Diversity: Programs should strive for a diverse cohort, including low-income earners and poor people, people of color, immigrants and refugees, disenfranchised youth, LGBTQ individuals, and people from rural communities, and communities with high rates of childhood obesity.

Leadership: Programs should use a well-grounded framework for leadership development that focuses on cultivating competencies and skills needed to understand local issues and key constituents and respond to the challenges facing their community or region.

Advocacy: Programs should build the skills of the participants to effectively use advocacy strategies like coalition building; grassroots organizing; public, policymaker, and influencer education; media advocacy; policy analysis; public opinion polling; and regulatory feedback.

Systems: Programs should provide an understanding of how income, employment, housing, education, social cohesion, civic participation, equity, health care, violence, and access to opportunities like healthy food and physical activity impact health outcomes.

Project: Participants should have a culminating project that involves developing an advocacy initiative around an issue they identify, research, strategize, and lead and engage a larger community in completing.

Policy: Programs should help participants focus on changing policies affecting the physical, social and economic conditions that lead to poor health.

Length: Programs should be of sufficient length to make a real, sustainable difference. A general guideline is that programs must provide a minimum of 40 hours of education / training. Time devoted to implementing an advocacy project can be included in the 40 hours.

Size: Programs should be large enough to be diverse and stimulate challenging conversations, yet small enough to be safe and manageable. A general guideline is that programs must recruit a minimum of 15 participants per cohort.

Note: The criteria are guidelines, not requirements. Please call or email the program officer if you feel there is a compelling reason to structure your program differently given the population you are working with, the geographic area in which the program will operate, or other factors.

As part of this funding opportunity, grantees are likely to be asked to engage in an evaluation study conducted by an external evaluator. The design and scope of the evaluation has not yet been determined. The Foundation will keep grantees updated as the evaluation is developed, and will inform grantees about any associated expectations for grantee engagement. It is anticipated that the evaluation will require grantees to collect some quantitative and/or qualitative data about their activities, to participate in data collection by a third party evaluator (e.g., interviews, surveys), and potentially participate in learning discussions about the evaluation findings.