Archive for May, 2011

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Social Media, Foundations, and Grantees: What Works, What Doesn’t?

Friday, May 27th, 2011

This piece was originally posted on Beth’s Blog on May 12:

This week I attended Center for Effective Philanthropy’s  conference “Better Philanthropy: From Data to Impact” where I participated on a panel about social media, foundations, and grantees.  Vincent Stehle moderated, and other panelists included Paula Goldman, Omidyar Network,  Jacob Harold, Program Officer, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Travis Manzione, Director of Assessment Tools for CEP.

Travis Manzione shared some preliminary data from a survey of over 2,000 grantees from 9 foundations about their social media usage. For the most part,  foundations are using social media as a one-way communications tool about their programs, not for interaction with grantees. Grantees are reading about foundation’s programs through social media channels, but not engaging with funders. A skeptic’s view might be: why waste time? Another lens, ask why?

I shared a few points about nonprofits use of social media, including a maturity of practice model called “Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly.” This prompted discussion about the similarities and differences in practice between nonprofits and foundations and how to move to the next level.  There were questions about social media policies as well as content and engagement strategies and handling mistakes. It all comes down to intention, capacity, and audience as Jacob Harold observed.

Paula Goldman shared some thoughts about foundation intent in using social media, particularly amplifying grantees work and thought leadership. In addition, Kathy Reich mentioned the potential of using social media to help inform and improve grant-making strategy and broader field impact.

Jacob Harold discussed how social media can be of value to a program officer: it is an easy way to stay informed about grantees activities with anecdotal information. It can also facilitate informal communications with other people in the grantee organization. He also added that it is  important to have structured information.

Transparency was a theme that came up throughout the conference.  In our session, Vincent Stehle provoked with this:  “We want to be transparent except when it matters.” Transparency isn’t a black and white definition - share everything or share nothing. Transparency isn’t a means to end, but is part of a ladder or scaffolding, particularly if  used to spark public learning about how to make grantmaking strategies more impactful.

The theme of learning from grants that were not that successful also surfaced as it did during the Networked Funders convening last month, where a new phrase as coined:  “Compost Grantmaking.” This refers to grants for projects that were ahead of their time or more experimental.  Projects that didn’t quite work out perfectly. Later, they turn out to be a rich source of learning to avoid replicating mistakes.

I also attended a  round table discussion with Kathy Reich and Paul Connolly about some of the very preliminary findings from the Packard Foundation’s “Goldmine” evaluation that analyzes 1,300 capacity building grants to find out what works and how to improve impact.

Kathy Reich offered some context. The Packard Foundation Organizational Effectiveness program came out of David Packard’s belief that nonprofits needed to invest in themselves – coaching, leadership, strategic planning – as the for-profit world does. The foundation’s grant making and thought leadership spurred the development of the nonprofit organizational effectiveness movement.

The last evaluation of this work was a decade ago.  Thus,  a retrospective evaluation of capacity building grants would no doubt produce a “goldmine” of insights for in the field. The Packard OE program is working with the TCC Group to analyze this rich data set to answer these questions:

While the ultimate goal is to improve the grantmaking strategy and impact, they are also experimenting with sharing the evaluation process and preliminary findings on the wiki as part of a “public learning” process. It is just getting underway both online and offline.

A couple of nuggets that Paul Connolly shared about the design of capacity grants based on his deep expertise in this area.   He talked about “transformative” versus “transactional” capacity building approaches. The former being a strategic planning process that changes the way the organization works. Transactional capacity building are projects like building a web site or accounting system.

Paul also mentioned the “ready, set, go”  framework. Many consultant engagements focus on the “ready, set” part – expert consulting that helps grantees prepare to  implement – an assessment, research, or a strategy. He suggested that the “go” is very important and approaches  such as peer exchanges or coaching as the organization implements are highly effective in getting to transformative results.

As a nonprofit consultant that works on capacity building projects,  I’m always looking to improve my practice. You can get feedback from clients and keep up on a never ending stream of topic or subject-matter information. But data about how to design capacity building, the trade craft of practice, and what nonprofits are looking for in a consultant and consulting relationship are not quite as plentiful and can be pure gold!

Beth Kanter is a co-founder and partner of Zoetica.

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Understanding the Foundations Outcomes Paradox

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

For the past four years I have been responsible for producing The Irvine Foundation’s Annual Performance Report, our foundation-wide assessment of program impact and operational performance. Through my work on that report I have come to understand that focusing on outcomes in many foundations is encumbered by the core business activity of making grants. The grantmaking process tends to focus the attention of program staff on the next grant award rather than the outcomes of active and past grants, which should be the focus of an assessment of our performance.

