Research and Policy
Affecting Policy and Practice
THIS AREA OF EXPERTISE OFFERED BY THE SILLERMAN CENTER demonstrates how a foundation can leverage its knowledge, experiences and connections to influence policies and practice.
EASING THE CONFUSION ABOUT POLICY
Often social policy is a difficult concept to understand. It is easy to become confused about the role and impact of policy. A foundation may be very sophisticated in selecting an innovative grantee to do something important in the community, but may have little experience in helping that grantee advance its work in partnership with government (municipal, county, state or federal) around joint funding, appropriate new regulations, replication and so forth.
Foundations are often leery of engaging with the mayor, a state legislator or the federal government for fear of violating their tax exempt status. The Sillerman Center can educate about the acceptable ways to engage in policy. These strategies of engaging publicly can provide enormous opportunities for promising initiatives to reach scale through replication.
FINDING FOUNDATION-PUBLIC SECTOR CONNECTIONS
Accordingly, the second principle guiding the Brandeis work is that we will seek foundation-public sector connections. The intended result is for grantmakers to feel comfortable that their investments have achieved scale and yielded positive returns on investment by leveraging attention in the policy sector. Working to bring together stakeholders in the foundation and government policy world at a number of levels is a step toward promoting these goals.
