Interrogating the Strategy of Place: What is the value of national philanthropic investments in local place-based systems change?

Abstract Information: The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) is engaged in a meta evaluation of its place-based work to examine the assumptions and investments driving its goals for improving the opportunities and conditions for vulnerable children, especially in specific places across the globe. With more than 1,000 grants over 5+ years focused in these communities, WKKF seeks to determine the true value added of these diverse but complementary investments across time and within place. Using the frame of leverage points in a system (https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system), the evaluation is identifying the grantmaking “ripples” of impact in each ecosystem to determine where the philanthropic strategy has been most (and least) effective. This session will share the context for this work and the challenges that the retrospective evaluation has to address to be relevant to current and future place-based philanthropy. It will also examine WKKF’s core principles of community engagement, leadership development, and racial equity. A driving force behind the evaluation is the desire to understand how WKKF’s implementation of its place-based work reflects the needs of the communities in which it is engaged and how the combination of place-based work and national systems change work adds to, and complements, the efforts and investments of local funders. The session will provide structured opportunity for participants to interrogate the panel about the preliminary findings and offer additional insights, bringing new voices and perspectives to reflect on the findings and improve on the preliminary insights.