As a mission-driven grantmaker focused on improving California’s health care system in service of the state’s Medi-Cal population, it’s important to know if CHCF’s work is having an impact. CHCF’s Learning & Impact (L&I) team helps the foundation learn from its investments, assess and improve grantmaking approaches, and — together with grantees and other partners — identify the pathways to improve California’s health care system. CHCF believes that devoting resources to reflect on and evaluate its work with staff, grantee partners, and the field is key to effective grantmaking.

Partnership and collaboration are key to learning. Learning is integral to the team’s work and is done in deep collaboration with CHCF’s grantmaking staff. Our organizational structure reflects this philosophy: L&I team members report to the senior vice president of programs and strategy, and also maintain their own grantmaking portfolios.

Reflection and learning are integral to having impact. CHCF is committed to organizational learning, to sharing successes and failures, both internally and externally, and to engaging in and contributing to field-wide learning. The L&I team supports and creates space for reflection and learning to happen at CHCF.

Transparency and accountability is built into our work. The L&I team develops, manages, and analyzes data and reporting about our grantmaking, which is shared with staff, senior leadership, CHCF’s board, and the public.

The main ways we learn at CHCF are through:

• Peer review and learning events
• Data collection, analysis, and reporting
• External evaluations