The culture at the John Rex Endowment is important to us. Our culture helps us pursue our mission to support an environment where children and families in greater Wake County live healthy lives. Here we articulate these core values that broadly define our culture, which, in turn informs our actions. These values represent both who we are and who we strive to be. In all of our efforts, we try to strike a balance with all of these principles. Documenting and sharing these values holds us accountable and improves the quality of our work.

Integrity: Behaving with honesty, consistency and fairness ensures our credibility as a funder and our trustworthiness as a community institution.

  • We are mindful of our impact on our community. We strive to maximize our positive impact and minimize any negative impact.
  • We believe that establishing and acting on an explicit set of expectations helps us build and sustain trusting relationships. We seek to understand the perspectives of others and to be explicit about our own points of view.
  • We are certain that operating in a frank and thoughtful way gives us confidence that we can move forward, even in tough circumstances.

Impact through Change: We are committed to achieving positive change in our community by encouraging fresh perspectives on how to achieve meaningful results.

  • We believe that effective change requires a clear vision of a desired outcome and concrete plans to sustain that outcome.
  • We recognize that change can come with risk, thus we provide financial support to organizations as they explore new ways of fulfilling their purpose.

Learning: Being a learning organization—one that constantly strives to improve based on insights gained from all experiences—is critical to our ability to be effective.

  • We understand that learning and growing must be ongoing and must be embedded in every aspect of our work.
  • We learn from success and failure as well as from evaluating the practices that lead to both.
  • We believe in sharing what we learn internally and externally.
  • We also encourage those we collaborate with to evaluate and learn from their experiences as well, and to share their insights.

Working Together: We are more likely to achieve our mission when we engage with individuals, groups, and organizations with diverse perspectives and experiences.

  • We stay informed about our community’s priorities, its resources and its initiatives.
  • We pursue information about effective and promising ways to achieve our goals.
  • We encourage and support individuals and organizations to learn from each other, to share resources and to collaborate.

Open Interactions: Our working relationships are more productive when grounded in respect.

  • We are a welcoming and approachable foundation. We strive to interact with others in a relaxed and personable manner.
  • We inevitably encounter unexpected challenges in our internal and external work. Rather than assigning blame, we focus on solutions.
  • We do not shy away from conflict. Just as we honestly yet constructively express our opinions, we encourage others to do the same.

Health: Supporting a healthy body, mind and spirit is consistent with our organization’s fundamental purpose.

  • Our organization’s success depends on valuing and supporting individuals as whole beings. We pursue an environment that allows people to speak their minds and that enables the best use of people’s unique talents and skills.
  • Our workplace policies contribute to a healthy work environment. And we encourage the same considerations in other organizations.