Table 2.1.The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Communications Department Mission.
The Communications Department plans and executes activities creating information and effecting the exchange of information tailored to foster relationships and actions crucial to advancing the Foundation's mission and goals.
STRATEGIES
In carrying out its mission-and using grants, contracts, and the direct efforts of its staff-the Communications Department employs seven strategies:
1. Working with other Foundation staff in all phases of institutional and program planning, as well as in proposal review and development, to incorporate provisions for strategic communications.*
2.

Helping grantees build their capacities for employing strategic communications in their research, evaluation, training, and service-demonstration projects and programs for a variety of purposes, including:

  • Building and maintaining alliances
  • Raising supplemental funds o Recruiting staff and volunteers
  • Creating and maintaining favorable and even supportive media and policy climates
  • Disseminating the results and findings of their work
  • Moving issues and solutions into mainstream thinking and practice.
3. Making the findings and lessons learned by the Foundation and our grantees accessible to other individuals and organizations- at national, state, and local levels-that can benefit from this information.
4.

Encouraging the adoption of health-care innovations and health promoting behaviors.

5.

Maintaining the quality and volume of the Foundation's proposal stream by

  • Stimulating interest among eligible organizations capable of taking actions consistent with the Foundation's mission
  • Providing potential applicants with information that is clear and precise about the Foundation's (i) intent, (ii) its interests and priorities, (iii) what it does not fund, and (iv) its application process
  • When appropriate, conducting a "call for proposals" process that creates a climate of receptivity and attracts highly qualified applicants who might otherwise never approach the Foundation.
6. Orchestrating two-way information flows with decision makers, opinion leaders, and other groups important to the Foundation's programmatic and philanthropic goals.
7.

Ensuring the Foundation is appropriately accountable as the steward of private funds serving the public good. Techniques include:

  • Publishing an annual report, a quarterly publication focused on the work of our grantees, reports on the results of most programs, and an annual anthology of in-depth examinations of selected activities
  • Maintaining a website that includes all of the Foundation's publications and news releases and connections to grantee websites
  • Encouraging grantees to give appropriate notice of the Foundation's assistance in their publications, on their websites, and in contacts with news media and others
  • Maintaining effective relations with key news media
  • Ensuring a steady, two-way flow of useful information between the Foundation and decision makers and opinion leaders affecting health, health care, and the philanthropic community.
*Strategic communications is the managed process by which information is produced and conveyed to achieve specific objectives vital to an organization's mission.