Generating ideas, connections, and action

Author: Claire Reinelt

<< Back to Authors
Showing 1-10 of 26 items with author 'Claire Reinelt'.
Leadership Development in the Social Sector: A Framework for Supporting Strategic Investments PDF file [download] [more info]

Current economic conditions have increased pressure on foundations to optimize their investments. This article offers a tool for doing this in an area of high leverage: leadership development. It offers a framework for assessing a foundation’s current approach in this area that reflects the rising significance of collective leadership. This article is based on an in-depth review of leadership development practices carried out by one of the authors in three sectors – government, business, and social – as well as in the emerging multistakeholder sector. It reflects as well another of the authors’ experiences evaluating leadership development programs and initiatives that have vastly different purposes, and co-creating with funders and evaluators a framework for assessing leadership investments that can guide program and evaluation design.

Authors: Grady McGonagill, Claire Reinelt

Subjects: leadership, investment framework

06/01/2011 - 00:00 - 0 comments - 1 attachment - Posted by Natalia Castaneda

Leadership Development Investment Framework PDF file [download] [more info]

The Leadership Development Investment Framework is a tool developed to assist funders, program staff, and evaluators clarify the purposes of leadership development and capacity-building supports. In 2008, we partnered with United Way Toronto to adapt the original Leadership Development Investment Framework that was produced by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations in 2005. The tool was useful in assisting the United Way and other leadership funders in Canada to become more intentional about where they are currently investing resources, where there are gaps in investment, and how they might work together to maximize the impact of their resources. Grady McGonagill adapted the framework further by adding the dimension of teams and team building capacity as part of a study for the Bertelsmann Foundation. Claire Reinelt and LLC Board Member and Leadership Consultant Grady McGonagill have continued to refine the framework and explore ways that funders can use this tool to better align their leadership investments internally and externally with others. At a recent Funders' Circle meeting designed for funders to learn more about each other's work and find synergies across strategies, issues and geographic areas, the attached summary of the framework was shared. This summary describes changes that occur at five levels: individual, team, organizational, community, and field. Since most foundations seek to develop a range of leadership capacities across multiple levels, choosing the right approaches and combining the right strategies is a process of experimentation and learning. To make the framework more useful, we have added examples of different programs and how they invest in leadership development. This framework provides a comprehensive view of 25 potential leadership development opportunities organized in a 5 x 5 matrix. The matrix enables stakeholders to identify patterns in their current investment strategies; engage in deeper dialogue about the purposes for investing in leadership; and become more intentional about the directions in which they want to invest moving forward. Through sharing strategies and lessons learned among funders, successful approaches can be adapted and tried in different contexts. Please refer to the document for additional information on the framework.

Authors: Claire Reinelt, Grady McGonagill

Subjects: leadership, evaluation

11/23/2009 - 01:00 - 0 comments - 1 attachment - Posted by Natalia Castaneda

Learning-Circle Partnerships and the Evaluation of a Boundary-Crossing Leadership Initiative in Health PDF file [download] [more info]

This article describes an initiative developed by The California Endowment (TCE) to explore how best to support leadership capacity development in low-income communities and communities of color to create health. TCE’s investment strategies were developed in response to growing disparities in health outcomes and a recognition that there would be little improvement in those disparities without effective, engaged, and connected leadership among underrepresented populations. With the changing demographics in California, TCE is committed to amplifying and aligning the voices of immigrant, youth, and ethnic communities so that they can more effectively influence the systems that affect the health quality of low-income communities and communities of color.

Authors: Claire Reinelt, Dianne Yamashiro-Omi, Deborah Meehan

Subjects: leadership, health

10/04/2010 - 09:21 - 0 comments - 1 attachment - Posted by Natalia Castaneda

A New Leadership Mindset for Scaling Social Change External website [view] [more info]

Over the past 50 years our thinking about leadership, whether in communities or board rooms, has been heavily influenced by heroic models of leadership. We traditionally think of leadership as the skills, qualities and behavior of an individual who exerts influence over others to take action or achieves a goal using their position and authority. Leadership for a New Era was launched because we believe this way of thinking about leadership is only one part of the story -- one that does not fully recognize leadership as a process grounded in relationships that are fluid, dynamic, non-directive and non-unilateral. Understanding leadership as a process requires us to think very differently about how change occurs and how we work with others. We will never mobilize leadership at the scale needed for significant progress on social justice or any other complex issue without expanding our thinking about what leadership is, how it works and how we can support it.

