In an essay this week for the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, Irvine President and CEO Jim Canales addresses three questions that we should be asking to bring greater transparency to foundation boardrooms. The essay is reprinted here:

With its recent report, Foundation Transparency: What Nonprofits Want, the Center for Effective Philanthropy examines the nonprofit perspective, outlining the benefits of foundation transparency to the partners we support. As we continue to explore the merits of greater transparency in philanthropy, I propose we add another dimension to the discussion by asking: What about transparency in foundation boardrooms?

In my view, one of the fundamental duties of a foundation CEO is to construct time with the board in ways that engage trustees in substantive ways and that add value to the work of the foundation. Information sharing certainly deserves its place on board meeting agendas, but it should not comprise the majority of the board’s time together. Rather, we should be building into our board agendas opportunities for strategic dialogue, robust engagement, and, yes, even debate and disagreement. And, as we do so, a transparency mindset is essential.

At Irvine, we believe a healthy democracy depends on decision making informed by the views and experiences of a broad cross-section of our communities. That’s why we’re heartened by the many public officials and civic leaders who place a high value on public participation and are interested in exploring new strategies to engage the public in decisions affecting their future

A new study, commissioned by the Irvine Foundation, shows that public officials and civic organization leaders have much more in common in their views of public engagement in local decision-making than we might assume. In the study of more than 900 elected and nonelected public officials and more than 500 leaders of civic and community-based organizations across California, Public Agenda found the following:

The USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration just released a new report titled What's at Stake for the State: Undocumented Californians, Immigration Reform and Our Future Together. Funded in part by the Irvine Foundation, the report calculates the potential economic gains to California overall and in specific regions through national immigration reform. The researchers provide as a conservative estimate that the state’s economy could grow by $4.5 billion annually once undocumented residents have access to the greater educational and economic opportunities afforded by authorization and citizenship. The report authors call for California to plan ahead and to learn from existing regional cross-sector collaborations for effective integration of all residents into our society. One of the report authors, Dr. Manuel Pastor, made the case for reform in a compelling op-ed column in the Sacramento Bee. Here is the beginning of Dr. Pastor’s column:

Viewpoints: Why immigration overhaul matters to state
By Manuel Pastor

Reprinted from The Sacramento Bee, May 7, 2013

Last week the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation invited a diverse group of foundation staff, evaluation professionals and social media experts to talk about measurement and evaluation of social media. You can get a feel for some of the topics and ideas that were shared by reading the Twitter activity captured by the hashtag #SM_RE. RWJF has also captured and organized the material related to this meeting on its website.

I found the meeting quite productive and helpful for those of us who think about evaluating our communications efforts and putting those evaluations in the context of our broader organizational goals. And although this subject might appear to be a bit too “in the weeds” for those who aren’t engaged in the evaluation of communications efforts, I would like to share some of the more interesting points that came up at the meeting.

A primary goal for the meeting was to identify how best to measure social media indicators for a common set of outcomes identified by the participants. The common outcomes were:

In April 2013, the following published articles mentioned the work of the Foundation or our grantees:

• Reducing traffic: Cities Can Promote Use of Transit and Cut Down on Costly Parking Spaces
  (San Jose Mercury News, 4/28/13)
• AUSD is Leading the Way
  (Antioch Herald, 4/23/13)
• Dual Enrollment Gives Struggling Students a College Try
  (Kitsap Sun, 4/19/13)
• State Schools Chief Praises Oxnard Union's Career Technology Education Program
  (Ventura County Star, 4/18/13)
• Redlands: County Museum hosts ‘Express Yourself’
  (Riverside Press-Enterprise, 4/18/13)
• Follow the Money Trail to Oz
  (Huffington Post, 4/2/13)

By Hilary McLean, Deputy Director of the Linked Learning Alliance

We recently hosted a convening for our Youth program grantees who are working together to advance Linked Learning in California. We asked attendee Hilary McLean, Deputy Director of the Linked Learning Alliance, to share her impressions of the convening.

After two days spent this week with fellow advocates for Linked Learning, I came away with one main realization: We feel a collective urgency.

But like any growth spurt, there are potential growing pains. There is also concern that without appropriate supports in place, the growth in this field could end up not being truly rooted in the non-negotiable elements of Linked Learning and not delivering on the promise of true college and career readiness for all students.

A new report by Harder+Company Community Research on Irvine’s Families Improving Education (FIE) initiative offers fresh insights into the impact of parent and community involvement in educational policymaking. The report highlights how equipping parents with data, engaging them in discussions with school officials and connecting them with others in their region can transform school policies toward better educational outcomes for students.

The James Irvine Foundation launched the FIE initiative in 2008 to support parental involvement in K–12 educational policymaking. The Foundation partnered with Families In Schools to build the capacity of organizations in the San Joaquin Valley and Inland Empire to engage parents and families in local and state decision making for education policies that affect their children.

Once the initiative was well-established, the Foundation and Families in Schools recognized the opportunity to evaluate the work and assess the most promising practices in FIE. We then contracted with Harder+Company to gauge the initiative’s impact on parents, organizations and school policymaking.