How We Are Using All of Our Tools to Build a Healthier Future for Children
By Dr. Ebony Gaffney, Mary Black Foundation Trustee & Community Impact Committee Chair, Psychiatrist, and Director of Spartanburg Area Mental Health
As a psychiatrist and the director of Spartanburg Area Mental Health, I’ve spent my career working to understand how systems shape health outcomes. I’ve also seen how the most impactful changes happen not in exam rooms or therapy offices, but through sustained and collaborative community effort, advocacy, and policy change.
At the Mary Black Foundation, we put children at the center of everything we do. This means making decisions based on community needs, research, and best-practice interventions. Our work aims to strengthen the entire ecosystem surrounding children and families and extends beyond funding to:
Policy & Advocacy: Supporting policies and advocacy work that benefit children and families.
Nonprofit Capacity Building: Building the capacity and leadership of local nonprofit organizations.
Collaboration & Convening: Bringing together cross-sector partners to align resources and efforts.
Research & Thought Leadership: Supporting solutions that are grounded in data and community voice.
As the chair of our Foundation’s community impact committee, I feel fortunate to guide the team of board members and volunteers who work with the staff to use all the tools available to us—what the SMIRF framework calls moral, social, intellectual, reputational, and financial capital. It’s a recognition that systems change requires more than dollars.
We are working to use all the tools in our SMIRF toolbox by:
- Deepening our investments in policy and advocacy work, understanding that upstream change is essential to downstream outcomes. Our partnership with the policy research team at the Institute for Child Success to create the Early Childhood Policy Digest is one example (subscribe HERE). This plain-language digest provides timely updates to funders, policy groups, service providers, and other interested parties on the most important state updates impacting families and children.
SMIRF Framework
Modern philanthropy recognizes that foundations bring more to the table than just financial support. The SMIRF framework, developed by the former chair of the Council on Foundations, Ambassador James Joseph, outlines five forms of capital that philanthropy can use to drive meaningful change.
S – Social Capital: The networks, relationships, and connections we build and share.
M – Moral Capital: The ethical leadership and community trust we uphold.
I – Intellectual Capital: The data, expertise, and thought leadership we contribute.
R – Reputational Capital: The credibility and influence we lend to important issues.
F – Financial Capital: The grants and funding we distribute.
- Working alongside local nonprofits to build capacity, not just fund programs. We want to strengthen nonprofit leadership, infrastructure, and sustainability in our community.
Continuing to serve as a convener and collaborator by bringing together partners across sectors to solve problems collectively rather than in silos. Some successes achieved by Spartanburg partner collaboration include:
One of the most collaborative, innovative, and successful approaches to reducing teen pregnancy in the state.
The creation of Quality Counts, a continuous quality improvement initiative for childcare providers in Spartanburg County.
Collaborative Emergency response efforts during COVID and Hurricane Helene.
The development of a countywide behavioral health plan that support what has been working well in our community and filling in the gaps where resources are missing.
This work is complex, but essential. It’s steady, strategic, and grounded in the belief that every child deserves to grow up healthy, safe, and ready to learn and thrive in life. We are committed to this by prioritizing children’s well-being, health, and development at every level.
Dr. Ebony Gaffney, M.D., is a board-certified Psychiatrist and an American Psychiatric Association Fellow. Dr. Gaffney holds a PhD in Public Health and a MBA in Health Administration. Her psychiatric training was completed at Morehouse School of Medicine. Dr. Gaffney’s interests include working with the faith-based communities, women’s health, and academic psychiatry.
