But it looks like we’ll have to wait just a few more days as we have extended the nominations deadline to April 10. If you haven’t yet nominated that terrifically effective leader who wows you, now is the time.

The $125,000 Leadership Award advances the work of individuals and small teams who are implementing innovative and effective solutions to significant state issues. Nominees may be working in any field - such as education, health, public safety, economic development or the environment - and in the public, private or nonprofit sector. We seek nominees who have demonstrated inclusiveness and leadership in their fields and whose work is ready to be shared with policymakers and other practitioners.

We have simplified the application to make it easier to nominate someone for a James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award. The application has two parts:

The 2013 Leadership Award recipients are making headlines. In the month since the awards were announced, media outlets across the state have been spotlighting the work of these extraordinary individuals who are advancing innovative solutions to some of California’s biggest challenges.

Vida en el Valle, a weekly Spanish language paper serving the San Joaquin Valley, profiled recipients Aida Cardenas (Building Skills Partnership, Los Angeles) and José Quiñonez (Mission Asset Fund, San Francisco), noting that both "have dedicated a substantial part of their lives helping others build their own."

The San Francisco Chronicle featured an op-ed by Quiñonez describing how Mission Asset Fund, through its Lending Circles program, helped a low-income family establish a credit score, build assets and start a small business.

Dear Friends,

We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2013 James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awards. The awards recognize Californians who are implementing innovative, effective solutions to critical state issues. This year’s recipients are particularly collaborative in their approaches and excel at building upon the resourcefulness and determination of California’s residents to improve the future of our state.

They are:

Today we kick off an exciting month for the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awards. We are pleased to announce that nominations are now open for the 2014 Leadership Awards. And in just a few short weeks, we’ll announce the recipients of the 2013 Leadership Awards. It’s going to be a celebratory, inspiring month!

Each year the Leadership Awards recognize four to six leaders who are tackling big issues in California and offering breakthrough solutions that can contribute to a better future for our state. We welcome nominations of leaders from all corners of the state and from any field – such as education, health, public safety, economic development or the environment – in the public, private or nonprofit sector.

Past recipients have worked on issues as diverse as providing mental health care for returning veterans, building vibrant communities for seniors, reducing youth recidivism and installing solar panels in low-income communities. What these leaders have in common is that they are advancing innovative, effective solutions to significant issues in California.

Please take a moment to tell us about someone who is improving California and nominate him or her for a 2014 James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award. The deadline for nominations is April 5, 2013.

One of the most fundamental values we hold at Irvine is to share what we’re learning. We want our colleagues — both nonprofits and other funders — to be able to apply the most promising ideas, approaches and strategies to their work – and to also avoid the ones that aren’t working. We will be putting this value into action at the upcoming Council on Foundations 2012 Fall Conference for Community Foundations.

We know that all community foundations want to grow assets and create positive changes in their communities, and Irvine will be hosting a special workshop to share strategies on how to make this happen. The workshop is built around the lessons and approaches developed over six years of intensive work to help a set of emerging community foundations in California become stronger leaders in their communities as part of our Community Foundations Initiative II. Between 2005 and 2011, this group grew their collective assets 12 percent annually (from $73 million to $131 million), compared to 7 percent for their peers nationwide. At the same time, they increased their grantmaking, awarding $4 million more in grants each and every year for projects in their communities.

We began sharing some of the lessons and tools from this work in 2007, with our Growing Smarter report, and over the years, we have hosted sold-out webinars and conference programs in partnership with the Council on Foundations to disseminate this knowledge to the field.

I have written before about the importance of developing an honest and engaged partnership between nonprofit boards and staff leadership. Unfortunately, we sometimes see stark reminders of the tragic costs when such a partnership is lacking. The Penn State tragedy is such a case. I recently authored an op-ed in the Chronicle of Philanthropy to encourage nonprofit leaders to learn from this tragedy and do everything in their power to ensure that it never happens again. The full text of that op-ed is reprinted below. You can read it on the Chronicle website here. I welcome your comments.

