The Power of Voice
By Deidre Johnson and Laurel Petralia, The Colorado Trust
As a health foundation, The Colorado Trust has the opportunity to be a member of Grantmakers in Health (GIH), a nonprofit organization that helps foundations improve health for all. GIH holds an annual meeting to connect health funders across the country. We were fortunate to attend the conference in Atlanta earlier this month.
This year’s event, titled “The Power of Voice,” focused on foundations using their voices to influence change as well as using their resources to lift the voices of others. We attended many engaging sessions, especially one focused on communicating about our work and one on the social determinants of health-where people live, learn, work and play. We also hosted a breakfast meeting to learn more about other foundations doing community-based work.
The conference began with a presentation from Alan Jenkins, executive director of The Opportunity Agenda. He presented information around communications, messaging and how to best reach people. Jenkins discussed four types of communications: branding, campaign communications, crisis communications and long-term moving of hearts and minds. He also explained the importance of tailoring messages to your audience as a way of connecting and inspiring them. Additionally, Jenkins presented the importance of focusing on opportunities and solutions to inspire change. He shared an example of how Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech would have had very different outcomes had it been instead titled “I Have Some Complaints.”
Another session focused on the importance of cross-sector partnerships when addressing social determinants of health. Robert Eckardt from the Cleveland Foundation shared insights learned from developing the Evergreen Cooperative Initiative. The project creates jobs and other economic opportunities in low-income neighborhoods in Cleveland. He emphasized the importance of time; when working with communities, especially in the beginning, foundations may invest more of this particular resource than money.
Eckardt also shared the importance of breaking down barriers that exist in communities. The Cleveland Foundation worked diligently to break down barriers that existed between institutions and residents. One strategy they used was hosting dinners in resident homes to bring people together and build trust.
In addition, we had the opportunity to host a breakfast meeting with other foundations focused on employing community-based participatory grantmaking to advance health equity work. Participants included board and staff members from Caring for Colorado, the Consumer Health Foundation, Connecticut Health Foundation and Cone Foundation. A key learning was how important it is to use the language of the community in discussing health equity.
Above all, the GIH annual meeting allowed us to connect with foundations across the country that are doing similar work to The Colorado Trust. We learned that community-based participatory grantmaking that The Trust is developing is new for other foundations, too. Yet there are very few other foundations doing this work-so as we embark on our journey working with Colorado communities, we are also thinking about how to share what we learn along the way. Sign up to stay up-to-date with our progress.
