KU Center for Community Health & Development chosen to partner with Kauffman Foundation to improve economic mobility

LAWRENCE — In an effort to increase equity and economic mobility in Kansas City through a broad collaborative project, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation reached out to a nearby University of Kansas center with decades of experience addressing large, complex problems. 

The Center for Community Health & Development (CCHD) at the KU Life Span Institute will serve as the third-party evaluator and provide a wide variety of educational and action support for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s Collective Impact Initiative (CII). Through a grant of $353,000, the foundation will fund CCHD’s role in the expansive effort, including work to support foundation staff and the project’s six coalition partners. 

Christina Holt, assistant director of CCHD, said she is excited about the center’s involvement in the project and its potential to make a positive impact.  

“They had a need for a third-party evaluator for their new collective impact initiative, which is their signature initiative now,” Holt said. “They are working to transform economic conditions in the Kansas City metro region. It’s really an honor to be a part of it.”  

The Kauffman Foundation’s plan to reach its goal includes three approaches: improving college access and completion, enhancing workforce and career development, and supporting entrepreneurship.   

The foundation invited CCHD as the independent organization assigned to provide ongoing support, evaluation and guidance for growth of the project over time for both its staff and the coalition partners.  

CCHD has a long history of supporting community health and development through collaborative research and evaluation, teaching and training, and technical support and capacity building.  The center is home to the free, online resource called The Community Tool Box. Translated into Spanish, Farsi and Arabic, the website draws 6 million users annually from areas throughout the world — including in Kansas City.  

"When the folks from the Kauffman Foundation reached out, they had been decades-long users of the Community Tool Box,” she said. “They said, ‘When we found out that the people who developed the Tool Box are right down the road, we had to partner with you all.’”  

CCHD’s role in the project includes using the Community Toolbox's Community Check Box Evaluation System, providing tailored technical assistance and offering webinars with content adapted from the Tool Box curriculum. The funding also supports developing and expanding the Tool Box, adding to its resources on collective action, engagement and assessment. 

The Kauffman Foundation is incorporating a collective impact approach with a network of community members, organizations and institutions organized into partner coalitions with broad geographic representation and community roots. The coalitions focus on areas such equity and opportunity; technology; entrepreneurship education; university research; workforce partners and others.  

Allison Greenwood Bajracharya, chief impact and strategy officer for the Kauffman Foundation, said in an announcement that they are inspired by the number of organizations who have applied to partner in the initiative “to think and act differently in solving some of our regions’ most pressing systems-level challenges.”