Archive for October, 2010

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Monitor Institute and CEP Join Forces to Scale Data Visualization Tool

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

CEP is extremely pleased about our new partnership with the Monitor Institute, announced today. Read the press release below.

Monitor Institute and the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) announce a joint venture to bring a new data visualization tool, created with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, to the field of philanthropy.

Given the scale and complexity of the challenges foundations face, funders increasingly need to look beyond their organizations to other stakeholders — both in philanthropy and across sectors—to mobilize sufficient resources and efforts to move the needle on pressing social problems. Yet working together remains a challenge; simply knowing what other funders are supporting can require time-consuming research, meetings, and calls.

In response to the lack of easily accessible and comprehensible data about the strategies different funders are pursuing, the Monitor Institute and CEP are partnering to scale Monitor Institute’s Strategy Landscape™.

The Strategy Landscape™ is an online interactive visualization tool, developed by Monitor Institute with support from the Rockefeller Foundation as part of their initiative to accelerate innovative practices in the social sector. After initial pilots using the Rockefeller Foundation’s own strategies, the tool was piloted with a group of 10 climate change funders. The tool allows users to easily see and understand grantmaking strategies and patterns within and across institutions so they can make better decisions in pursuit of their goals.

“It has the potential to be a real game-changer for the field,” explains John Branam, director of programs at Grantmakers for Education, which is exploring ways to use the tool to map education funding flows. By sharing data through the tool, funders can understand gaps, opportunities, and possibilities for connection, coordination, and collaboration — helping inform their decision making and increase their effectiveness.

“The Strategy Landscape™ can help foundations and donors make individual strategic choices with a clearer understanding of what is happening around them, and can provide a shared picture of the collective funding environment that allows groups of funders to strategize and work better together,” said Barbara Kibbe, vice president for client services at the Monitor Institute. “We are delighted that the Center for Effective Philanthropy will be our partner in delivering the Strategy Landscape™ to the field. They have the skills and commitment needed. And they have a decade of experience in building large comparative datasets on foundation practices.”

Monitor Institute and CEP will work together over the coming months to collaborate with groups of funders that have common goals and seek to share data and increase the transparency of their grantmaking strategies. Those funders will then be able to access that data in ways that will allow them to refine and improve their approaches in a highly leveraged way.

“We are thrilled to work with the Monitor Institute to help scale the Strategy Landscape™,” said CEP President Phil Buchanan. “Too often, we see foundation executives making decisions in the dark, without access to relevant data about what other funders are doing, and why.”

Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, noted that “the Rockefeller Foundation is pleased to have supported the development of the Strategy Landscape™. We are delighted now to see Monitor Institute and the Center for Effective Philanthropy working in partnership to make this tool broadly available.”

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Posted in Assessing Performance, Developing Strategy | 1 Comment »

“Open-Source Strategy” (Part 4): Foundation Strategy Development and the Perils of Isolation

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

If adopting a stance of openness with stakeholders in strategy development processes makes sense for nonprofits, as I have argued, then it makes even more sense for foundations. No one is susceptible to isolation in quite the way foundations are: foundations, after all, are surrounded by those who are predisposed to tell them what they think they want to hear. Plus, they’re often a step — or two — removed from the conditions on the ground that they seek to change. And, unlike operating nonprofits, private foundations don’t have to compete for resources and so are more protected from some of the downsides of openness that I blogged about here.

In our research on foundation strategy, we find that the exemplars of strategy are significantly more likely than their less strategic counterparts to solicit the perspectives of grantees and other stakeholders — including intended beneficiaries — on how they might do their work. That makes sense.  It seems almost impossible to imagine that a foundation could develop good strategy without taking assertive steps to reach out and hear from both experts and people closer to the front lines about what approach is most likely to help them achieve their intended impact.

Yet, my observation is that many foundations develop what they call their “strategies” (which often aren’t really strategies, at least according to CEP’s definition) in isolation, or with only the help of consultants who may or may not possess actual expertise in the area in which the foundation is working. Maybe that’s why some of what gets labeled foundation strategy seems so ill-conceived.

As former Ford Foundation President Susan Berresford points out in a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy op-ed, the costs of bad strategic planning are high. “Is it possible,” she writes, “that the quality of what passes for ‘strategic planning’ in too many places is just plain subpar? As in all fields …. there is a lot of mediocre practice. … So a lot of time and energy are poured into planning exercises and materials that yield little actionable analysis.”

