In 2015, the Hewlett Foundation launched its first strategy on Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE). The goal of that strategy was to support women in achieving greater agency, opportunities, and control over resources. To do so, we focused on three areas of grantmaking: data, research, and advocacy. We worked under the premise that improved data, macro-level…
In 2020—a year rocked by a racial reckoning and the inequities of the global pandemic—diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) rose to the forefront of issues that were most of interest to funders. In a new study of how U.S. foundations find and use information about effective philanthropy, DEI emerged as the leading topic of interest…
The Hewlett Foundation began collecting information about the demographic makeup of its grantees in 2018 as part of our ongoing commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Just as we collect and publish the demographics of our staff and board, we view the demographic data of our grantees as a critical input to help us understand…
The Hewlett Foundation is publicly releasing a new data platform that describes the racial, ethnic, and gender makeup of its U.S. grantees—a platform developed in partnership with the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP). In this interview, Kevin Bolduc, Vice President of Assessment and Advisory Services, and Della Menhaj, Associate Manager of Assessment and Advisory Services,…
The Hewlett Foundation updates our grantmaking strategies every five years to facilitate ongoing learning and adaptation, consistent with our commitment to outcome-focused philanthropy. The foundation’s transparency, participation, and accountability (TPA) strategy reached the five-year mark in 2020 and we kicked off the strategy refresh in late 2020. We are now at the stage of making…
Re-granting or intermediary organizations—frequently used in philanthropy—are “mission-driven organizations that aim to more effectively link donors (individuals, foundations, and corporations) with organizations and individuals delivering charitable services.” (That’s a definition from the experts at PEAK, the association for grantmaking professionals.) Such organizations play valuable, wide-ranging roles including campaign leadership, coalition-builder, policy expert, and capacity-builder for small and…
Last week, the Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI) released a new report called Arts Workers in California, authored by scholars at the Urban Institute and funded by the Hewlett Foundation Performing Arts Program. Like our colleagues at CCI, we have long been concerned with how we can best support not only art that matters to…
Our International Reproductive Health (IRH) team kicked off a strategy refresh process back in March 2020. We began with a retrospective evaluation of Hewlett’s contributions to the IRH field over the past five years and a landscape analysis of global and regional trends in sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and related fields. Though we…
The Listening Post is a monthly email by Hewlett Foundation Vice President Fay Twersky dedicated to lifting up exceptional ideas, voices, and questions that can help all of us become more effective in our philanthropy. In each issue, Fay weighs in on a new topic, curates the latest sector resources and news, and shares what…
Two years ago, the Hewlett Foundation’s U.S. Democracy Program (then, the Madison Initiative) launched a grantmaking strategy to combat digital disinformation. The premise was that disinformation posed a unique challenge to U.S. democracy, and we should move quickly to learn more about the impact of this problem and to assess solutions to counter it. Because…