Community Health Acceleration Partnership’s (CHAP) work forming the NJ Birth Equity Funders Alliance has taught us the power of working collectively as funders and the need for guidelines and infrastructure to support effective collaboration. In partnership with two consulting firms, Boldly Go Philanthropy and Afton Bloom, the Alliance has developed a playbook for how funders can work together, including how to develop a charter, investment principals, and grant criteria. CHAP is exploring opportunities to seed similar funder collaboratives in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arkansas. The idea is to support place-based birth equity funder collaboratives to complement state efforts, strengthen community engagement, and improve maternal health outcomes. The Pritzker Children’s Initiative has joined this effort with a particular focus on Michigan and Ohio.

While this work aims to improve coordination in states, CHAP is also exploring collaborating with other national foundations to convene a summit on birth equity for funders to advance birth equity work throughout the United States.