Kaiser Permanente invests in programs, organizations, and efforts that address social health issues through grantmaking in their Office of Community Health. Kaiser Permanente engaged the Urban Institute to develop an impact framework that would inform future grantmaking activities for health systems and philanthropic funders investing to end homelessness and improve housing outcomes.
Urban conducted two phases to complete this work: (1) a landscape scan and assessment of Kaiser Permanente’s Community Health—Housing for Health portfolio, and (2) the development of an impact framework and tools for Kaiser Permanente to better measure performance and understand impact, which is the subject of this toolkit. It was important to Kaiser Permanente that lessons learned and tools developed as part of the project inform the broader field of communities and philanthropic groups working to end homelessness across the nation. To that end, for the purposes of this toolkit, Kaiser Permanente is used as a case example to develop materials applicable to all funders, specifically using their Housing for Health focus area.
Why This Matters
This toolkit was created to assist funders working to end homelessness and improve housing outcomes achieve their goals. It includes a set of tools to help housing funders better align funding decisions with the outcomes in their theory of change and provide the strongest available evidence about what works to reduce homelessness. It is modeled after Kaiser Permanente’s Housing for Health Theory of Change and can be used as a template by foundations looking to align their grantmaking decisions with their mission, strategy, and theory of change.
We encourage funders of all types—local, community, family, private, and corporate—to consider which strategies, actions, and processes could be useful to your organization and apply them in your work. Each section covers a different aspect of decisionmaking for the foundation and a few sections also include recommendations for encouraging equitable outcomes from grantees. Throughout this toolkit, we identify specific actions that funders could take to help embed racial equity into its processes and outcomes.
