Wider Impacts

The work of the Everychild Foundation has caused a ripple effect in the community and beyond beginning with its success in leveraging it grants. Everychild only seeks out projects and/or organizations that are prototypes and can inspire replication either within the community, nationwide or even worldwide.

A good example of this leverage is Everychild’s 2001 grant for the QueensCare mobile dental clinic. Now five years later, there are five such clinics in operation by the grantee, QueensCare. The Everychild clinic, which is staffed by the University of Southern California School of Dentistry, was selected as a grantee in order to help demonstrate to other potential funders the extensiveness of dental disease among poor, urban schoolchildren.

Another example is our most recent grant for the first universally-accessible playground to be built on a hospital’s grounds. Before construction even began, envoys from other orthopaedic and children’s hospitals around the nation have requested copies of the plans for the project with the hope that they can be replicated at their own facilities.

Aside from this “leverage by design”, Everychild has also served as a catalyst for multiple other philanthropic acts both among individual members and beyond. Hence, the foundation has actually created a kind of “philanthropic multiplier effect.” For example, in three instances, individual Everychild members provided very substantial grants (ranging from $150,000 to $625,000) to the grant runner-up candidates that enabled their proposed projects to be launched. This began with Advisory Board Member, Gregory Mitchell, CEO and President of California National Bank arranging for the bank to fund Stone Soup’s after school programs, followed by Member Jane Wurwand and The Dermalogica Foundation funding the Mar Vista Family Center’s expansion project. Most recently, Member Monica Rosenthal and other Everychild members provided the funds to allow Inner City Arts to realize its new theater project. The Rosenthals also funded the John Tracy Clinic’s Sound Beginnings program to screen newborns for hearing loss. If detected early, such losses can be completely curable with cochlear implants.

Additionally, Everychild Foundation has also served as the direct inspiration for the creation of at least six new charitable groups, including The Women’s Fund of Santa Barbara, The Women’s Fund of Northern Santa Barbara County, benefiting families and women’s causes; The Nevada Women’s Philanthropy Foundation serving Las Vegas area children in need; Today and Tomorrow Children’s Fund at UCLA’s Mattel Children’s Hospital, supporting medical research projects; Women Helping Youth, serving children in need in Los Angeles; AVIVA Platinum Associates serving at-risk young women; and Blue Heron Foundation, which provides for Romanian orphans. The latter two groups were founded, respectively, by Everychild members, Robin Broidy and Stefania Magidson.

But the ripple effects do not end there. While most private foundations have, at most, a handful of people reviewing their grant applications, Everychild has a team of 20 trained by a professional consultant, plus the consultant herself. This has helped Everychild to garner a reputation as having one of the most thorough grant review processes in Los Angeles. Directors at other prestigious local foundations have stated that if a project can survive Everychild’s review process, it must possess merit. Consequently, a number of these projects have received the attention of other philanthropists in the community, resulting in significant grants.

Family members of Everychild women have also become inspired by the foundation and its accomplishments. While they do not directly participate in the grant selection process, they are encouraged to attend project dedication events, salons and the hands-on community service day. Many family members have expressed how much they have learned by attending these events and how it has stimulated discussion at their dinner tables about children’s issues and philanthropy. Invariably, the result has been an increase of their own charitable activity and more thoughtful investigation beforehand.