Sacramento Bee Profiles California Endowment
The Sacramento Bee on Monday profiled the California Endowment, "one of the state's richest health care foundations and an influential force in the Capitol," with more than $3 billion in assets. Since it was created about 10 years ago, the California Endowment has awarded more than $1.3 billion through about 6,000 grants to programs such as the Agricultural Worker Health and Housing Program, the Partnership for the Public's Health and Healthy Kids.
Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Kim Belshe, a former executive for the California Endowment, said that the organization "is a grant-maker, but it's also a thought leader, a policy informer and an advocate." Belshe added, "It's not hard to give away money, but it's very hard to make grants strategically and to do so in a way that advances policy outcomes."
Jim Keddy, director of the Pacific Institute for Community Organization and a California Endowment board member, said, "The endowment has funded bottoms-up changes, whereas many foundations take a more top-down approach and set the agenda" (Rojas, Sacramento Bee, 6/6).