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Home > Special Initiatives

Special Initiatives

Beyond Grantmaking

While there are no easy answers to the challenges facing the Buffalo Niagara region, the Oishei Foundation hopes to play a leadership role in catalyzing change by provoking debate, encouraging new thinking, advancing learning and mobilizing parties to work together towards solutions. By focusing our own grantmaking and by working with others to prioritize community needs, the Foundation hopes to be an adaptive community leader. 

To catalyze change in the Buffalo region the Foundation will participate in and encourage partnership and collaboration and continue to expand our leadership role, leveraging and pooling resources to identify and implement innovative, effective solutions.

In this expanded leadership role, the Foundation will dedicate our resources to:

  • Serve as a voice for the Buffalo Niagara region in conversations with national funders
  • Advocate for policies and resources that support Foundation goals and objectives
  • Identify and implement opportunities for collective governance and action around high priority issues
  • Bring national expertise to the region

By acting as a convener of community members and by partnering with public and private organizations, we will affect a significant increase in collaboration and partnerships. Foundation support will be directed to opportunities for collaboration, alignment, and mergers among nonprofit service providers, particularly those that work across sectors and disciplines.

We see the leaders in our region as assets that can be grown and cultivated. We plan to increase opportunities for leadership development by supporting:

  • Leadership training at the neighborhood/local level
  • Nonprofit leadership training
  • Succession planning efforts including executive training and support during transition

We look forward to telling you more about our leadership initiatives in this section of our web site as they develop throughout the year.