Our Strategic Roadmap is our guide. It helps us set priorities as we move toward our desired impact to ensure that all Wake County children and their families are safe, healthy and living to their full potential. Recognizing the complexity involved to address this objective, and the time required to affect change, we have made that long-term commitment.

Throughout our history and within the varied aspects of our work, we have a focus on learning. It is a core tenet of the John Rex Endowment and is written into our Values.

We use learning as a quality improvement tool for ourselves and for our grantees as well as to monitor progress.

Our experience has led us to recognize that the health and well-being of Wake County's children is influenced by a set of intertwined conditions. These conditions cannot be realistically separated into distinct funding areas. Guided by our Strategic Roadmap, we are looking to develop and strengthen:

  • Courageous champions for children who will stand up and stand together to make tough decisions and take bold actions on their behalf;
  • Strong organizations working together across sectors to address the needs of children and their families; and
  • Community settings where children and their families thrive.

We will continue to evaluate how our grants and other endeavors are supporting our long-term goal. In order to assess progress being made and to improve our effectiveness, we will establish indicators of progress to monitor our success and help us understand the changing conditions in the environment that we are attempting to influence. It's our pledge that we will share what we learn with our partners and the community.