Hartford Foundation Launches New 3-Year Strategic Plan For 2016-18

2016 marks the launch of a new three-year strategic plan for the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving. The new plan seeks to amplify the organization’s efforts to improve access to opportunity by recognizing that a strong Greater Hartford region requires that all residents, especially those with the greatest need, have equitable supports to achieve and flourish. To remove barriers to success, the Foundation is focusing on three interrelated priorities: vibrant communities, learning – from birth through college, and family economic security.

“Through our past and current work, we recognize that important issues in our community cannot be addressed in a vacuum; success in one area depends on and reinforces success in the others,” said Hartford Foundation president Linda J. Kelly. “We cannot do this work alone. As Greater Hartford’s community foundation, we have a unique role to play to bring different groups of people together including nonprofits, state and local government, philanthropy, and business organizations to develop a shared understanding about community needs and collaborate on developing meaningful solutions.”

“This plan was developed with the input and support of hundreds of our local stakeholders,” said Yvette Meléndez, chair of the Hartford Foundation’s board of directors. “We are excited to build on our strengths and to explore new ways of working together for the benefit of our region.”

Hartford Foundation’s Strategic Priorities

• Vibrant Communities – All of our region’s residents should have the opportunity to live and contribute to strong, safe vibrant communities. This effort will focus on people and places with the greatest need by engaging and supporting partners who promote meaningful civic engagement, safe affordable housing, quality health and mental health care and a rich diversity of cultural and other experiences to improve the quality of life.
• Learning - From Birth through College – All of our region’s children should be ready to learn when enter kindergarten and prepared to succeed when they graduate from high school. The Foundation will focus on supporting children who face the greatest opportunity gaps by leading and collaborating with partners to engage families with young children; develop family-school-community partnerships with low-performing school districts; stem summer learning loss; provide college scholarships; and other opportunities that promote learning, and inspire college and career readiness, for children and youth.
• Family Economic Security – All of our region’s residents should have access to clear pathways to employment and career advancement that lead to economic security for their families. The Foundation will focus on adults with low-level literacy and job skills, including those previously incarcerated by incentivizing and supporting employment pathway components such as adult literacy, contextualized learning, career readiness, financial literacy and other opportunities that contribute to economic development and success in our region.

“Transformation happens when we are able to forge creative, cross-cutting approaches that lift up all members of the region in all areas,” Kelly said. “We recognize that significant disparities exist in our region by race, ethnicity and income. To ensure that residents and communities with greater need have access to high-quality education and employment, we must provide more attention and support.”

The Foundation has identified four key strategies that best leverage its assets to affect enduring change in its priority areas and allow the organization to be nimble and responsive to new knowledge and opportunities: building, sustaining and sharing knowledge; engaging in public policy; inspiring philanthropy; and stewarding resources and investing in the region. 

This strategic plan builds on the Foundation’s past efforts. The Foundation has focused on supports and opportunities for learning from birth through high school, preparing a skilled workforce, expanding activities to collect, analyze and share data, advancing the Foundation’s longstanding nonprofit capacity-building initiative, and engaging in public policy. All of this work has emphasized the importance of collaborations and partnerships.

Here are some examples from the past five years:

• Expanded the Foundation’s education work beyond Hartford to deepen partnerships among school district leaders, families and community providers from the state-designated lowest performing districts in the region (Alliance Districts) to support education equity and success.
• Launched an innovative approach to improving the quality of home-based child care in the region, engaging state agencies, community based organizations, providers and families.
• Led efforts to create MOVE UP!, the Capital Region Adult Literacy Partnership, which established a regional adult literacy plan and the Contextualized Learning Institute, which trains literacy providers to work with job skills instructors.
• Launched the Career Pathways Initiative to support eight collaboratives designed to develop viable career pathways for low-literate and/or low-skilled adults in the region, a learning community of workforce providers and a model for a regional career pathways system.
• Served as lead funder and staff for the region’s first community indicators project, working with eight partners to publish two annual editions of Metro Hartford Progress Points and create a series of community forums to identify and drive action around the challenges and opportunities facing Greater Hartford.
• Became the first and remains the only community foundation in Connecticut to register as a lobbyist to support its priorities, enabling the organization to collaborate with statewide partners to establish the state Office of Early Childhood and influence legislation for English Language Learners and a two-generation approach to helping families with young children. 

“Through all of this work, we have come to recognize that building partnerships and collaborations is vital to making a real impact,” said Meléndez. “We will intensify our efforts to build, join and support strong collaborations to better link knowledge and resources within and between sectors in our region that will lead to breaking down barriers to opportunity and enduring social change.”