Leadership

Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund joined the Arcus Foundation and the Gill Foundation to support a new initiative, the 21st Century Fellows Program (Program). The year-long Program provides leadership support to managers of color working at LGBT human rights and advocacy organizations and includes the creation of individualized leadership development plans, retreats, skills training and peer learning and networking opportunities.

BTW is collaborating with program staff to review, analyze and synthesize information collected during the Program’s inaugural year to document the program model, identify key findings and provide recommendations to inform the Program’s evolution.

The Professional Development Initiative (PDI) is a novel, seven-year, seven-million–dollar program of the Jim Joseph Foundation (JJF). The Program seeks to increase the capacity and commitment of talented, early-career Jewish professionals to build a career leading Jewish communal institutions.

The Foundation engaged BTW at the very outset of the Program in 2008 to design and execute a comprehensive evaluation. BTW works closely with JJF and the Jewish youth leadership network BBYO, the organization implementing PDI. We help both organizations identify current impact and opportunities for course correction.

In order to capture the early career trajectories of PDI participants, BTW’s longitudinal evaluation will continue through 2015.

In 2008, Jewish Funds for Justice received funding from the Nathan Cummings Foundation to redesign their Selah Leadership Program. Selah staff wanted to strengthen the program and its contribution to the Jewish social justice movement. They envisioned providing participants with leadership training, opportunities for social networking and a focus on collaboration.

BTW was hired to measure the program’s impact in a number of areas:

• Individual leadership
• Organizational change
• Network and movement building
• The role of Jewish values in social justice leadership development

The evaluation findings will inform Selah’s staff, Advisory Board and funders on the best practices for implementing leadership trainings and developing participant networks.

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

BTW documented the program’s Theory of Change and designed a multi-year evaluation. We are now assessing the impact of the many types of CLI supports (seminars, peer groups, executive coaching, etc.) on each cohort of participants.

CLI is one of the few programs of its kind; because of this, BTW’s findings are being used not only to strengthen the CLI program itself, but to inform other efforts to support emerging nonprofit leaders.

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.

CCI’s leadership-cultivation efforts are integral to all its grantmaking programs. In 2007, BTW launched an evaluation to assess the impact of these efforts. Our findings showed that CCI has fostered leadership within a broad social change initiative, including a CCI-supported health care–management training program.

Coaching can be a powerful tool in the development of nonprofit leadership.

Wanting to identify when and how coaching works best, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund and Harnisch Family Foundation launched a project to examine coaching in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors.

The resultant Coaching and Philanthropy Project produced a new body of literature and tools to fortify this emerging practice among nonprofits. Funders and nonprofit leaders now use these resources to assess when and how to use coaching to strengthen leadership within the sector.

The James Irvine Foundation Fund for Leadership Advancement Program provides coaching, mentoring and training opportunities tailored to nonprofit leaders throughout California.

The Foundation hired BTW to evaluate the program over two years. Over that period we kept them abreast of emerging findings as we targeted three goals:

• Identify the program’s strengths and weaknesses
• Understand the program’s impact on participants
• Garner suggestions for program improvements

BTW’s evaluation strengthened the program’s operation and helped the Foundation better understand its efforts.