Posted on The Chronicle of Philanthropy website on July 16, 2012

Damage Done by a Culture of Deference: Leadership Lessons From the Penn State Tragedy
By James E. Canales

The child-abuse scandal that unfolded at Penn State University over the past decade and half is a tragedy of epic proportions. Nobody can disagree with that after the report last week by the former FBI director Louis Freeh provided clear evidence that the crimes committed by Jerry Sandusky could have and should have been averted.

What is particularly distressing in reading the 267-page report is how the lessons nonprofit leaders should have learned from previous scandals continue to go unheeded.

Building leadership is one of Irvine’s core values, and one of the ways we try to realize that value is through the Fund for Leadership Advancement. Started in 2005, the fund supports the development of individual leaders as a way to increase the impact of existing Irvine grantee organizations. Although the fund has been on hiatus while we conducted a program review, we are restarting this leadership development initiative and sharing what we’ve learned from our work in this area.

As we reached a critical mass of more than 50 FLA grants, we decided to take stock of FLA and consider updates that would insure that the program takes into account the economic and social circumstances our grantees currently face. In order to review the impact of FLA, we commissioned Harder+Company Community Research to conduct an external assessment of these grants and help us understand where and how FLA has had the greatest impact.

Dori Rose Inda, recipient of a 2011 Leadership Award, has been improving the lives of workers in the Pajaro Valley for a decade. She and her colleagues at the Watsonville Law Center developed an effective way for agricultural and other low-income workers with job-related injuries to access medical care. The model, which connects to the existing workers’ compensation system, would save taxpayers an estimated $100 million each year if it were expanded statewide.

On the heels of publishing a comprehensive replication manual for the program, Rose Inda spoke with Watsonville Patch about her journey and goals. Here is an excerpt from the interview:

When Martha Ryan returned from working as a nurse in refugee camps in Uganda and Somalia, she was shocked by the poverty she found here in the United States — especially that hundreds of pregnant women and children were living on the streets. This led her to start the Homeless Prenatal Program, which transforms the lives of homeless mothers in San Francisco. Ryan, who received a Leadership Award in 2011, was recently featured as a Change Agent by The Bay Citizen.

Here is an excerpt of the article:

“Solar power didn’t just save me money — it saved my life,” says U.S. Navy veteran Elmer Rankin, referring to the solar panels paid for by a California subsidy and installed on his rooftop by GRID Alternatives. Founded by 2010 Leadership Award recipients Erica Mackie and Tim Sears, GRID Alternatives has been helping tens of thousands of low-income California residents like Rankin reduce electricity costs and greenhouse gas emissions, while training thousands of workers in solar installation.

In a recent San Francisco Chronicle op-ed article, UC Berkeley professor and renewable energy expert Daniel Kammen makes the case that policymakers should expand models like GRID Alternatives to help even more people. Here is an excerpt from Kammen’s op-ed:

Earlier this month, I was part of an event in Napa County that shows why a creative and resourced community foundation is one of the most important assets a community can have. More than 150 civic leaders, business people, teachers and community members attended a gathering hosted by the Napa Valley Community Foundation to talk about immigration and look at a new report the community foundation commissioned that examines the fiscal and economic impact of immigrants in the region.

To most of us, Napa Valley brings to mind wine and tourism; and indeed, those are two of the most important industries in the county. But because the Irvine Foundation seeks to expand opportunity for disadvantaged Californians, I also think of changing demographics when I think of Napa County.

Napa will experience one of the most profound demographic shifts in the state over the next 40 years. The Latino population is estimated to grow from 23 percent to 70 percent of residents by 2050, and Napa will become the first county in the Bay Area to have a Latino majority. How the community handles these shifting demographics will be critical to the county’s economy and quality of life. Will the community welcome this increased diversity or will it become a source of division? Will public schools be able to close the achievement gap between Caucasian students and students of color, or will inequalities become exacerbated?