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The Opportunity Youth Forum: Seizing the Moment to Advance a Movement

December 17, 2021

In 2020, Equal Measure conducted its fifth annual evaluation to explore the status of the OYF Network and the communities in which they operate to better understand areas of strength and opportunities for additional focus and learning. This report details network-wide findings drawn from data collection among 30 of 33 communities participating in the OYF Network in 2020.The events of 2020 acutely affected the work of the OYF Network's collaboratives. Partners adopted new youth engagement and recruitment strategies, as many models relied on in-person program delivery. Program providers shifted their focus to address the immediate and pressing concerns faced by families affected by the pandemic, supporting emergency relief efforts including food distribution, housing stability, laptop and wireless hotspot provision, and pandemic-related information and resources. Organizations adapted to a rapidly changing funding landscape. Backbone organizations found new ways to convene and organize community partners from the public and private sectors in supporting youth amid the uncertainty.

The Opportunity Youth Forum: Seizing the Moment to Advance a Movement Infographic

December 17, 2021

In 2020, Equal Measure conducted its fifth annual evaluation to explore the status of the OYF Network and the communities in which they operate to better understand areas of strength and opportunities for additional focus and learning. This report details network-wide findings drawn from data collection among 30 of 33 communities participating in the OYF Network in 2020.The events of 2020 acutely affected the work of the OYF Network's collaboratives. Partners adopted new youth engagement and recruitment strategies, as many models relied on in-person program delivery. Program providers shifted their focus to address the immediate and pressing concerns faced by families affected by the pandemic, supporting emergency relief efforts including food distribution, housing stability, laptop and wireless hotspot provision, and pandemic-related information and resources. Organizations adapted to a rapidly changing funding landscape. Backbone organizations found new ways to convene and organize community partners from the public and private sectors in supporting youth amid the uncertainty.

The Opportunity Youth Forum: Seizing the Moment to Advance a Movement Executive Summary

December 17, 2021

In 2020, Equal Measure conducted its fifth annual evaluation to explore the status of the OYF Network and the communities in which they operate to better understand areas of strength and opportunities for additional focus and learning. This report details network-wide findings drawn from data collection among 30 of 33 communities participating in the OYF Network in 2020.The events of 2020 acutely affected the work of the OYF Network's collaboratives. Partners adopted new youth engagement and recruitment strategies, as many models relied on in-person program delivery. Program providers shifted their focus to address the immediate and pressing concerns faced by families affected by the pandemic, supporting emergency relief efforts including food distribution, housing stability, laptop and wireless hotspot provision, and pandemic-related information and resources. Organizations adapted to a rapidly changing funding landscape. Backbone organizations found new ways to convene and organize community partners from the public and private sectors in supporting youth amid the uncertainty.

Building Capacity, Transforming Systems: A Summative Evaluation of The California Endowment’s Sons & Brothers Grantmaking Executive Summary

September 7, 2021

In 2010, The California Endowment began an ambitious 10-year initiative called Building Healthy Communities (BHC) – a $1 billion effort to "advance statewide policy, change the narrative, and transform 14 of California's communities most devastated by health inequities into places where all people have an opportunity to thrive."In the early stages of the initiative, The Endowment identified ten key outcomes for community health, including "health gaps for boys and men of color are narrowed." The health outcome was considered critical because "addressing the social, educational, and economic disadvantages faced by boys and young men of color is essential to community health. Success here means equity in schools, more job opportunities, more alternatives to incarceration, and new youth development approaches tailored to them.The drive to reduce health inequities evolved into a cross-cutting, population-focused effort to advance racial and gender justice. Sons & Brothers was launched in 2013 as a seven-year, $50 million investment to "help all young people of color reach their full potential, because when our sons and daughters succeed, we all succeed."The report from Equal Measure and Bright Research Group outlines the findings from a two-year evaluation of Sons & Brothers. It is a look back at what Sons & Brothers was, what it accomplished, and the challenges faced along the way – and a look ahead to how learnings from Sons & Brothers can help to chart a new course forward in challenging times.

How Funders Seek and Use Knowledge to Influence Philanthropic Practice

June 3, 2021

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's Effective Philanthropy Program seeks to strengthen the capacity of its grantees, and philanthropy in general, to achieve their goals and benefit the common good. One of the program's main strategies—Knowledge for Better Philanthropy—promotes more effective philanthropy by funding organizations that create and disseminate research-based knowledge about philanthropic practice. This includes support for academic centers, investigative journalism, consulting firms, philanthropy-serving organizations, and others who develop and share knowledge products about philanthropic practice. In 2020, the Hewlett Foundation commissioned Engage R+D and Equal Measure to partner on an evaluation examining how funders find and use knowledge to influence philanthropic practice, with a focus on what role organizations funded in the Knowledge for Better Philanthropy strategy play in that process. This resulting report, How Funders Seek and Use Knowledge to Influence Philanthropic Practice, builds on a 2016 study (released in early 2017) also commissioned by the Foundation entitled Peer to Peer: At the Heart of Influencing More Effective Philanthropy. The earlier report examined how staff and board members at U.S.-based foundations find and use practice knowledge, revealing that funders are more likely to seek knowledge from peers and colleagues than from the large volume of knowledge content available from organizations, associations, and publications. This evaluation follows up on the scan in 2016 and adds new findings. As the world changes around us, this study asks how funders are drawing from a range of knowledge sources in the ongoing pursuit of more effective philanthropy. The answers shed light on what information funders are seeking, which sources are most influential in creating change, and whose voices are included in the process. This executive summary highlights key findings from this study. Further detail on these and other findings from our survey of funders andfollow-up interviews can be found in the full report.

