This paper highlights the accomplishments, challenges and lessons learned from TCWF’s Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Initiative.

Over a 10-year period beginning in 1995, The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF) made nearly $60 million in grants for its Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Initiative (TPPI). An impressive array of individuals and organizations contributed their talents to this undertaking, with some significant results. Participants in the TPPI were credited with transforming practice at the community level, contributing to landmark public policy victories, and perhaps most important, helping change how decision makers, youth-serving professionals and others view the issue of teen pregnancy. The final report of the comprehensive formal evaluation of the Initiative details those outcomes and other aspects of this complex grantmaking program.(1)

The purpose of this document is to complement that evaluation with some of the lessons learned by the Foundation. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, how did strategic decisions made by the Foundation affect the implementation of the Initiative? What seemed to work well? What challenges emerged and how weåre they addressed? What insights might we offer other funders engaged in social change work?