Options for Incorporating Whole Family Approaches in Your Investment Strategy

Foundations can incorporate a range of whole family strategies into their grantmaking and their overall engagement in whole family work. Depending on the mission, existing investment strategy, and anticipated or planned investment in whole family work, foundations may decide to expand existing grants to incorporate more elements of whole family work, pivot to policy work, invest in both policy and practice, provide technical assistance or capacity building to support solid whole family approaches, or some combination of all of these. 

This section offers considerations for each kind of philanthropic investment. There are four broad areas for consideration:

  1. Programmatic
  2. Pilots
  3. Policy/Advocacy
  4. Capacity/Field Building

1. Programmatic

Goal: To serve families more holistically with comprehensive, coordinated services so that families can increase their well-being faster.

Considerations:

At the program level:

At the foundation level:

Examples:

SomeThe Texas Women’s Foundation established a Child Care Access Fund, recognizing that quality and affordable child care is critical to women’s economic success.
LotsThe Women’s Foundation of Colorado intentionally asks partners to work together to coordinate services and provides networking across grantees and technical assistance, allowing families to access many services across partners.
AllThe Women’s Foundation of Mississippi supported grantees to undertake a whole family strategic planning process to create a comprehensive whole family approach in their communities.

2. Pilots

Goal: To explore and test how whole family approaches support better outcomes for the entire family.

Considerations:

At the foundation level:

At the program level: 

Examples: 

The Birmingham Manufacturing Pilot sponsored by the Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham has created 18 manufacturing pilots for primarily single mothers that combine quality child care with training and placement services.

CareerAdvance in Tulsa, Oklahoma, piloted recruiting parents from Head Start programs for a health care careers program funded by the federal government, creating a whole family approach that has supported parents in job training and children in moving forward with critical developmental benchmarks.

3. Policy/Advocacy 

Goals: To scale whole family practice by influencing policies and funding streams that support families, and/or to advocate for systems change to place families at the center.

Considerations:

At the foundation level:

At the policy/advocacy level:

Examples:

The Southern Arizona Women’s Foundation holds an annual day at the statehouse to educate legislators on key issues for women and their families, and it buses in parents who are trained on how to tell legislators their stories and advocate for better policies for themselves and their children.

The Texas Women’s Foundation engages in deep advocacy work related to child care, recognizing quality care as a pillar for parent success and family economic mobility. Through direct advocacy and grantmaking, they have won key victories, including creating easier and more integrated application processes for women to obtain multiple family-focused benefits.

4. Capacity Building/Field Building

Goal: To build grantee capacity to provide whole family program services and incorporate whole family thinking into policy approaches.

Considerations:

At the foundation level:

At the field level:

Examples:

Ascend’s Accelerating Postsecondary Success for Parents Initiative, funded by the Omidyar Network, brings together parents and postsecondary institutions to identify policy and practice solutions that support parents in achieving credentials that set them on a path toward economic mobility.

The Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham’s Collaboration Institute offers deep technical assistance to cohorts of organizations to build whole family programs and collaboratives.