Neighborhood Transformation/
Family Development: Making Connections

Executive Education Program for Community Foundation CEOs and Senior Program Staff

Communities across the country are changing. New demographics are in play. New economic realities are fast asserting themselves. New modes of local governance and funding are emerging. And new familial and social challenges are testing the mettle of existing community and civic institutions. Nowhere is this challenge clearer or more compelling than with communities’ many efforts to improve outcomes for children.

As the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s recent efforts have reminded us: kids do well when their families do well, and families do better when they live in supportive neighborhoods. Central to such well functioning families and communities are a range of critical connections—to informal networks of social support; to formal programs that enhance capacity or provide critical services; to access to economic opportunity; to adequate housing, safe space, and supportive environments. But how do we forge these connections and foster those supportive neighborhoods? How do we strengthen those families? How do we promote each child’s optimal development?

One thing is clear: all around the country, communities are looking to community foundations to provide leadership around the interlocking issues of children, family, and community. And increasingly, community foundations are looking to each other for ideas and strategies and support.

The Coalition has joined forces with the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago to assist with the development and implementation of a two-year long process to prepare and enhance community foundations as effective change agents on behalf of children, families, and neighborhoods. Beyond subject matter expertise, this effort will also help us examine and exploit the unique capacities of community foundations to effect change, and explore ways to align the multiple functions they perform in a more synergistic fashion to achieve and sustain a high impact.

This is not to be a generic and passive "how-to" session on institutional and community change. Nor is this a University seminar on child development. If successful, this process will require both learning and doing on all our parts. It will provide that rare space where we can think about the future of our institutions and our communities with colleagues we respect and trust, and who understand the challenges facing community foundations. It will constantly test the alignment between program and organization. We will be assisted along the way, to be sure, and there will be lots of exciting information and tools shared. But real success means we will have created more effective institutions, and more profound outcomes for children and families.