Member Spotlight: Beth Collins
Beth Collins, Executive Director
Sisters of St. Joseph Health and Wellness Foundation (SSJHWF)
Brief Bio: A native of Belleville, West Virginia, Beth completed her undergraduate degree in Sociology and Environmental Science at WV Wesleyan College in 2009. After graduation, she served as an AmeriCorps VISTA and went on to receive her master’s in Education at Wheeling Jesuit University in 2012. She served as the Director of the Clifford M. Lewis, SJ Appalachian Institute, focusing on promoting service learning, research initiatives, and advocacy efforts around social and environmental concerns within the region. Beth went on to become the Northern Regional Director of Catholic Charities WV where she oversaw five offices that provided basic needs assistance and long-term case management for individuals and families in poverty.
In late 2019, Beth joined the Sisters of St. Joseph Health and Wellness Foundation as the Executive Director overseeing grantmaking efforts to support agencies promoting the health and wellbeing of WV’s children. Over the last three years, Beth has led the organization’s Covid-19 response efforts in collaboration with other WV Health Funders, partnered to develop a public-private health partnership focused on promoting minority health initiatives, worked with organizations to become trained on the StrenghteningFamilies approach to child abuse prevention, and shifted the SSJHWF’s grantmaking approach to be more in line with the values of trust-based philanthropy. She currently serves on the board of the Big Laurel Learning Center and the WV ACEs Coalition. Beth resides in Wheeling, West Virginia with her husband and three children.
How long have you been part of AFN? Formally as a member for about 6 months.
What is the mission of your organization, and why is this pursuit important to you?
SSJHWF’s mission is to strengthen the holistic health of West Virginia’s children and their families.
What is a project you have recently worked on that you’re passionate about? What was the impact of this project?
Recently, our foundation began to take a hard look at how philanthropy often perpetrates a power imbalance–funders dictating programming and demanding impact with little recognition for how their funding process immobilizes nonprofits to bring about effective change. We’ve worked over the last couple of years to shift our grantmaking to be more in-line with trust-based philanthropy and its core values of power-sharing, equity, humility, transparency, curiosity, and collaboration. We express those values by eliminating burdensome applications and reports and now work with grant partners through conversation-style approaches. We offer multi-year, general operating support, eliminate budgets, and do the homework for an organization rather than asking them to prove themselves to us.
We also look to see how we can support nonprofits beyond the check and hold ourselves accountable as mutual partners, not gatekeepers of funds. In the last year, we’ve seen the burden on grant partners decrease from an average of over 20 hours they were spending on our grant process to, now, the majority only spending 1-2 hours. We’ve received feedback from grant partners that our new process has “…left [them] feeling energized and like [their] organization was seen, understood, and appreciated. It was a realization that [they] were an important part of a network and not just a number. [They] also learned so much more about the goals of the Foundation!” Our approach to evaluation is focused on learning about the work we support rather than attributing direct impact to our investments. We recognize that the greatest impact a funder can truly have is not necessarily on WHAT they support, but in HOW they support their partners.
What do you see as the greatest strength of Central Appalachian communities?
Appalachia, and primarily Central Appalachia, has a history of semi-colonialist–outside entities reaping the benefits of extracting resources while the people of the region remain largely in poverty with poor health. We are also constantly fed lines about the diaspora of young minds. Yet, even with that history and current messaging, our communities have been resilient. I’m overwhelmed daily by the creativity of people who are often deemed “hopeless” - whether it be young people forming coalitions for change or nonprofits coming together and letting go of competition to tackle an issue.
Our strength as Central Appalachians comes from our real-life experience with the crises we are working to fix. Unlike many other areas, our nonprofit leaders and community change agents have direct experience, either personally or through a family member or friend, with issues like poor physical and mental health, substance use disorder and overdose, environmental degradation, and financial struggles. That direct connection provides more motivation to keep on pushing for change. We realize that if we don’t do it ourselves, no one is going to do it for us.
What is one thing you’d like to see improved in how funders work together in Central Appalachia?
As I’ve mentioned before, our Foundation seeks to transform the way foundations grantmake by enacting the values and practices of trust-based philanthropy.
What do you see as the primary hurdle in the pursuit of equitable Appalachian transition? How would you approach this challenge?
The primary reason nonprofits struggle to enact real change is that they are overwhelmed with the piece-mealing of funds and pretzeling their mission into whatever they think a funder wants to hear. By recognizing and calling out traditional philanthropy as a motivator for power imbalance, changing our systems to be less burdensome, viewing ourselves as mutual partners to nonprofits, and relying on their expertise rather than our own priorities–we open up a world where true equity can be built.
What questions do you think funders in Appalachia should be asking regularly about improving their grantmaking processes?
We can’t keep patting ourselves on the back about giving out “x” amount of dollars. We can’t keep thinking that our funds, no matter how large, are what is creating impact. We have to take a hard look at ourselves as funders and ask questions to our grant partners and others in the community about what we’re getting right and what we’re getting wrong. Those questions should be answered with anonymity so that grant partners feel free to be open. We should also look at our current processes and go step by step asking ourselves “Why?” Why do we ask this question? Why do we have this rule? Why do we have this approach? If the answer is to benefit the “look” or reputation of the staff at board meetings, the overall foundation in annual reports, or because “that’s the way it’s always been done,” then we have to question whether those are appropriate motivations and work to change it to benefit the grant partner and, ultimately, the community they serve.
What is the one experience from your past, personal or professional, that most influences the work you do today?
When I was a nonprofit Regional Director with an organization that primarily worked with individuals experiencing homelessness and other barriers, I felt the overwhelming burden nonprofits juggle just to survive. Oftentimes, the reports and grant applications were what I was doing at night just so that I could actually help with the outreach of my organization during the day. It greatly impacted my relationship with my family, but I did it because I thought that’s just the way nonprofits had to operate.
The “lightbulb moment” for me came when I had a young woman come into our center who recently found herself homeless because of an eviction. Our case manager knew there was a women’s shelter with beds open because of a recent meeting she had attended. When she called to offer a warm handoff for the client, she was asked if the client had been human trafficked. Their funder was only allowing the open beds to be used by victims of human trafficking and they had to report out data on the use of these beds to the funder. The client hadn’t experienced being trafficked and so she was denied a bed. Weeks later, she was still coming into our soup kitchen and we found out from her that she had been taken in by a well-known pimp. She was being abused and provided with drugs on a regular basis. We worked with her to get her out of the situation finally, but my mind always returned to that situation as an example of how funders can directly impact the lives of community members. What if that funder had said, “We recognize that human trafficking is an issue in this area and we’d love for these beds to be used by victims of trafficking. However, we also recognize that as a nonprofit, you understand the needs of your community better than we could–so use them as you need to.” If they had provided that flexibility, the life of this woman could have been spared significant trauma.
As funders, we are obsessed with the word impact and we usually assume that means positive impact, but, too often, we ignore that our impact can be detrimental and even dangerous to the health and wellbeing of the communities we serve. This woman’s story and my experience working in nonprofits is what motivates me daily to seek change in the funding world.