Stories that LEAD
What we are learning, including the parts that did not work.
A young foundation, working in public. Notes on Idaho scholar-athletes, on getting girls into sport and keeping them there, and on the things we got wrong the first time.
Looking for the individual stories instead? IX Stories is the collection of first-person accounts — what stood in the way, what we funded, and what happened next, in their words rather than ours.
Read IX Stories
We publish what we cannot claim
Our impact page has a list of things we do not know how to prove. Putting it there was the most useful decision we have made.
What $115 actually buys
It is registration season in Idaho. Here is the arithmetic of one girl's season, what a grant covers, and the number we still cannot tell you.
Tara VanDerveer's first head coaching job was in Idaho
Before Stanford, before three national championships and Olympic gold, she coached in Moscow, Idaho. Then she came back, forty-six years later, for a first-year gala.
What LEAD Means, and What a Strong Application Actually Looks Like
Four criteria, explained the way a reviewer reads them, with the common mistakes that separate a finalist application from a recipient application.
Camps Are Not About the Summer. They Are About Ages 12 to 14.
The case for girls' sports camps is usually made in adjectives. Made in numbers, it is narrower, more specific, and considerably more urgent.
Inside the Change Make*Hers Gala: What $250K+ and 308 People Tell Us About What Idaho is Ready For
A first-year gala for a two-year-old foundation sold out and raised more than a quarter of a million dollars. That is a fact about Idaho, not about us.