The Community Ecocycle in Place-Based Systems Change: A Tool for Funder and Community Reflection and Action

May 4, 2021

This tool is intended to help funders who have elected to invest in place-based systems change efforts in two ways. First, funders can use this tool to consider the dynamic, natural, and necessary developmental phases through which communities move. Second, the tool can help funders engage with communities to co-design investment approaches that better match communities' current and future assets and needs based on their developmental phase.

Investments in Implicit and Explicit Dimensions of Place-Based Systems Change: A Tool for Funder Reflection and Action

April 16, 2021

This tool is intended to help funders who have elected to invest in place-based systems change strategies assess the extent to which their strategic intent, culture, and capacity can support complementary dimensions of systems change. By using this tool, funders—and by extension the foundations within which they work—can further clarify how to focus their place-based systems change investments, leading to more coordinated, locally owned, and sustained impact. 

Opportunity Youth Forum: Forging a National Network to Advance Equitable Systems Change

January 28, 2021

Equal Measure has partnered with The Aspen Institute Forum to conduct a three-year evaluation of the Opportunity Youth Forum with a focus on systemic shifts. In January 2021, Equal Measure shared Network-wide evaluation findings drawn from data collection among 23 of 27 communities participating in the OYF Network in 2019.This survey expanded upon data from the 2015-2017 OYF evaluation by exploring more nuanced aspects of collaborative capacity, systems change, and the values that drive these efforts. 

Opportunity Youth Forum: Forging a National Network to Advance Equitable Systems Change Infographic

January 28, 2021

Equal Measure has partnered with The Aspen Institute Forum to conduct a three-year evaluation of the Opportunity Youth Forum with a focus on systemic shifts. In January 2021, Equal Measure shared Network-wide evaluation findings drawn from data collection among 23 of 27 communities participating in the OYF Network in 2019.This survey expanded upon data from the 2015-2017 OYF evaluation by exploring more nuanced aspects of collaborative capacity, systems change, and the values that drive these efforts. 

The 15 Characteristics that Matter Most: A Self-Reflection for Funders Pursuing Place-based Investing

December 4, 2020

Place-based investing (PBI) is a powerful philanthropic strategy to catalyze substantive social change in communities. At Equal Measure, we believe PBIs offer an opportunity for funders to support communities and local decision makers, shine a brighter light on inequitable systems, and promote more equitable approaches to change—breaking down silos and siloed thinking, building new and inclusive relationships, and elevating diverse perspectives and lived experiences.In this first brief, funders are introduced to the characteristics of their organizations that matter most to the success of place-based investments.The characteristics are evident in a funding organization's internal structures, culture, and norms; their interplay can support or hinder place-based strategies and efforts to center communities.The brief includes a four-stage discussion guide for funding teams and staff to reflect on the characteristics of their own organizations. The guide provides a sequence for internal conversations to uncover and begin to align organizational dynamics with effective place-based investments.

The BUILD Health Challenge: Community Approaches to Systems Change

November 26, 2019

This Compendium shares with the field what we have learned about community-level progress from four years of implementing, testing, and observing the BUILD principles in action in communities across the United States.This piece is critical reading for practitioners and leaders looking to move resources, attention, and action upstream—to make meaningful change in the complex systems that affect health in our communities. It contains the following four sections:Systems Change Brief: an overview of our findings on how implementation of the BUILD model leads to the precursors to systems change and sustainable, systems change outcomes.Spotlight on Health Equity: a deeper dive into the common successes and challenges BUILD sites experienced in integrating a health equity framework into their BUILD initiative.Spotlight on Partnership Health: a deeper dive into the common successes and challenges BUILD sites experienced in building broad, multi-sector, nontraditional partnerships.Spotlight on Community Engagement: a deeper dive into the common successes and challenges BUILD sites experienced in building authentic and sustainable community engagement and ownership.

Equity Counts: Tracking Opportunity Youth Outcomes

November 4, 2019

Opportunity youth (OY) are among the hardest-to-reach youth in our communities. Unlike youth who are connected to school systems, postsecondary institutions, or employers, opportunity youth—defined as "young people between the ages 16 to 24 who are neither enrolled in school nor participating in the labor force"—do not interact with these systems. There is no system or single point of contact through which opportunity youth are engaged, and through which progress and outcomes are measured. Rather, opportunity youth, if connected at all, float among service providers, in and out of school, and between jobs.In this report, we:discuss the importance of creating common measures for tracking opportunity youth outcomes;describe the greatest challenges associated with these efforts; andintroduce a set of measures—The OYF Common Measures—that utilize publicly available data to capture community-wide progress in connecting 16 to 24 year-olds to high school, postsecondary education, and the workforce.