The California Endowment (TCE) – Organizing Evaluations

From 2008 to 2019, the USC Equity Research Institute (ERI) published reports under our previous name, the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE). 

A Pivot to Power: Lessons from The California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities about Place, Health, and Philanthropy

March 2018

By Jennifer Ito, Manuel Pastor, May Lin, and Magaly Lopez

A Pivot to Power: Lessons from The California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities about Place, Health, and Philanthropy offers a mid-initiative assessment of TCE’s 10-year investment in building “people power” capacity in 14 diverse communities. The report is based on surveys from grantees funded to organize in one or more of the 14 sites receiving grants through BHC and interviews with organizers, funders, intermediaries, and academics. The data is clear: There is evidence of increased capacity in BHC places to organize people who are usually excluded from the policymaking process such as documented and undocumented immigrants, young people, formerly incarcerated individuals, and LGBTQ individuals.

Through campaigns, they are developing their voice, leadership, and advocacy skills to influence neighborhood, local, regional, and statewide decision-making processes.

At the halfway mark, TCE has taken a bolder stance on people power. What had been considered a driver of change is now the change that it seeks to achieve. This report offers a discussion of what it means to pivot to people power as an end goal. And since the change in BHC is not intended to stay within BHC, this report offers three lessons for other comprehensive change initiatives, the health equity field, and philanthropy.

Key lessons to pivot to power:

LESSON #1: Place is a scale for change—not just a stage for change.

LESSON #2: Health equity is an opportunity to build power—not just pass policy.

LESSON #3: Building power is about power among, to, with, and within—not power over.

Sustaining People Power

March 2018

By Jennifer Ito, Manuel Pastor, May Lin, and Magaly Lopez

Adapted from A Pivot to Power, the Sustaining People Power brief summarizes the organizing capacity supported by BHC and identifies key challenges and recommendations for sustaining capacity based on interviewee insights. Some of the recommendations drawn from A Pivot to Power and lessons for the fields of philanthropy public health, and organizing include:

• Continue funding grassroots organizing and leadership development
• Measure campaigns in how they build people power
• Create opportunities for new organizing groups to partner with experienced organizers
• Support experimentation to build alternative sources of funding

At a time when national organizations are pivoting to state-based strategies to move to a justice agenda, the lessons learned from TCE’s funding initiative can help set the stage for the next phase of investment in organizing and health equity.