There’s a saying that you don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been. For a mission-driven organization like the Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Health, we needed to know where we are and how we are doing in our quest to build a healthier Idaho as a statewide health foundation that addresses the root causes that impact health. We thought it was the right time to do so since our leadership change last year.

It is important for us to learn about our impact in Idaho and how we are showing up as a statewide health foundation.

Last fall, we worked with outside entities to collect insights from partners, grant applicants, and recipients from the past three years. Feedback was gathered over a three-month period and analyzed for patterns, strengths, and opportunities. We thank those who were a part of this process.

Why did we listen? To better understand how our foundation is experienced externally and to learn what is working well and what should be reinforced or improved.

This is important, not only for 2026, but for when we embark on a new strategic plan within the next few years.

Continuous learning is one of core values, and this process will help us improve. Here’s what we learned from the anonymous quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews:

• Most stakeholders view us as a partner, not just a funder. That’s one of our goals, and it was satisfying to get that feedback.
• There is an opportunity to evolve our grant communications, starting with opening RFPs (requests for proposals) and continuing through the entire life cycle of the grant, program, or project. Explaining why we do what we do will be a communications focus for us.
• We are proud that we do what we say we are going to do. It sounds simple, but we learned that it’s important to show up that way as a partner.
• Every staff member at the foundation deeply cares about Idaho, and we are grateful that the feedback shows that’s how partners feel as well.
• We are actively working on different ways our staff can show up for partnerships and complement funding with some of our other strengths.

We learned a great deal from this process and will be focused on more thorough data collection in the future. The right data can help us make informed decisions that will positively impact Idaho.