I think Berresford is right on in her critique of much of what gets called “strategic philanthropy.” My view is that a big part of the problem lies in the lack of emphasis on getting good information and real (and critical) feedback.  The real strategists take an iterative approach — in which strategies are constantly re-assessed based on data and experience.

Some foundations, like the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, are committed to doing what they can to counter the tendency to be isolated. That Foundation gets regular, confidential feedback from grantees through CEP’s Grantee Perception Report (GPR) process, and takes that feedback seriously, as this CEP case study describes. As part of Packard’s “grantee experience standards,” described in the case study and formulated in response to grantee feedback, the Foundation makes this pledge to its grantees: “When you speak to a program officer, you will receive clear communication about the subprogram strategy and where the work of your organization fits into that strategy.” (Sounds simple, but ask nonprofits that get foundation funding how often this kind of communication happens.)

Packard has also sought to experiment with new technologies as a way to open up its strategy development processes and tap into the best ideas: in Packard’s case, the mechanism was a wiki. An analysis of the experience of using a wiki to develop strategy on the foundation’s web site notes that, “the wiki did not emerge as a panacea. Other methods commonly used by the Foundation remain important, such as drawing on the expertise and contacts of Foundation staff and consultants, and conducting workshops and conferences to enable more in-depth exploration of strategy points.”

I think Packard is wise to recognize that technology is no panacea — and should be commended for sharing its lessons learned. New technologies can facilitate more engagement, but they can’t substitute entirely for the kind of discussions that happen when the right people talk together. (Disclosure: In addition to using CEP’s assessment tools, Packard provides grant support to CEP.)

This, of course, means thoughtful strategy development is going to be time-intensive. In my first post in this series, I blogged about Joanne Creighton, former president of Mount Holyoke College (a mentor to me and my former boss), and her approach to planning. I still remember the push-back she got from some on the Mount Holyoke Board when she said the planning process would take 18 months. “That’s too long!” But she insisted that it would take that long to substantively engage the Mount Holyoke community, get the best thinking and ideas, and emerge with a compelling plan and a community mobilized to implement it.

Of course, at a college, it’s easier to define who to consult with. For foundations, that’s tougher. Much has been written about “crowd-sourcing,” and I think one of the real challenges is to determine how widely to cast the net. 

  • What is the relevant crowd, in other words, from which to get ideas about strategy or reactions to ideas? 
  • What are the best mechanisms to get that feedback? 
  • How do you integrate an approach that takes advantage of data and research on what works with one that taps into perspectives that might help make sense of that research — and how to apply it? 
  • How do you balance “expert” perspectives with the perspectives of others — such as intended beneficiaries (and, by the way, aren’t they real experts, too?)? 

Regardless of how these questions get answered, it seems clear that foundations can’t develop good strategy with closed processes. The only exception that I can imagine, and it’s an important one, is when a foundation is pushing to achieve goals that put it in direct tension with a well-funded opposition that might use knowledge of the foundation’s strategy to better counter it. I can think of a number of examples of goals — from those related to environmental issues to civil rights — where this could be the case. Even then, however, some openness in the strategy development process will be necessary to engage the right people and get the right information. 

I don’t claim to have the answer to how to balance all the tensions that arise in devising and executing strategic planning processes: between data collection (and analysis) and cost; between consulting widely and time; between expert advice and practical wisdom from those on the ground. And I don’t know how to determine the threshold when you have enough data and enough feedback and have been through enough iterations of a plan to know it’s time to start implementing. (Even then, the best planners know strategic planning, and learning, never really stops.)

But I am clear on this: too much of what passes for strategy in foundations isn’t of a high enough quality. Our research suggests much of it isn’t even really strategy. I think that has a lot to do with a failure to engage the right data and the right people, in the right ways, during the strategic planning process.

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“Open-Source Strategy” (Part 3): Getting Burned by Openness

Monday, October 25th, 2010

As I mentioned in my previous post, we have taken a stance of openness when it comes to our strategy and operations at CEP, sometimes against advice to the contrary from people I respect greatly. We have done so because of our view that it’s the right approach for a mission-driven organization like ours.

Openness feels easy to me internally. I trust our staff and feel they’re entitled to know what’s going on. I am always struck, when we work with large foundations, how much time is spent by some of them planning how to internally communicate about the data we provide them! “It’s your own staff,” I want to say. “Just give them the information! It will be okay.” I think this effort to manage internal communication often backfires, with staff feeling disempowered, disrespected, or just plain patronized. Maybe because of CEP’s small size, 30 or so staff, I have always found it easiest to err on the side of just getting the information out there, and sooner rather than later.

