Blue Meridian Partners to Become Independent Nonprofit

Blue Meridian Partners, a collaborative funding vehicle established in 2015 by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, has announced that it is taking steps to become an independent nonprofit organization. As a new 501(c)(3), Blue Meridian will carry on the youth development work of EMCF, which pioneered a performance-based investment approach to discovering and financing effective strategies capable of delivering results at national scale and is in the process of sunsetting. In a letter on its website, Blue Meridian chair Stanley Druckenmiller and CEO Nancy Roob outlined the organization's approach to carrying forward EMCF's work with its longtime youth development grantees, as well as the future of the foundation's PropelNext initiative. After the completion of an evaluation earlier this summer, PropelNext recently launched a new cohort of twelve organizations in northern California and has plans to support a second cohort in a second region that has yet to be announced. In addition to its investments in Wendy's Wonderful Kids, Youth Villages' YVLifeSet, Nurse-Family Partnership, HealthySteps, Upstream USA, and Year Up, Blue Meridian recently announced new investments in the Center for Employment Opportunities and the Bail Project. Regional strategies led by the Tulsa-based George Kaiser Family Foundation and the Duke Endowment in North Carolina also are augmenting the organization's investments, which to date total $350 million. To ensure a smooth transition to standalone status, Blue Meridian staff and several EMCF team members will remain with the organization and work closely with EMCF to wrap up its work in the youth development field.