Home/Insights
Insights
The Foundation publishes four letters each year together with periodic notes on program design and outcomes. A considerable proportion of them document revisions to the Foundation's own assumptions, which we regard as the most useful material we are positioned to contribute.
Archive
A review of the Foundation's postsecondary completion work. Cohort outcomes did not support the program's original tuition-led design, and the majority of its resources were subsequently redirected toward emergency financial assistance. Completion rates rose from 52 percent to 79 percent.
Full text is not published on this demonstration site.A review of four years of interim reports identified no instance in which the document altered a Foundation decision. Effective with the autumn cycle, the annual conversation constitutes the complete reporting requirement across all grant types.
Full text is not published on this demonstration site.An assessment of the Foundation's newest region, including the substantial revisions to regional strategy that followed sustained consultation with local partner organizations.
Full text is not published on this demonstration site.The chair of the Foundation's Rio Grande Valley advisory council has been appointed to the Board, providing the region with direct representation in Foundation governance.
Full text is not published on this demonstration site.The Foundation does not ordinarily fund capital expenditure. Two exceptions made in the Appalachian Highlands proved among the most productive awards of their respective years. A note on the conditions under which an institutional rule should yield.
Full text is not published on this demonstration site.An accounting of the Foundation's smallest and least formal instrument, including median award value, approval rate and the administrative case for a one-paragraph application.
Full text is not published on this demonstration site.For three years the Foundation declined applications using language that conveyed no substantive information. A note on what the Foundation's decline letters now contain and why the change took longer than it should have.
Full text is not published on this demonstration site.The Foundation's complete annual accounting, including payout rate, operating expenditure, awards the Foundation would not repeat, and two rapid response awards applied to purposes other than those represented.
Full text is not published on this demonstration site.An examination of what maternal and infant health navigation requires in counties without an operating obstetric unit, and why transport constitutes the binding constraint in several of them.
Full text is not published on this demonstration site.The Housing Stability Fund operates without an application process. Four partner organizations draw against the pool directly and reconcile quarterly. Six years of reconciliation data are presented.
Full text is not published on this demonstration site.The Catawba region has undertaken a substantial and largely successful economic transition. This note concerns the residential neighborhoods established around the former mills, which have participated in it least.
Full text is not published on this demonstration site.The Board withdrew the sixth of the Foundation's original operating principles in 2019, having concluded that it favored newly formed organizations over demonstrably effective ones and encouraged partners to restate established work in novel terms.
Full text is not published on this demonstration site.No publications are filed under this category.
Foundation updates
The Foundation publishes a quarterly summary of its grantmaking, program results and guidance. All published material is collected in the archive above. The Foundation does not fundraise, maintains no mailing list and makes no solicitation of its readers.