Webinar Explores Casey’s Strategic Coinvestor Approach to Community Change

When the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion joined local part­ner­ships in three com­mu­ni­ties through its Fam­i­ly-Cen­tered Com­mu­ni­ty Change™ (FCCC) ini­tia­tive, it did so with a new approach called strate­gic coin­vest­ing. A recent Foun­da­tion webi­nar explores this approach, as well as lessons for both com­mu­ni­ties and fun­ders gleaned from an eval­u­a­tion of the sev­en-year effort.

Casey launched FCCC to sup­port local part­ner­ships in three high-pover­ty neigh­bor­hoods — Buf­fa­lo, New York; Colum­bus, Ohio; and San Anto­nio, Texas — as they devel­oped a more inte­grat­ed set of ser­vices to help par­ents and chil­dren suc­ceed togeth­er in what is known as a two-gen­er­a­tion approach.

The 75-minute record­ing, enti­tled Lessons From Casey’s Strate­gic Coin­vestor Approach to Com­mu­ni­ty Change, high­lights all eight com­po­nents of a strate­gic coin­vestor approach, tak­ing a deep­er look at three in particular:

• fos­ter­ing a non-direc­tive rela­tion­ship, with the fun­der defer­ring to local dis­cre­tion in pro­gram design and imple­men­ta­tion of an agreed-upon topic;
• nest­ing an issue of focus ― in this case, two-gen­er­a­tion strate­gies ― with­in a broad­er com­mu­ni­ty change effort; and
• reg­u­lar­ly eval­u­at­ing the invest­ment approach.

Kan­tahya­nee Mur­ray, a senior research asso­ciate with Casey’s Research, Eval­u­a­tion and Data team, and Jared Raynor, direc­tor of Eval­u­a­tion and Learn­ing with TCC Group — which doc­u­ment­ed lessons for adapt­ing the approach in the future — mod­er­ate the discussion.

The ses­sion also fea­tures two pan­elists from the San Anto­nio Dual Gen­er­a­tion Part­ner­ship, who reflect on what it was like to work with the Foun­da­tion in its strate­gic coin­vestor role and offer insights for oth­er non­prof­its and fun­ders con­sid­er­ing sim­i­lar efforts.

These local lead­ers are:

• Lakeshia Bragg, direc­tor of Dual Gen­er­a­tion Sys­tems for the Unit­ed Way of San Anto­nio and Bexar Coun­ty; and
• Hen­ri­et­ta Muñoz, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Insti­tute for School and Com­mu­ni­ty Part­ner­ships at Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty-San Antonio.

Read or down­load slides from the session