FOUNDATIONS SHOULD STEP UP AS OBAMA STEPS IN

Foundations and their grantees have been grappling with these very same challenges for decades. They know of proven solutions—programs that work to improve educational results, increase health care access and reduce its cost, conserve energy, revitalize communities, and create economic empowerment—but they could never get them financed on a national scale.

Now is that rare moment of convergence—the time to come forward with our very best evidence of success and advocate as strongly as we can for the policy changes that we know will work. And it may now be feasible for the first time in our lives. If we can combine this moment of opportunity with the movement-building lessons of the campaign, we have the potential to enter a whole new era of creating social change.

As we approach the inauguration, Dickens’s words have never rung more true:

Foundations and nonprofit groups alike have understandably been caught up in the trauma that has been our winter of despair. This inauguration is our opportunity to focus instead on the extraordinary lessons and opportunities of the spring of hope that lies ahead.