EMCF's View

The board of trustees of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation has approved investments of up to $42 million over three years in nine outstanding organizations....

EMCF President Nancy Roob discusses evidence and evaluation on the blog of Duke University’s Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society.

EMCF President Nancy Roob observes the tenth anniversary of the Foundation's shift in grantmaking strategy.

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation launches an open and competitive search and selection process to identify and advance 8-10 high-performing, youth-serving organizations in our new role as an intermediary for the Social Innovation Fund.

The Corporation for National and Community Service announces that it has selected the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation as of one of 11 intermediaries for the Social Innovation Fund.

While economists debate whether the recession has ended or still lingers on, nearly everyone agrees that our recovery will be long and slow. For many nonprofits and the vulnerable populations they serve, the light at the end of tunnel is a long way off. 

These are challenging times for nonprofits and the vulnerable populations many of them serve. A Nonprofit Finance Fund survey of more than 1,100 nonprofit leaders found that almost a third of their organizations operated at a deficit in 2008. 

It will come as no surprise that the recession is affecting the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and our grantees, as it is everyone. How long the economic crisis will last, whether it will worsen, and what will be the ultimate consequences for the Foundation’s strategy and the work of our grantees are, of course, uncertain. 

As many of you know, in June 2007 the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (EMCF) launched an initiative we call the Growth Capital Aggregation Pilot. Its purpose is to partner with other funders and raise the required up-front growth capital necessary to fuel the expansion, capacity building, and long-term financial sustainability of three of our highest-performing, long-standing grantees. 

As 2007 draws to a close, I would like to share with you some exciting developments in the evolution of the Foundation’s work. This year we began to experiment with an innovative approach to raising and aggregating large amounts of growth capital up-front to support the dramatic expansion and sustainability of a few of our most successful long-term grantees.