Patience and Trust: Lessons from a 13-Year Grantmaker-Grantee Relationship

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Since 2010, the Langeloth Foundation has funded TCN’s work to reverse the health and economic harms of mass incarceration by transforming health systems to heal communities. Here, the organizations’ leaders share wisdom gleaned over their 13-year partnership. 

Thirteen years ago, I — Shira — bloody, sweaty and near tears, was scurrying to the post office, rushing to postmark our grant application before the deadline to the Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation. I had cut myself when hurrying and trying to staple through three copies of the 30-page application. Long story short, staff at the Langeloth Foundation caught wind of this and the following year, the application was virtual. This small moment gives us a lens into what a grantor-grantee relationship can be: responsive, impact-driven and authentic. Funders must remain grounded in their key issue areas, while simultaneously being fluid enough to adjust to their grantee partners’ needs as well as the ebbs and flows of the field. 

Money-to-hand relationships without substance and trust are hindrances to the important work of transforming harmful systems. We believe that the relationship between our two organizations — the Transitions Clinic Network (TCN) and the Langeloth Foundation — can provide insight into how funders can create a lasting impact on their grantee partners and the communities they help heal.

Systemic transformation is a daunting task. When we take a step back and realize how entrenched the inequities we face are, unearthing and reforming systems not only requires a multilayered approach, it takes time. For funding relationships to thrive, we believe it’s imperative that those relationships center on a set of shared values and goals. In our case, both TCN and Langeloth share a steadfast commitment to supporting health and racial equity outcomes to foster and sustain healthy communities. 

Unfortunately, many nonprofits are forced to seek funding opportunities based solely on financial need. But our relationship models the synergy created when organizations can align with funders beyond dollars. Langeloth’s commitment to systemic transformation that centers and empowers directly impacted individuals is TCN’s programmatic model. TCN’s community health workers, many with lived experience of incarceration, are able to engage and support individuals returning from jail and prison with healthcare and social support. Collaboration with directly impacted community members is foundational to TCN’s work, and receiving support from a funder that values authentic community engagement has been beneficial to cultivating a productive partnership to advance health equity. 

The TCN team is composed of recognized carceral health policy experts, practitioners and directly impacted individuals at all levels of the network, who create comprehensive solutions. Langeloth’s unwavering trust and investment in TCN’s programming has helped onboard 48 community-based primary care programs to the TCN model in 14 states and Puerto Rico, including 21 programs in California. TCN programs employ over 100 community health workers with lived experience of incarceration and have served over 20,000 returning community members. Valuing the wisdom of grantees is instrumental to TNC’s success, and key to a sustainable, thriving donor-grantee relationship. 

One of the many things we have learned throughout our decade-plus-long relationship is patience. Make no mistake, achieving health equity is urgent — negative social determinants of health have led to severe health disparities in the U.S. that have been worsening for decades, with systemic racism driving harmful policies like mass incarceration. These destructive systems have been compounding on top of one another for centuries, becoming more and more entangled and entrenched in our social fabric. Our solutions require deeply transformative work that, unfortunately, cannot be achieved overnight. Serious problems require serious, thoughtful solutions, and not superficial Band-Aids that can yield illusory rapid results. 

While everyone wants to see quick outcomes and positive progress made toward improving the health of the communities most harmed, to spur meaningful change, funders must understand that systemic transformation is both timely and time-consuming. By evolving its reporting process in response to grantee needs and feedback, the Langeloth Foundation is developing a system that allows partners like TCN to honestly share challenges and successes in the place of onerous reporting requirements that are burdensome to grantees and yet don’t communicate the complete scope of the work being done on the ground to funders.

This slow and steady approach calls for multi-year general operating support. When that is provided, we are all given the space to experiment and try new approaches to transforming health systems to heal communities. Sustained, flexible funding has been integral to TCN’s growth into a robust network, and leveraging this support to continue partnering with like-minded funders will permit the level of growth necessary to reverse mass incarceration’s impacts on Black and brown communities throughout the nation. This funding model has freed TCN from constantly devoting limited staff capacity to securing future funding, taking precious time away from executing the current programmatic work — a hurdle that many organizations in the nonprofit sector face. We are able to be bold in our approaches and formulate innovative ideas that have brought on real progress.

Just as TCN takes risks in its solutions, a core component of Langeloth’s strategy is calculated risk. Partnering with directly impacted community members and embedding formerly incarcerated community health workers in primary care programs to drive the transformation of the healthcare system is a new approach. With Langeloth’s ongoing, steadfast support, TCN has been able to take measured risks and try new things, leading to incredible innovations to address health disparities. 

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, when individuals with chronic health conditions were rapidly released from California prisons with little to no transitional planning, TCN identified the acute need for a statewide safety net and developed a reentry health hub and hotline to link returning community members to care in their communities. Responsive to the additional challenges grantees faced, Langeloth provided additional support during the pandemic, and TCN was able to leverage its experience of partnering with primary care programs to develop a robust statewide safety net. As a result of TCN’s heightened ability to take strategic risks, it connected over 10,000 individuals to care while closing systemic gaps during the critical reentry period, when individuals are at heightened risk of adverse outcomes and death.

To tackle an issue as complex as health equity, organizations and the philanthropists who support them must work in tandem, developing effective interventions and then bringing them to scale. Funders have enormous potential to advance positive change by providing grantees with the financial stability necessary to take risks and innovate. But grantmakers are only as strong as their partners on the ground. Our impact depends on us remembering that.

We at Langeloth have tried to hold a deep understanding and reverence for the knowledge of our community members and grantee partner staff. That trust-based relationship has created a symbiosis, allowing grantee partners like TCN to dictate their own path to success. 

Scott Moyer is president of the Langeloth Foundation, which supports health and racial equity outcomes for all people in order to foster and sustain safe and healthy communities.

Dr. Shira Shavit is executive director of the Transitions Clinic Network, a national organization committed to reversing the harms of mass incarceration by eliminating racial health and economic disparities.