- 5 -
accessHealthNews.net
January 2024
Volume 10 | Issue No. 80
The REACH Healthcare Foundation's mis-
sion is to advance health equity through
coverage and care for underserved peo-
ple. A regional foundation granting about
$4.5 million annually, REACH recently cel-
ebrated its 20th anniversary. To mark this
milestone, Board and staff leadership re-
flected on the foundation's evolution from
a highly politicized health care conversion
foundation at its inception to a philan-
thropy striving to reshape its actions and
practices to reflect a more reparative ap-
proach focused squarely on health equity.
The journey has been long and, at times,
tenuous, and continues to evolve. It has
been joyful, inspiring, messy, painful, and
exhausting. As the CEO and Vice President
of Programs, we would like to share some
of the lessons learned along the way and
the internal and external changes made in
the hopes of becoming a better partner to
our grantees.
Since its earliest grantmaking days, REACH
has prided itself on being transparent and
"fair." At the time, this meant having firm
rules that applied to all, exhaustive guide-
lines, lengthy applications and review
processes, specific eligibility requirements,
and a high rating on GlassPockets. We en-
gaged in rigorous strategic planning, im-
plemented philanthropic "best practices,"
and were upfront and unapologetic about
our funding priorities and the strategies we
advanced. The Board and staff generally
felt positively about our efforts to be ac-
cessible and approachable while demysti-
fying the grantmaking process.
Like most funders, we always received far
more requests than we could possibly fund
but were relatively satisfied we were "do-
ing good where we could." What we were
not paying attention to was who was not
seeking us out as a funding partner, partic-
ularly those preemptively excluded from
consideration due to onerous funder prac-
tices.
Our reckoning began in 2018 with a port-
folio review and the resulting realization
that Black-led, Black-serving organizations
were embarrassingly absent from our in-
vestments. Our Senior Program Officer
sought to understand why and what could
be done to rectify this wrong. Further, the
Board would need to be brought along in
its understanding that REACH had fallen
short in investing and partnering with lead-
ers in the Black community within our ser-
vice area.
Our most recent results from the Center for Effective Philanthropy's
Grantee Perception Report, which included participants from the CBV pilot,
also give us encouragement that we are moving in the right direction.
