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February 2016 |

Ballmer Family Giving, the youth-focused philanthropy organization representing former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his wife Connie, has joined a funding partnership that aims to award $1 billion in grants to high-performing charities that serve low-income youth. The new collaborative, Blue Meridian Partners, is led by the New York-based Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.

January 2016 |

Microsoft will donate $1 billion of Microsoft Cloud Services to nonprofits and university researchers over the next three years as part of a new corporate philanthropy initiative. Stating with $350 in market-value donations this year, the goal is to serve 70,000 nonprofits and 900 university researchers, while expanding broadband for 20 communities in 15 countries.

January 2016 |

Pay for Success (PFS) is a form of government contracting in which third-party investors, including foundations, commit to paying the upfront costs for providing evidence-based social services; government agencies repay investors with a modest return if the program achieves the agreed-upon outcomes. For other funders interested in exploring this emerging model of impact investing, Philanthropy Northwest has learned of three new opportunities through the Corporation for National and Community Service's Social Innovation Fund and the University of Utah’s Policy Innovation Lab.

December 2015 |

David Bley, director of the Pacific Northwest Initiative at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation looks back at on  memorable moments for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Pacific Northwest partners and our team, helping families achieve stable housing, strengthening local community networks and supporting great schools that help students and teachers realize their potential and reach for their dreams. Here are just a few of his favorite moments of progress over the past year.

December 2015 |
Pride Foundation has awarded more than $7.5 million this year to expand opportunities and advance full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people and families throughout the Northwest, including a 23 percent increase in its community grant awards.
November 2015 | Philanthropy Northwest

Craig Muska, Canopy | They say every place is unique, a complex melting pot of people, beliefs, history and politics. I’ve been thinking a lot about this “uniqueness” in recent weeks, especially given that earlier this year I launched Canopy, a new place-based investment collaborative. Today, nearly 30 Pacific Northwest leaders will convene in Roseburg, Oregon at The Ford Family Foundation headquarters for an experiential learning session focused on the rural economic development ecosystem, and how we all might help drive capital to our communities that need it most. I would invite you to tune in to the posts that follow as this work develops to watch what we hope will be a beautiful knitting together of our region.

November 2015 |
Chris Cardona, Ford Foundation | Why is it so hard to foundations to talk about failure? There are many reasons, including lack of incentives, presence of disincentives, lack of context, lack of clarity about when failure has actually happened and who owns it. In this blog post, Chris explores the the intersection between failure and risk and how that connects to "second discipline" work: the relational and interpersonal skills program officers need.