The James Irvine Foundation is currently accepting nominations for the 2024 Leadership Awards to recognize leaders whose innovative solutions to critical state challenges improve people’s lives, create opportunity, and contribute to a better California.
Donor Name: James Irvine Foundation
State: California
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Award
Deadline: 04/27/2023
Size of the Grant: $250,000
Details:
Goals of the Leadership Awards
The Awards annually recognize cohorts of four to six leaders whose innovative solutions to critical state challenges improve people’s lives, create opportunity, and contribute to a better California. The goals of the Awards program are to:
- Recognize and support diverse leaders whose work improves people’s lives, creates opportunity, and contributes to a better California
- Advance innovative, effective solutions that merit expansion or replication
- Inform local and statewide policy to expand opportunity for the people of California
Nominations Tips
- Who should nominate
- The Foundation welcomes nominations from people who are well acquainted with the nominee and can describe their alignment with the award criteria. Some nominators are familiar with the nominee’s policy field and can describe how their approach is different from their peers or ripe for expansion; others can describe how they or their peers have been affected by the nominee’s work. The nominator must be someone other than the nominee or a family member and, preferably, not employed by the nominee.
- Demonstrating significance
- The significance section provides an opportunity to describe the problem the leader and organization are working to solve and why it is important to California. Strong nominations provide the number of people affected by the problem.
- Types of innovation:
- They consider many forms of innovation, including work that:
- Represents an entirely new approach or a creative leap from standard practices
- Is not widely known or practiced in California
- Applies a proven approach in a new way or within a new context
- They consider many forms of innovation, including work that:
- Demonstrating effectiveness
- Competitive nominations address the problem described in the significance section and provide tangible evidence of the effectiveness of the leader’s work by referencing evaluations, impact data, or examples of how the work has achieved change or directly impacted people’s lives. Changes within the organization like budget or staff levels are not by themselves examples of effectiveness.
- Use the prompts and word counts:
- Use the prompts and word counts in the nominations form to guide your responses. They describe the types of information often included in the most competitive nominations. Note that the higher the suggested word count, the more detail they would like you to share about the leader and their work. Avoid repeating information provided in a previous section.
- Diversity
- The Leadership Awards aim to elevate leaders who reflect the diversity of California’s population and regions. The Awards value the diverse life experiences leaders may bring to their work, such as experience with incarceration, serving in the military, or being unhoused. You are welcome to share such details in your nomination, especially if they inform how the nominee conducts their work. They also encourage nominations that are distinct from those we have recognized in recent years.
Award Information
Each Award recipient’s organization receives $250,000 and help sharing their solutions with policymakers and other leaders in their communities.
Eligibility Criteria
- The Foundation recognizes leaders whose work improves people’s lives, creates opportunity, and contributes to a better California. They especially encourage nominations that reflect the diversity of California’s population and regions. The most competitive nominations describe leaders addressing critical issues with innovative approaches that have been proven effective. They ask nominators to review the selection criteria and nominations questions carefully before nominating.
- Nominated leaders may:
- Be an individual or a pair of leaders
- Work in any sector (nonprofit, public, or private)
- Work in any field (such as education, health, housing, economic development, or the environment)
- Nominees must be residents of California. They seek nominees who have not been extensively recognized for their work through other awards.
For more information, visit Leadership Awards.
