Release of New Positioning Statement

In 2020, the Scattergood Foundation will be 15 years old.

In our decade and a half, the Foundation has built new programs, expanded staff, and developed areas of focus – navigating significant change. Through our evolution, we have had the opportunity to learn and grow, but maintained an unwavering commitment to improving behavioral health and well-being for all.

What brought us to this work?

A passion for building a stronger, more effective, compassionate, and inclusive society where behavioral health is central and a core belief in social justice where people have equal access to wealth, opportunities, and social privileges.

We hope that our core values come through in our work.

Two years ago, we knew it was time for a strategic refresh. The Foundation’s portfolio of work had changed significantly since its start in 2005 and our expressed goals needed to reflect that. Our first step was to tap more deeply into the needs and expectations of our community – partners, grantees, staff, board, and others. We heard things that made us proud and were humbled by what we still needed to learn. We discovered that there were areas of our work where we should double down and areas that required new exploration.

Through this process, it became clear that we had taken for granted that our value of working toward equity would simply come through in our work. We are grateful to our community for your candor in asking us to be explicit in our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). We intend to do just that.

Our new Positioning Statement reflects our commitment to equity, to which we intend  to hold ourselves accountable.

How did we get here?

Advancing equity requires us to work toward a desired future. We are challenging ourselves to unwind engrained social constructs and structures while also introducing new and more equitable approaches.

As the Foundation embarked on this journey, we wanted to learn with others. Thankfully, Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia came to us with an opportunity to fund and participate in its inaugural Equity Cohort. Alongside eleven other Foundations and charitable organizations, we have been able to learn core dimensions of a DEI frame, assess our internal and external practices, and apply new principles to our work.

In a short time, we have already learned a great deal about ourselves, our organization, and our role in the Greater Philadelphia landscape. At the start of the cohort, we aimed to develop an equity statement which would express our values and help guide our work. We looked to other organizations to see how they had conveyed their respective commitments to DEI and found tremendous power in those that placed equity at the center of all of their work. Thus, our goal evolved; rather than developing a standalone equity statement, we got to work integrating equity into our core positioning statement for everything we do. Working collectively with our entire staff and board, we came to a common understanding of our values as an organization. We developed a statement that asserts these values and creates the platform for accountability to ensure that we live them.

We have deep appreciation for the patience our community has given us to be thoughtful in this process. The release of this statement reflects the start of an evolving practice for the Foundation. We will continue to update our statement as we learn and grow and will build upon it by creating accountability measures, altering our grant application and process, strengthening our governance model and much more in the coming years. All the while, we will share our steps and missteps through our blog and insights. We hope you’ll come along with us as we work to realize a more just and equitable society.

If you have questions about our journey and/or feedback on our positioning statement please email the Foundation at info@scattergoodfoundation.org.