Dear Friends:

At the S. H. Cowell Foundation, we are privileged to work closely with organizations and community leaders engaged in efforts on behalf of families and their children. Some of these efforts are broad and ongoing movements, such as the push to improve the teaching of English learners and the growth of family financial stability programs within the field of family support. Some are the initiatives of individuals working to rise above the confines of private concerns to the wider concerns of the community. Through place-based grants including support for leadership development and sponsored learning exchanges between grantees, Cowell encourages and enhances these changemakers’ work.

Significant change requires more than a few grants. Collaboration and cooperation are also needed to create change and sustain it. What can Cowell do to promote collaboration?  As the Foundation has focused more of its grants budget on operating support, we have learned what is core and vital to the organizations we fund. When we ask grantees what would help them do the work they need and want to do, we hear that in addition to operating support they need to develop their leadership skills and the capacity to sustain open and productive relationships with each other.

We are inspired by the commitment of local stakeholders to solve problems together and create positive opportunities for children and their families. As a foundation dedicated to place-based grantmaking we aim to foster real-time learning so that our grantees can learn from each other and flourish in their collaborative work.

To help provide this support, Cowell is taking several steps.

• We will continue to support leadership development for our grantees to help them cope with the current changes and challenges.
• We will also continue to fund learning exchanges, where grantees from different communities who face similar challenges visit to support, counsel and teach each other. For example, Cowell is sponsoring a learning network of leaders from 7 school districts in our grantee communities who, together with a team of research and policy experts convened by Stanford University, are addressing key challenges in the education of English Learners through data sharing, cross-district observations, web conferences and other activities.
• Our grants team hosts and participates in issues-oriented conversations that increase our understanding of our grantees' work and promote collaboration among grantees and other funders. These conversations include: a discussion about out-of-school time programming in affordable housing developments; in-school and after-school support for English learners; Cowell's Family Resource Center Advisory Committee; and a series of Courageous Conversations among foundation and leadership development executives.
• Our 2011 leadership convening focused on the theme of "shared responsibility for achieving collective goals.”

We know that change, particularly collaborative, community-wide change, takes time.  For that reason, we remain committed to the Foundation's place-based work as the best strategy for strengthening communities where children contend with the challenges of poverty.  While our grants budget does not yet support a return to multiple-year grants, we have streamlined the process for renewing one-year grants. Many grantees seeking renewal may be eligible to submit one document that covers the final report for the prior grant, the new letter of inquiry and new request. We hope this will give the leaders of the organizations we fund more time to focus on their important work.

The Board and staff of the Cowell Foundation take this opportunity to stress our support for candid communication, open collaboration and solving problems together. One of the things we admire most about our grantees is their ability to define themselves not just as individuals but as members of a community. As Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf Schools, said, "A healthy society is found only when in the mirror of each soul the whole community finds its reflection."

Sincerely yours,

Ann Alpers
November 2011