But, externally, openness gets more complicated, because, frankly, even though we’re all mission-driven, there are real competitive dynamics – especially for operating nonprofits. While I think we have generally been right to adopt a stance of openness externally, and I have certainly championed it, we have, at times, been burned.

The big risk is that people take your ideas and work and seek to implement them themselves, without credit or compensation. This has happened to us. We have shared our survey instruments with foundations expressing interest in using our tools, only to have them use the survey questions, verbatim, on their own – without asking or even having the courtesy to let us know. In other cases, organizations have come to us espousing a spirit of “collaboration” only to turn around and use our work to compete directly with us – offering what in my (admittedly) partial view was an inferior product – all the while insisting they were not. In some of those moments, I have doubted myself and my judgment, feeling that perhaps I am just naïve.

So, there is no doubt, openness can bite you.

But I think we just can’t afford to take a narrow view. We know that, for the kind of change in foundation practice to happen that we want to happen, many other organizations need to play a role. That’s why we work in close and productive consultation with organizations like GEO, Monitor Institute, Bridgespan, Foundation Center, Grants Managers Network, and others. We know that all of these organizations play a vital role in helping create the kind of change CEP is trying to affect. We are but one part of a much bigger picture. If we jealously guard our plans, we’ll duplicate efforts and stumble into each other. Resources will be wasted.

Competition is often healthy, of course. But there are many, many examples where it’s better to coordinate than compete. One very small, simple, example: GEO and CEP each have bi-annual conferences and we coordinate on the dates so that we don’t go head to head with each other. We’re largely seeking to reach the same audience, so it just makes sense for everyone to plan together in this way.

So I remain convinced that it’s better to err on the side of openness – both internally and externally. I know that, at times, we have been naïve about peoples’ intentions. But I am pretty sure that obsessive parochialism and competitiveness on the part of organizations like ours won’t lead to the kind of impact we seek.

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“Open-Source Strategy” (Part 2): The Benefits of Engagement

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

At CEP, we have been engaged in a planning process since last fall, examining our record over the nine years we have existed and asking: what’s working, what’s not, and what should we start doing that we’re not doing today? There will be more in coming posts on the substance of this effort, but right now I want to discuss the process: specifically, how open and inclusive should we be in a planning process like this?

Largely because of the formative experiences I wrote about in my last post, I am predisposed to be open. Over the years, at CEP, we have made no secret of our plans or, for that matter, of our own assessments of our performance. We make public, on our website, all the studies we conduct or commission that relate to how CEP is perceived or how our research and tools are — or are not — being used to make change. And, of course, we have, for years, put our 990s and audited financials on our website as soon as they are final. (This seems like a given, but I am always shocked how many nonprofit organizations still don’t do this!)

So our planning process, which is focused on defining the organization’s direction for 2011-2014, has been an open and iterative one. That openness starts within the organization, among staff and board.

Our staff engaged our planning process through several all-day, all staff planning sessions as well as a two-day, off-site staff retreat. Why do we spend so much time in this way, taking staff away from their immediate work? Because, over our brief organizational history, we have seen that great ideas come from everyone, including from staff who are just a few months out of college. We foster the exchange of ideas and thinking about the organization and our mission through meetings and retreats – but also through simple technological platforms, such as Yammer, which we use for internal communication. I post and respond to posts on Yammer multiple times a day, often in exchanges with members of our staff who I don’t get much of a chance to work with directly. 

With our Board of Directors, openness and engagement often means resisting the urge to feel we always need to come to meetings with clarity on exactly what we want. Instead, we involve board members at key moments in the interpretation of data and in brainstorming possible initiatives. At a two-day retreat in May, our Board — armed with new data we had gathered and analyzed about our performance and impact — took stock of the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and areas of potential opportunity for greater contribution. We shared some thoughts with them but, mostly, my staff colleagues and I listened and sought to benefit from the Board’s engagement.

During the summer, my closest colleagues and I integrated board and staff thinking with our own and developed a complete draft of our Plan, which we shared with our Board for reaction at a meeting last month. We explicitly asked the Board not to act yet: we wanted their perspectives on the draft and the chance to make it better. 

We also wanted to reach out to a broader group of leaders: we have just sent a draft of our Plan for CEP: 2011-2014 to our 30-member Advisory Board and invited feedback during one of a series of conference calls. Many of those on our Advisory Board are foundation leaders, but others are in leadership positions at organizations that some observers view as our “competitors.” I have been told it’s foolish to be so open with other organizations working in the same space. But I don’t think they want to take our ideas and implement them. If they do, and they can do it better than we can, more power to them. (I think.)

