About Our Grantmaking
Over the course of our history, The Nicholson Foundation remained committed to helping New Jersey's vulnerable populations. The Foundation’s goal of transforming the way health and early childhood services are paid for and delivered drove our search for strong partners and promising new ideas.
We worked by providing funds to nurture the development of local service providers and to help ensure that government agencies provided accessible, effective, and equitable services. We partnered with statewide intermediary organizations, hospital systems, other foundations, state and national experts, and state agencies and departments to implement innovative strategies for addressing social needs. Our grantmaking, was guided by three principles:
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Systems change
In addition to supporting single, one-time projects, we advanced our focus areas by funding multiple projects that complemented and built on each other. This approach allowed the communities working with us to apply lessons learned, share inspirations, and build a concentration that could begin to move the culture. The ultimate goal was to change the systems that deliver health and early childhood services.
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Riding the wave
We wanted to capitalize on the momentum of what was on the public's agenda. We sought out approaches and practices that demonstrated evidence of success elsewhere and adapted them to meet New Jersey’s unique needs and circumstances.
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Sustainability
We made funds available to seed select pilot programs, allowing us to build relationships, test new ideas, and make adaptations. Then, we provided additional support to build these projects over time and help them become self-sustaining.
Performance-Based Funding
We felt strongly that projects with clear goals, measurable objectives, and defined performance milestones were the ones with the best chance of success.
Organizations we funded were required to be accountable for outcomes they defined, because definable outcomes helped us know and measure what we were supporting. We sought to attract partners and collaborators who not only had good ideas, but who could achieve outcomes that resulted in measurable impact. Therefore:
- The projects we funded included performance benchmarks delineating specific process and outcome objectives that were measured by “how much,” “how many,” and “when.”
- Depending on the project, we linked 25 to 100 percent of the total funding amount to the achievement of those performance benchmarks.
To help this approach succeed, we worked closely with organizations during project development to help them articulate their goals, define their objectives, and determine the performance benchmarks. Our collaboration included providing technical assistance and guidance throughout the project’s implementation.