This foundation outcomes paradox was on my mind during the recent CEP conference, where one of the breakout sessions, “Driving Toward Impact: What Funders Can Do To Support Nonprofits’ Performance Management,” raised the question of whether foundations are equipped to support and model best practices in performance management. The unanimous response was no, most foundations are not a good model for nonprofits’ performance management.

Why is this? For the answer to why, I return the core business of a foundation – making grants. In an article in Foundation Review, Patti Patrizi and Elizabeth Heid Thompson astutely observed that the process of reviewing proposals, making recommendations, awarding grants, and cutting grant checks can dominate time and attention in foundations. Any readers with experience working in a foundation can attest to the way that making grants drives the day-to-day work at a foundation. Time and energy of program staff are sucked up by “bureaucracy’s gravitational force.”  Two things happen as a result. First, we find ourselves with program staff who are good at the grantmaking that they have been trained to do, rather than focused on grant outcomes. Second, when foundation performance is measured, it is often in terms of the amount of grants made rather than the outcomes of those grants.

What can we do about it? Foundations seeking to manage based on performance and outcomes will need to tackle the outcomes paradox and think about how their current processes support or impede a focus on outcomes. What is the job description for a program officer, and how is their performance measured? Break-out panelist and Impetus Trust Chief Executive Daniela Barone Soares reported that the performance of the foundation’s investment staff (their equivalent to program officers) is based on the outcomes achieved by nonprofits in their investment portfolio. This creates the incentive for deep engagement and collaboration with nonprofits to help them succeed. It also requires a set of skills that is probably different from traditional foundation program staff.

These process changes need to be part of a larger cultural change in the foundation, led by foundation executives and boards. Based on my own experience and the wisdom of others, this is no small task (see Mario Marino’s timely and relevant new book, Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity). Once a foundation’s leadership is aligned about a focus on outcomes, we need to turn attention to the business processes and job descriptions and consider how to shift the management of the foundation from grant making towards grant outcomes.

Kevin Rafter is manager, research and evaluation at The James Irvine Foundation.

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Connecting the Dots with Data

Friday, May 20th, 2011

This piece was originally posted on The Communications Network blog on May 17:

At last week’s Center for Effective Philanthropy Conference (CEP), it was refreshing to see the role of communications keep popping up during discussions that explored the links between data and foundation impact.

That’s not surprising, either, and for at least for two reasons.

For one, when CEP first began conducting surveys of grantees almost a decade ago, foundations primarily used those findings to learn what their grant recipients liked about doing business with them and what needed improvement.  In the years since, many foundations have seen great value in sharing grantee feedback from these surveys on their Web sites for the public to see.

Often times these postings include discussions about improvements foundations are making spurred by comments from their grantees.  As an example of how much more a foundation can make use of these findings, the James Irvine Foundation went one step further, and instead of just posting the 2010 Grantee Perception Report on its Web site, it recently created a page that invites people to comment on the findings.

Data But a second reason communications is a common topic these days during discussions about assessing impact is because the data that comes out of that work can tell important stories about foundation performance.

Or as CEP President Phil Buchanan puts it, “We see time and again the crucial connection between good data and analysis and good communication. Foundations need to be clear about what they’re trying to do, how they’re trying to do it, and what they’re learning along the way.”

The data, in other words, can be a helpful frame for those stories we want to tell about what foundations and their grantees are accomplishing, as well as how to frame the message about what went wrong and why, as does happen.

A lot of ideas were put forward over the course of the conference about how to use data, including to whom to share it and how. Those conversations, naturally, resonated with the many communications professionals in attendance.

For me, one of the more intriguing suggestions about how to combine data and storytelling, for example, was offered by Molly Martin, operations and learning officer for the Lumina Foundation for Education.  In a post she wrote for the CEP blog during the event, Martin offered this observation:

We all know the power of storytelling in philanthropy.  Stories can move our grantees to action, compel our colleagues to support important work, engage our policymakers, and convince our neighbors to help us build a movement for social change.  But what of stories without stats?  Without data to enrich the tales we tell about our work, how can we be sure we’re even telling the right story?

Martin goes on to say that if foundations want their work to be taken seriously by people they’re trying to influence and move to action, it will take more than anecdotes to make the sale.  She writes:

Emotional anecdotes are calls to react…not calls to action.

Martin illustrates her point by commenting on a discussion during the CEP conference that featured Debi Brooks, Co-Founder of The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, and the actor-turned philanthropist himself.  As Martin notes,

If ever there were a foundation that could ride the tide of a compelling personality, it’s the Michael J. Fox Foundation.  Yet they choose to tell their story—to frame the invaluable currency they have in a beloved actor—by sharing the science…the Foundation chooses to train and arm their best asset with rich data.  Fox becomes more than a compelling personality: he becomes a compelling personality with a well-informed, actionable story to tell.