By December, we should be ready to ask the Board to approve the Plan. It will be stronger for all its iterations, all the feedback, and the thinking of what will be, by then, some 70 people who will have contributed. All in all, our planning process will have taken well over a year and lots of time and energy — even as we work day to day to implement initiatives we outlined in our last plan, which covered the 2008-2010 period. But I am convinced that this kind of process is well worth the time and energy it consumes.

In my next post, the drawbacks of openness.

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“Open-Source Strategy” (Part 1): Community Engagement and Building Take-Overs

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

“Can you open-source your strategy?” That is the provocative headline of a short piece in the current Harvard Business Review co-authored by Barry Newstead, an executive at Wikimedia Foundation and former Bridegespan partner, and Laura Lanzerotti, a current Bridgespan manager.  The answer, according to Newstead and Lanzerotti, is absolutely. 

This counsel, of course, runs counter to the typical MBA approach to strategy development, in which strategy is formulated under a cloak of secrecy intended to deny potential competitors any knowledge of your intentions.  Newstead and Lanzerotti argue that the benefits of opening up your strategy process to various stakeholders are powerful, including “insight and loyalty that come from genuine engagement.”  They argue that the benefits outweigh the “loss of control and the additional time needed to facilitate an open process.”

I think they’re right on and that their counsel, which is directed toward an audience of business executives, resonates even more in the nonprofit and foundation world, where the competitive dynamics are different. Long before “open-source” was part of our lexicon, I had the opportunity to learn a bit about strategic planning from a leader who pushed the boundaries of what a strategic planning process can be — engaging in an open, inclusive process that became my model of what good planning looks like.

It was 1996-1997, and I was working as assistant to the president of Mount Holyoke College.  Joanne Creighton, the new president of that institution, led a comprehensive and transparent planning process that engaged the board, faculty, students, and alumnae. 

  • She engaged in numerous efforts to bring the right data to the table to inform planning discussions, taking the time to educate the entire college community about all of the “brutal facts.”
  • She invited every faculty member, in groups of a couple of dozen per evening, to discussions at her house to reflect on the College’s past, present, and future.
  • She engaged the board in numerous meetings and, to the horror of her senior administrative team, she invited board members to meet with faculty and students without any administrators present.
  • She solicited ideas from students through formal mechanisms and informal ones, and included two students on a planning committee of 11, which she chaired.
  • She opened up the planning process to alumnae through meetings around the country.

Along the way, she was totally candid about what she was thinking. Joanne shared an outline and then, months later, a draft of the full plan before submitting it to the board for approval — inviting anyone to comment and making changes based on feedback she received. She literally invited people to edit her writing, to email her better ways of articulating our plans — or better ideas for new initiatives. 

The result was a much stronger plan than she and her senior colleagues could have developed in isolation and, perhaps most important, a community that was energized to implement by the time the Plan was approved.

The process was not without its challenging moments. Joanne put so much on the table — including the question of whether Mount Holyoke should remain a women’s college (it has) and vexing questions about budget trade-offs — and did so with such openness that it produced considerable anxiety. The difficulties came to a head when Mount Holyoke and University of Massachusetts students took over the Admissions Office, barricading themselves inside, and then the President’s Office.   

[An  aside: A defining moment for me as a young professional (the 25-year old — and male – assistant to the president of the oldest continuing women’s college in the country) was when I had to emerge from the building that housed the President’s Office, which students had taken over,  to face the local media and make a statement about what was going on. I was just a few years out from being involved, as a student, in efforts to preserve need-blind admissions at Wesleyan University, wondering, when did I end up on this side of this kind of thing?]

But, ultimately, the benefits of Joanne’s open, inclusive planning process outweighed the risks, I think. The Plan that was approved set the College in motion in ways that generated significant positive results. All the major indicators — from fundraising to admissions selectivity — moved in the right direction in the years to follow. All of that could be coincidental, or the result of other factors, of course. But my sense is that our Plan was much stronger, and the responses to our challenges wiser, for the input and counsel received from literally hundreds of thoughtful members of the Mount Holyoke community. 

I learned a lot from the process — and from Joanne’s approach to planning. In my next post, I will reflect on CEP’s planning process and the benefits of openness and broad engagement. Then, I will discuss some of the drawbacks and the ways in which openness can burn you. Finally, I will turn to how foundations undertake their strategic planning efforts — and how open they should be.

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Posted in Developing Strategy, Managing Operations | 2 Comments »

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