improvements
3. Clinic leadership
4. Major capital investments
5. Strategic investments in collaborative information technology
6. Clinic networking efforts

In 2004, CCI contracted with BTW to design and implement a multi-year, multi-program evaluation to help understand CCI’s impacts.

The evaluation process allows findings to be shared in a timely manner with CCI staff, grantees, grantmakers and the broader community-clinics field. This disseminated resource, in turn, informs ongoing learning within and across organizations.

In the 1990s, Kaiser Permanente observed that increasing numbers of individuals in California were uninsured or underinsured, creating health disparities for want of access to health care. The foundation responded by forming the Kaiser Permanente Community Clinic Partnership to tackle the problem through grantmaking and resource sharing.

Through the Partnership, Kaiser Permanente has supported nearly 200 community clinics that serve these underserved populations. To assess its first-phase efforts between 2002 and 2005, the Partnership contracted with BTW to conduct a retrospective evaluation.

BTW undertook a sweeping assessment:

• We studied the Partnership’s broad impact on grantees
• We documented tangible grantee accomplishments in the wake of Partnership support
• We analyzed trends in health-care provision
• We gleaned and compiled lessons learned from Phase I

The evaluation provided a window on the effectiveness of the Partnership’s initial years and informed its future grantmaking.

The Women’s Foundation of California Reproductive Justice and Sexual Rights Program, supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, exists to enhance the well-being of women and girls in California. It does this through grantmaking, policy advocacy, capacity building and technical assistance.

In 2007, the Foundation engaged BTW to evaluate the Program’s past six years of grantmaking and support.

BTW demonstrated that the Program’s multifaceted model had been effective overall. The evaluation and reflection process helped both the Foundation and the Program understand the value of their investments to date, and equipped them to refine the program design.

In 1996, the nonprofit Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood, California was sold to a for-profit corporation. The move precipitated a dramatic reduction in health services for underinsured residents. To protect access to health care in the region, the California Community Foundation (CCF) was selected to administer the $50 million Centinela Medical Funds trust that resulted from the hospital’s sale.

BTW was brought in to evaluate the first eight years of the Centinela Medical Funds’ programming. Our studies indicated that CCF ’s strengths in developing coordinated systems of care and long-term, place-based grantmaking could offer invaluable lessons to the health-care field.

CCF staff used BTW’s findings to engage board members in a discussion about grantmaking strategies and the direction of the program moving forward.

The Blue Shield of California Foundation (BSCF) engaged BTW to assess the impacts of its signature leadership program, the Clinic Leadership Institute (CLI). CLI is preparing the next generation of community clinic leaders for executive leadership.

BTW documented CLI’s Theory of Change and has designed a multi-year evaluation plan. BTW is assessing the impact of CLI support on each cohort of participants. One of the few programs of its kind, CLI offers a wide spectrum of support offerings, including:

• seminars
• peer groups
• executive coaching

BTW’s findings are being used to inform other efforts to support emerging nonprofit leaders, and continue to strengthen the CLI program itself as it evolves.

The Community Benefit Program of Kaiser Permanente Southern California Region provides grant funding and a broad range of provider expertise and in-kind support to health-related organizations in Southern California. The Program contracted with BTW to analyze materials for their 2004-05 and 2006-07 grant portfolios.

BTW produced striking visual reports describing the Program’s grant funding and grantees. These materials now provide strong support for Community Benefit Program staff when communicating their program to other stakeholders.

In addition to supporting the Program’s overall learning and decision-making about their grantmaking, BTW provided Kaiser Permanente Southern California with a grant analysis framework. This tool will enhance the program’s capacity to evaluate its own grantmaking in the future.

The Blue Shield of California Foundation and the Community Clinics Initiative wanted to assess the current state of leadership within the community-clinics field in California. BTW partnered with CompassPoint Nonprofit Services to collect information on this issue.

Through surveys, interviews and focus groups with clinic CEOs, senior leadership and emerging leaders, BTW and CompassPoint mapped the current landscape of community-clinic leadership.

The resulting snapshot identifies important needs and implications for the future. Funders, capacity builders and clinic leaders and boards throughout California are using the results to support current leaders and prepare those to come.