Facilitating effective stakeholder dialogue:
Wanting to solicit funding strategies to strengthen the health care safety net for children, The Illinois Children's Healthcare Foundation engaged Millennia to convene a half-day meeting of its Advisory Council, a panel of health care experts across the state.
ILCHF, created in December 2002 through an action of the State of Illinois Attorney General's Office and a group of Illinois insurance carriers, is the only private foundation that focuses solely on the health needs of children across Illinois.
In this instance, ILCHF was focusing its attention on the oral and mental health systems in Illinois and needed meaningful ideas and input from a large group. Like other charitable foundations across the country, ILCHF found itself wrestling with the central conundrum of philanthropy: how to apply available financial resources—always severely limited compared to need—to achieve maximum impact in improving systems and outcomes.
Millennia's lead consultant was able to bring experience in philanthropy as well as oral and mental health content knowledge and facilitation expertise to the project.
Millennia first summarized the work ILCHF staff had done so far, then contextualized it within evidence-based strategies for improving the delivery of children's oral and mental health services in Illinois and nationally. The agenda Millennia crafted for the meeting along with background documents and a facilitation strategy allowed maximum participation from the experts in a minimum amount of time.
After the meeting, Millennia prepared a report that categorized and summarized the experts' suggestions and proposed recommendations for the Foundation.