Authors: Leadership for a New Era Partners, Deborah Meehan, Claire Reinelt

Subjects: social change, Leadership for a New Era

04/20/2010 - 00:00 - 0 comments - 0 attachments - Posted by Natalia Castaneda

A question of leadership: What are the key challenges that for-profit and nonprofit organizations face in evaluating leadership development? External website [view] [more info]

Exploring evaluation in leadership development.

Authors: Lily Kelly-Radford, Deborah Meehan, David Altman, Claire Reinelt

Subjects: leadership, evaluation

03/24/2004 - 01:00 - 0 comments - 0 attachments - Posted by Natalia Castaneda

Developing a Racial Justice and Leadership Framework to Promote Racial Equity, Address Structural Racism, and Heal Racial and Ethnic Divisions in Communities Microsoft Word file [download] [more info]

In early 2009, the Leadership Team at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation commissioned a scan to identify promising strategies for supporting and enhancing leadership that can make significant progress on undoing structural racism; and healing, repairing and reconciling communities. This public document shares some of the core insights from the scan and highlights a number of national programs that are doing leading edge work in these areas.

Authors: Eilssa Perry, Deborah Meehan, Claire Reinelt

Subjects: racial justice, Racial equity, Leadership for a New Era

07/15/2009 - 00:00 - 0 comments - 1 attachment - Posted by Claire Reinelt

LLC Social Network Analysis Project Final Report Microsoft Word file [download] [more info]

LLC, through its Community Seed Fund, recently supported four members of the Community (Bruce Hoppe, Meredith Emmett, Dianne Russell, and Odin Zackman) to test the usefulness of this methodology in different network contexts. The team produced a very informative summary about the outcomes of this project. One of the more interesting findings was that network maps can be a valuable tool for generating group reflection about itself. The study raised the question about which networks would find this a valuable tool and which might not. There is some indication that those networks that have a clear purpose, are more bounded and formalized, and that have outside funding, may be more motivated and interested in using network maps to deepen their understanding of themselves as a network. Another interesting lesson learned is that the interpretation of network maps is full of complexities. There is no single interpretation of what the maps mean. This means that the maps can lead to many interesting conversations. The summary does a nice job of specifying and evaluating the outcomes of the three projects that were part of the study. It provides valuable guidance to others who may consider undertaking an SNA of their leadership networks. In addition, the report analyzes the three networks along 11 dimensions. These will be helpful to you if you are looking to better understand the networks you are part of regardless of whether you use SNA or not. While our understanding of networks is still very much evolving, SNA is a promising tool to help us "see" leadership networks.

Authors: Claire Reinelt

Subjects: social network analysis

07/23/2009 - 15:58 - 0 comments - 1 attachment - Posted by admin

A Scan of Reproductive Health Resources in California [more info]

The Leadership Learning Community (LLC) was invited to conduct a scan of California based reproductive health leadership development resources for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The foundation, through its "Domestic Reproductive Rights" portfolio, invests in both policy and community leadership development. The foundation is especially interested in engaging "...young people and diverse constituencies, at to foster leadership that can speak to these groups."

Authors: Deborah Meehan, Claire Reinelt, Bella Celnik

Subjects: california, leadership development, scan, reproductive health

01/06/2009 - 15:21 - 0 comments - 0 attachments - Posted by bcelnik

Summary of Results from a Leadership Development Cost-Benefit Analysis Survey PDF file [download] [more info]

The purposes of conducting and evaluating the results of this survey were to: explore the benefits and potential hazards of cost benefit analysis; harvest early learning about what constitutes a strong return on investment (e.g. numbers, strategic impact, etc.) and how it is achieved; and,explore methodologies and approaches for gathering data about the return on leadership investments.

Authors: Claire Reinelt

Subjects: cost benefit, roi, return on investment, program costs, funders, evaluation

04/22/2008 - 09:42 - 3 comments - 1 attachment - Posted by Elissa Perry

A Learning Circle On Disability and Diversity: Serving Those Who Are Underserved PDF file [download] [more info]

Twenty-five people attended a day-long learning circle on Disability and Diversity: Serving Those Who Are Underserved organized by the staff of the California Foundation of Independent Living Centers and facilitated by staff of the Leadership Learning Community. The purpose of the meeting was to engage providers, consumers, advocates, and disability professionals in a day-long inquiry to deepen understanding about why some people with disabilities are under-served and what can be done to improve utilization of services by all people with disabilities.

Authors: Claire Reinelt

Subjects: learning circle, diversity, disability, cfilc

03/04/2008 - 01:00 - 0 comments - 1 attachment - Posted by Elissa Perry