Special collections > Archived special collections
Below are special collections that are no longer actively curated. Earlier archived collections were archived as PDFs with detailed bibliographies that include working links to source material in Issue Lab. More recent archived collections are archived in their original, searchable collection form with the option of downloading a detailed bibliography (.csv).
Access to palliative care
Will you get the care you need when you face a serious illness? It depends on who you are and where you live. This collection brings together evidence and insights about the millions of people worldwide who are denied access to palliative care and what organizations are doing to help them.
Affordable Care Act
The passage of the Affordable Care Act represents an historic change in the way health insurance has been handled in the United States. With political discourse about the act continuing to occupy public policy debates and the news media, this collection attempts to shed light on the impact of the policy on citizens and providers.
Arts education
In recent years many school districts have had to restructure their arts curricula to meet the growing emphasis on standards that is central to most school reform. This unique collection is meant to assist educators, policymakers, grantmakers, and other stakeholders in identify the potential benefits of arts education for students and communities, and providing examples of creative ways school districts are handling their constraints.
Disconnected youth
For too many young people the transition to adulthood is characterized by isolation, joblessness, and a lack of educational opportunity or connection to caring community. In a far-reaching effort to help disconnected youth, nonprofits, foundations, and government agencies across the U.S. are providing support in the form of shelters, job training, mentorship, college prep, job placement, and mental and reproductive health services. But in order to achieve success it is clear that these efforts require greater alignment and coordination. This special collection gathers the many lessons being learned in the field; lessons about the challenges in meeting the needs of disconnected youth and the promise of both new and more proven approaches.
Funding capacity
Capacity building can carry many different meanings, but at its heart, it represents an investment aimed at strengthening effectiveness. This special collection gathers the experience and insights of foundations and nonprofits who have made just this kind of investment. The collection builds on topics explored in the new GrantCraft guide Supporting Grantee Capacity, including approaches to field-building, working with technical assistance providers and consultants, and assessing the impact of capacity building initiatives.
Funding intermediaries
When grantmakers use intermediary organizations, or “regranters”, they generally do so to expand their capacity or broaden their expertise. But what impact do intermediaries have on grantmaking practices? There are both promising opportunities as well as pitfalls to working with intermediaries, and this Issue Lab collection aims to inform grantmakers about both.
Joining Forces
This collection brings together valuable insights from nonprofit organizations, foundations, and government agencies that work directly with veterans in communities across the country. The works collected here provide a deeper understanding of the problems many veterans and their families face and also potential solutions to address these very real challenges. The collection is broken into five key areas where veterans are facing obstacles and where nonprofits and foundations have been focusing their efforts.
Multi-party advocacy
For many foundations, collaboration is key to advocating for policy and practice change. But these kinds of partnerships can be challenging to execute well. “Sticking points”, like conflicts over decision-making power or competition for resources, can derail advocacy-focused efforts and make even the most earnest collaborator wary. This collection brings together 40+ reports and reflection pieces about multi-party advocacy efforts; providing valuable perspective on both the sticking points and how we might move through them.
Open educational resources (OER)
The body of work collected here represents the combined efforts of organizations worldwide. As the OER movement has grown, so has the body of research being produced on the topic. We invite you to engage with the new discoveries and analyses that this collection has to offer.
#OpenForGood – Find results
The Find Results Special Collection was part of the #OpenForGood campaign. The goal of the collection was to provide easy and open access to the lessons that foundations were learning about what is and isn’t working. The collection grew to include thousands of actual evaluations that ar now available via Issue Lab’s search interface. We continue to maintain the Measure Results collection with its focus on the how to of evaluation.
Risk and philanthropy
There is no shortage of talk about the need for foundations to be bold and to take meaningful risks in the name of social change. Add to that the social investment literature that understands risk, and the management of risk, through a return on investment lens. But what is often missing from this discussion are the support and tools for foundations to walk the talk of risk-taking; to anticipate, manage, tolerate, and mitigate risk, close up. This special collection gathers in one place the reports, case studies, thought pieces, and the all too rare toolkit addressing this topic; offering a picture of how philanthropic organizations talk – and don’t talk – about the risks inherent to their work.