Rooted in Faith, Shaped by Community, Reimagining for Justice: Our Journey to Systems Change

Join us November 5th for our next SC Grantmakers Network quarterly meeting, as we sit down with the Sisters of Charity Foundation to explore its path toward systems change. Donna Waites, President, and her team will take us inside a journey that began with the foundation’s 2024 poverty studies, which shaped its strategic plan and drew inspiration from the ACS approach used by both the Network and the Arras Foundation.

It’s a story that started well before year one of the plan officially launched. For six months, the foundation engaged directly with former grantee partners about the shift ahead — offering transition grants and leaning into listening and learning before moving forward. Now a full funding round into year one, the team has already shown its willingness to adapt, adding capacity-building support midyear after recognizing that not every partner was ready to move at the pace of systems-level change.

Donna and her team will also share the foundation’s advocacy strategy, shaped over ten months in partnership with E3M of Charleston, offering a candid look at how the organization is charting its path forward in this space.

The afternoon opens things up for all of us. We’ll hold a facilitated but open conversation, with room for questions from the floor about Sisters of Charity’s approach — and a broader dialogue on what systems-change work looks like across other foundations, what lessons have been learned along the way, and where advocacy opportunities are emerging in the field. It builds on the conversation started in an earlier session on what foundations can fund and do in the advocacy space, and promises to be a rich continuation of that work.

We hope you’ll join us for a morning of learning and an afternoon of honest, generative dialogue.