Posts in 'Systems Change'

The stories we tell help us understand our world and build connections with others. Yet the stories we hear the most still disproportionately favor and represent a select few. By elevating underrepresented and unheard voices through deeper investments in arts, journalism, and storytelling in our...

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” – Alice Walker HealthSpark Foundation is pleased to announce that registration is now open for its Community of Practice event, on Tuesday, September 14, 2022 from 9:00 am – 10:00 pm. The Community of Practice is...

As we enter into the new year of 2022 and embark on the launch of the Dr. Frank E. Boston Black Justice Fund, I have been reflecting on the closing of 2021, Kwanzaa, and power. Power-building is a central tenet of the Dr. Frank E. Boston Black Justice Fund. Tapping into community power and...

Throughout our conversations with safety net partners over the last two years, HealthSpark has heard time and again the need to improve our sector’s capacity for advocacy and policy change. Safety net partners in fields from mental health to food security to senior services have noted the...

As HealthSpark continues on our journey to center equity and justice in our work, we have been asking ourselves “how do the tools and frameworks that we use as funders support or impede justice?”. A central tool, evaluation, has been a key driver of decision making in grantmaking. Evaluation can...

As part of our work to create systemic change within the safety net system, HealthSpark recognizes that our role as a philanthropy must shift, too. Part of that shift includes embracing a culture and practice of trust-based philanthropy, which centers on philanthropies sharing and redistributing...

In a time of crisis, the Montgomery County safety net system responded with agility and a call for long overdue investments in the sector and the people who staff it. HealthSpark Foundation is pleased to share, on behalf of our community partners, the State of the Safety Net 2020-2021 Report and two...

“Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.” Martin Luther King, Jr. Late last year, we shared an update on the ways in which HealthSpark Foundation has been holding itself accountable...

As a learning organization, HealthSpark is continually looking to assess the impact of our grantmaking and find ways to strengthen our programs. Recently, HealthSpark engaged Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health intern Duong Tina Nguyen to evaluate the impact of our Innovation Lab...

Social safety net organizations often focus on addressing individual issues- providing a family with food to alleviate their hunger, providing emergency shelter after an eviction. But work must be done to address systemic issues at a policy level that allow these individual situations to occur. That...