The Hogg Foundation works to strengthen the knowledge base and understanding of community-level mental health promotion, prevention. and early intervention by encouraging an exchange of information and ideas among grantee partners and community members.

Our ultimate goal is to improve resilience, mental health, and well-being in everyday life. To achieve this goal, the foundation invests in collaborative research and dialogue to advance our understanding of the community factors that influence mental health, especially for marginalized populations.

We want mental health providers, community members, policy makers, and advocates to be informed and committed to making choices that improve mental health and well-being for themselves, their families, and their communities.

Our Journey as a Learning Organization

In 2018, the foundation began a journey towards becoming a true learning organization. By completely reimagining the role evaluation could play at the foundation, the staff chose to pivot towards hiring a strategic learning and evaluation program officer – someone who could close the learning loop between acquiring new knowledge and implementing learning to create action.

“A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.” Read more.

Learning Theme: “Race, Power, and Privilege”

In order to support our grantees and rise to the challenges of the times, foundation staff decided to deepen our understanding of the role race, power, and privilege play in the social determinants of mental health.

There are several mechanisms implemented at the foundation that have supported our organizational learning:

• Staff have committed to read our weekly Mental Health Headlines, a focused news clips email curated by foundation staff;
• The foundation meets weekly for “Get n’ Go,” a brief meeting, where staff can offer updates, share learning, transfer knowledge, and reflect as a group;
• Every three weeks, staff meet for “courageous conversations,” which is a time for the foundation to practice being bold, taking risks, and making mistakes;
• Professional development is a key part of our learning organization. Every staff member has attended the Beyond Diversity training, hosted by Leadership Austin in partnership with the City of Austin Mayor’s Task Force on Institutional Racism and Systemic Inequities.