To Martin, the lesson from the Michael J. Fox Foundation is both clear and simple:

Train your poster children.  Arm your best ambassadors with your best data and let your story of impact unfold.

That comment reinforces a comment made earlier in her post:

Data equips your stakeholders with tools that enable them to become your envoys for the long-haul.  And if that data is couched in the form of a digestible, accessible story told by a beneficiary, it’s all the better.

What do you think? Can storytelling be more compelling with better and more thoughtful use of data?  Do you have experiences of your own to share?  Let us know.

Bruce Trachtenberg is executive director of The Communications Network.

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New Analysis Shows Foundations’ Grantee Perception Report Results Improving

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

CEP is pleased to be releasing a new research report today.  The press release is below:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Cambridge, MA—The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) released a new report today demonstrating that foundations that use the organization’s Grantee Perception Report (GPR) more than once are making changes that are benefiting the organizations they fund.

CEP’s report, Can Feedback Fuel Change at Foundations?: An Analysis of the Grantee Perception Report (.pdf), reveals that foundations that use the GPR – which is based on a survey of a foundation’s grantees – a second time receive substantially improved results, on average. To reach its conclusions, CEP analyzed data from tens of thousands of nonprofit grantees surveyed since 2003 in conjunction with the GPR process.

“We created the GPR almost a decade ago on the theory that feedback from grantees that was comparative and confidential could help foundations to learn and improve,” said CEP President Phil Buchanan, who co-authored the report with CEP’s Ellie Buteau and Shahryar Minhas. “We now have enough data to be able to test, empirically, whether this is true, and it appears that it is.”

More sobering, however, is the fact that there is little change over the years in results of foundations coming to CEP for the first time.  This suggests that foundations in general haven’t improved their practices in the eyes of their grantees, even as those that repeatedly use the GPR have.

The report highlights in particular the efforts of two foundations that have substantially improved in the eyes of their grantees: Endowment for Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). “If our relationship with our grantees is wanting, then it’s going to impact negatively our ability to accomplish the kind of goals we want to accomplish,” said RWJF President Risa Lavizzo-Mourey.

In addition to describing the data analysis and profiling foundations that have made changes, the report identifies four keys to driving change as a result of the GPR, based on CEP’s experience delivering results to some 200 foundations.

Along with the report, CEP also released today more in-depth profiles of the changes made by Endowment for Health (.pdf) and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (.pdf) as well as a profile of the use of the GPR at the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation (.pdf).

Ellie Buteau is vice president-research at the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

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The Art of Harnessing Collective Wisdom

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” – Winston Churchill

This quote came to mind during the first session of the 2011 Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) conference as CEP Vice President Ellie Buteau presented the results of a recent CEO survey on foundation assessment. Ellie noted that CEOs reported tensions between the focus on assessment and the freedom to take risks, between data and intuition. Survey results indicated that those who collect more types of information from a variety of data sources have stronger confidence in the effectiveness of their strategy.

The CEP conference set a valuable table for foundations seeking to craft strategies that yield powerful results on some of society’s most vexing challenges. Based on conversations with others, I suspect I am not alone in feeling more confident in the beauty of our strategies than in our ability to consistently identify or recognize how best to assess our effectiveness.

In his plenary presentation, Michael Mauboussin asserted that intuition only works when the situation is linear and stable. I can’t speak for other foundations, but the contexts in which McKnight works are neither linear nor stable! Mauboussin, investment strategist and author of Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition, spoke of the power of aggregated data to provide important insights – whether through computer algorithms or from the wisdom of crowds – and gave examples of how the collective guess is better than the average guess of the individual.

At McKnight, a vital aspect of our strategy development and iteration is a deep understanding of the ecosystem in which we are operating. We look at how we can use our particular strengths to foster change across the civic, public, and private sectors. We use multiple means including the Grantee Perception Report® to assess how well we are doing and where we need to improve. In terms of results, we increasingly look to goals and progress measures that are owned by a broader set of people in the community we serve. As our work cuts across issues and sectors, it is critical to harness the power of collective wisdom.

Some of our most exciting work is in collaboratives where we analyze and make meaning together of data and evolving circumstances, and share accountability for results. One example is Re-AMP, a network of nonprofits and foundations working on climate change and energy policy. The Monitor Institute recently completed a case study of Re-AMP entitled Transformer: How to Build a Network to Change a System. Another example is Living Cities, a consortium of foundations and financial institutions that works to increase opportunities for low-income communities through innovative systems change work in the midst of, as one participant described it, “wicked complexity.”

When we next gather around the CEP table, I look forward to continuing the conversation about how can we harness the power of the collective – grantees, protagonists (too often viewed as simply “beneficiaries”), and others in the public, private, and civic sectors to craft better strategies and achieve deeper impact than any of us can do alone.

Kate Wolford is president of The McKnight Foundation

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