DDCF Announces Inaugural Awardees of Child Well-being Leadership Development Grants

New York, April 23, 2019 – The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) today announced the five inaugural recipients of Child Well-being Leadership Development grants, which support programs that help racially and ethnically diverse mid- and senior-level researchers, policymakers and practitioners become transformative leaders who can make sustained improvements in the well-being of vulnerable children and families in the U.S.

“Effective and diverse social sector leadership is critical for ending intergenerational cycles of poverty and persistently inequitable outcomes for families and children,” said Lola Adedokun, program director for child well-being at DDCF. “We are excited to support a new set of leaders as they innovate and implement approaches to tackling the complex, systemic issues that unduly burden U.S. communities contending with vast health and economic disparities.”

The inaugural recipients of DDCF’s Child Well-being Leadership Development grants include:

• Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, with a grant of $700,000 over two years to strengthen the Doris Duke Fellowships for the Promotion of Child Well-being to further strengthen the Doris Duke Fellowships for the Promotion of Child Well-being network and provide research-to-action grants to teams of fellows and policy and practice partners who will use research to improve outcomes;

• Foster America, with a grant of $1 million over four years to expand the Foster America Fellowship Program, which places mid-career professionals in child welfare agencies to improve outcomes for children at risk of entering, or presently engaged with, the foster care system;

• NDN Collective, with a grant of $2.5 million over four years to provide core program support to strengthen Native American-led community development and develop and launch the NDN Collective Changemakers Fellowship, the first leadership development program focused exclusively on building the capacity and skills of Native leaders in the U.S., Canada and Mexico;

• National Black Child Development Institute, with a grant of $800,000 over two and a half years to support core programming and launch the NBCDI Fellowship Program, which aims to increase the number of Black policy professionals in executive-level roles in child and family policy; and

• Ascend at the Aspen Institute, with a grant of $800,000 over two years to support core programming and the third cohort of the national Ascend Fellowship Program, which will support diverse, visionary leaders who are committed to improving health and well-being and implementing concrete economic and social mobility pathways for children and their families together.

A growing collection of research suggests that chronic underinvestment in leadership within the U.S. social sector, accompanied by a 25 percent growth in the number of nonprofit organizations in the past decade, has created a gap between demands on leaders and their ability to meet those needs. With these Child Well-being Leadership Development grants, DDCF aims to empower organizations to pursue leadership building efforts while also delivering on desired outcomes for the populations they serve.

About the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

The mission of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is to improve the quality of people’s lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, child well-being and medical research, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke’s properties. The foundation’s Child Well-being Program aims to promote children’s healthy development and protect them from abuse and neglect. To learn more, visit http://www.ddcf.org.