Open Letter to the Nonprofit Community
Meyer Foundation Announces Strategic Framework for 2012-2014
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Dear Friends:
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
For more than 65 years the Meyer Foundation has been a champion of extraordinary nonprofit leaders and organizations meeting community needs throughout the Greater Washington region. Our practice has been to listen to those leaders and to adapt our work as new challenges arise for nonprofits and the people they serve.
The economic crisis has increased the profound problems facing low-income people struggling to live in our affluent region. And it has severely strained the ability of outstanding nonprofit service and advocacy groups to help people create better lives. These challenges have led the Foundation to re-examine how our own reduced financial and staff resources can be used to accomplish the most good for our community at this time. As a result, our staff and board have spent the past year developing a new Strategic Framework to guide the Foundation's work.
The Strategic Framework, which is summarized on our website, is built around an updated mission statement for the Foundation:
The Meyer Foundation identifies and invests in visionary leaders and effective community-based nonprofit organizations that are working to create lasting improvements in the lives of low-income people in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region, and works to strengthen the region's nonprofit sector as a vital and respected partner in meeting community needs.
This mission reflects our ongoing commitment to supporting nonprofit leaders and community-based organizations, while making more explicit a focus on creating long-term positive change in the lives of low-income people. It also re-affirms our commitment to a strong and influential nonprofit sector and its critical advocacy role.
Four Program Areas
Recognizing that our mission is still broad and that thousands of worthwhile nonprofit organizations are working throughout our region, the Strategic Framework focuses the Foundation's work by identifying four priority program areas:
Education: Improving life outcomes for children and youth from low-income families by supporting work across a comprehensive education continuum to ensure that young people graduate from high school and earn post-secondary credentials.
Healthy Communities: Building thriving communities in which low-income adults and families have access to health care and other essential services, and supporting public policy changes to reduce poverty.
Economic Security: Helping low-income adults and families to stabilize their lives, build assets, and achieve financial independence by improving their access to living wage jobs and other economic and social supports.
A Strong Nonprofit Sector: Increasing the effectiveness, sustainability, and influence of the Foundation's grantees and Greater Washington's nonprofit sector, and strengthening philanthropy in the region.
During 2011, we will develop specific strategies for each priority area that will further define, and most likely narrow, our funding interests. Reducing the number of program areas in which we fund will enable the Foundation to resume its traditional role as an early supporter of emerging organizations that show great promise, in addition to supporting established organizations and long-time grantees. We will maintain the flexibility to respond to strategic opportunities that fall outside these four program areas but address timely issues and changing community needs. We will also continue to devote substantial resources to our signature programs that sustain and recognize nonprofit leaders, including our Management Assistance Program, the Exponent Awards, our Cash Flow Loan Program, and research on nonprofit leadership and sustainability.
Arts and Culture Funding
The Foundation has a long and distinguished history of supporting arts and cultural organizations in our region. We continue to value the work we have supported to build a vibrant arts community, especially in theater, dance, and the development of cultural corridors. In developing this Strategic Framework, our board and staff faced difficult choices about how to use our reduced grantmaking resources in ways that would have the most direct positive impact on the lives of low-income people. After much consideration, we have not named arts and culture as a priority for the three years covered by this Strategic Framework. Our core and capital support for arts and culture groups has gone down over the past two years and will diminish further as we implement this Framework. However, we do anticipate ongoing support for some arts and culture grantees whose work directly addresses a strategy in one of the four priority areas.
A Year of Transition
As the Meyer Foundation embraces these changes, we are entering a year of transition. Our 2011 grantmaking will be governed by our current guidelines. By mid-summer, our board will approve specific strategies for each of the four priority areas. We will share our approaches and the impact we seek to achieve in the community, and we will develop new guidelines for our grantmaking and other activities beginning in 2012. In some cases, these changes will mean that we will be transitioning away from grantees with whom we've enjoyed long relationships and for whom we have great respect. Beginning in 2012, we plan to revise our grantmaking calendar to create two grant cycles per year rather than three. As a result, the Foundation will have an early 2012 application deadline rather than the October 2011 deadline. We also plan to simplify the grants process to reduce the administrative burden placed on grantees as they apply for support and report on their progress.
We will communicate more about all these changes over the course of this year through our website and e-newsletter.
Looking to the Future
Over the years, we have had the privilege of working with many extraordinary nonprofit leaders who share our commitment to social justice and building strong and vibrant communities in the Greater Washington region. The passion, commitment, and creativity of nonprofit leaders has long been one of our community’s greatest strengths. We look forward to continuing our work with current grantees and developing new partnerships to improve the lives of low-income people and strengthen the nonprofit sector in our region. We are excited about the road ahead and optimistic about the future.
