Supplementing community needs and the continuum of care
Riverside Community Health Foundation (RCHF) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to community health, engagement, and education. With a mission to improve the well-being of their community, RCHF focuses on strategic goals and initiatives that aim to address and support public health needs – in other words, supplement where the gaps are in healthcare.
Lauren Randall, Health Education and Evaluation Specialist, discusses the foundation’s unique perspective on managing strategy for community health with ClearPoint Strategy in our customer interview.
Watch the full video here!
The Challenge
In Randall’s words, Riverside Community Health Foundation “supplements community needs and the continuum of care.” RCHF faced the challenge of managing a diverse portfolio of health-related projects, including grants from the state, community engagement initiatives, and performance tracking for health improvement programs. The foundation needed an efficient way to set goals, develop new programs, and deploy resources effectively while maintaining transparency.
ClearPoint Strategy Implementation
The integration of ClearPoint into RCHF operations has enabled a seamless and synergistic workflow across its three main branches:
- The three clinics, operating under a federally qualified healthcare system, are now able to better manage and report on patient care and health outcomes.
- The direct programming branch benefits from enhanced tracking of initiatives and outcomes, ensuring programs are effectively meeting community health needs.
- The grant work division, which encompasses both the writing of new grant applications and the management of existing grants, leverages ClearPoint for detailed reporting and oversight, thereby increasing transparency and accountability.
Beyond these branches, ClearPoint's reach extends into the operational backbone of RCHF, including human resources, where the strategy management tool assists in aligning the foundation’s human capital strategies with its overarching mission and goals. This comprehensive adoption underscores RCHF's commitment to operational excellence and strategic clarity in promoting community health and well-being.
Streamlining Grant Management
RCHF has strategically leveraged ClearPoint to manage direct programming, the majority of which is grant-funded. After receiving the Transformative Climate Communities grant by the state, RCHF adopted ClearPoint as the cornerstone of its grant management processes.
ClearPoint's centralized system has allowed all grant-related activities to be meticulously tracked, thus ensuring adherence to state compliance requirements and facilitating the demonstration of the funded projects’ real-world impact.
The TTC’s Annual Indicator Report focuses on eight detailed activities contributing to the region’s sustainable development. In collaboration with eight local partners serving the community, RCHF has taken the lead in Community Engagement, establishing itself as the central hub for tracking the progress of all eight projects.
As the program requires working with eight other organizations to collect data, workflows have been beneficial for sending automated reminders to grant partners to update statuses. The real-time reporting capabilities of ClearPoint have provided a robust basis for reporting back to the state and maintaining a steady stream of data.
At the end of the year we have this beautiful report where I feel very confident about the data and information reporting back to the state.
Health Strategies
Working for the evaluation team, Randall uses ClearPoint to look at how well the organization executes on plans made, but also the impact on local communities. Prior to Randall’s time at the foundation, there was a notable gap in the organization's strategic management approach. Leadership defined the scope of work each year, but seldom revisited the plan until the next, creating a static and retrospective approach to project management.
ClearPoint has been pivotal in helping RCHF not only retain lessons learned, but also share these insights across the team, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and collective learning within the organization. According to Randall, ClearPoint has brought a level of synergy to the various moving parts of operations, making the evaluation of their work both honest and objective.
Especially working as a nonprofit, it’s important to be able to demonstrate the impact you’re making and what you actually were able to do with dollars that you received – which in turn, turns into more money for us.
With direct programming efforts involving tracking 37 different programs, their process and outcome measures, and the activities that contribute, people have easily been able to see the “why” behind ClearPoint.
See RCHF’s program tracking in ClearPoint in our webinar (10:25)
Departmental Scope of Work
As of 2024, RCHF has fully implemented ClearPoint across all departments. While not as minutely detailed as the overall Health Strategies system, these divisional scorecards provide the necessary overview to track activities, processes, and impact measures at an appropriate level.
Under Randall’s guidance, the departments are setting the stage to create data visualizations that will showcase various indicators. These visualizations will be able to highlight trends and enable the organization to draw comparisons with past performance, offering a dynamic view of their progress and impact over time.
Looking ahead, Randall sees ClearPoint as a key asset for RCHF, one that will undoubtedly serve them in their mission. Emerging from the challenges posed by the pandemic, the foundation is ready to once again engage actively with the community. With CPS, RCHF is equipped to provide services, demonstrate their effectiveness, and show the reasons behind their strategies, thus strengthening their position and impact within the community they serve.
Our workload is getting larger. Having something like ClearPoint to keep us organized and focused, making sure that there are no missing pieces to our operations, is a really great thing.
Strategic Advice
Riverside Community Health Foundation’s experience with ClearPoint Strategy has highlighted a fundamental truth about any tool: “It is what you make of it.” By fully harnessing the platform's full potential, the organization is able to extract a comprehensive view of the impact of their efforts. Emphasizing the importance of understanding the system's purpose, RCHF encourages users to explore navigating the system with confidence. With this mindset, the foundation finds that conceptual clarity between ClearPoint elements and reporting capabilities opens up a realm of possibilities – to build a robust framework for tracking and showcasing impact.