Archive for June, 2011

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Michael J. Fox: Getting Results By Going the Unconventional Way

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Almost from the start, Michael J. Fox and Debi Brooks began upending the way foundations typically do business.

The co-founders of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research did so because they felt an urgency about finding a cure for Parkinson’s—and because in the beginning, they didn’t know any better.

When Fox decided to start a new foundation dedicated to finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease, he said he knew he wanted to keep its efforts tightly focused on research. 

“One of the reasons we focused on research was because it was a huge task, it was an essential task,” said Fox, who spoke at the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s (CEP) 2011 conference. “If we started going in all sorts of other directions, no one would be served.” 

The decision to center the foundation’s mission around Parkinson’s research, rather than patient services, was just one of the first ways that Fox and his colleagues forged their own way.

Fox, an acclaimed television and film actor as well as bestselling author, established the foundation in 2000, following the public disclosure of his diagnosis in 1991 at age 30 of young-onset Parkinson’s disease. Since its inception, the foundation has funded more than $240 million in research to speed development of breakthrough treatments and a cure for Parkinson’s disease. Today it is the world’s largest private funder of Parkinson’s research and has been held up as an exemplar of a new breed of nimble, strategic, and fast-moving disease research funders.

At the CEP conference, which marked its 10th anniversary, Fox said that the hallmark of the foundation is “informed urgency.”

“It’s been like a joke in our board meetings—POM—purity of motive,” he said. “Whenever we get bogged down in anything, we [remind ourselves] we are here for one thing. We are in business to get out of business.”

Co-founder Debi Brooks, a former Goldman, Sachs & Co. executive, said that the foundation began taking unconventional approaches like asking its researchers to meet and share what they learned simply because it made sense. Brooks and her colleagues did not realize that wasn’t the way that competitive scientists typically approach their work.

Brooks pointed out that many academics are accustomed to receiving grants of up to five years’ duration from funders who do not routinely require detailed updates on their progress. Brooks and her colleagues, by contrast, began making smaller  grants over shorter timeframes. And, they wanted researchers to provide in-person updates on their work. It was a request that the foundation’s own scientific advisory board challenged. Board members said it would result in scientists simply sending their postdoctoral students because they were too busy to attend, Brooks recounted.

“I said, ‘We’re kind of busy too,’” she said. “We did some pushback.”

The requirement to meet was meant to help focus the work, Brooks said. Initially, the scientists simply tolerated the obligation of making an in-person presentation of their work in front of their competitors. But their reluctance soon changed to a different attitude, she said.

“What we found was that there was so much cross fertilization and problem solving in the moment that the assessment meetings ended up as some of the best work that we could spawn. [There were] partnerships, collaborations, [people saying] ‘I’m sending you my antibodies, you help me with this.’ Then it became that you wouldn’t miss the assessment meetings. We would say ‘Given what we heard, what are the challenges we should be thinking about?’ If you weren’t at the assessment meeting, you’d miss the chance to influence us.”

Meanwhile, as scientists compared notes at the assessment meetings, Fox’s presence provided an unexpected motivation, he said.

“I would go by the foundation [with these] large groups of scientists in the conference room who were busy swapping stories,” Fox said. “I would come in to say thank you. Their response [to me] was not as Michael Fox or as the founder of the foundation, but as a Parkinson’s patient. I would be very symptomatic in front of them. I could see them make the connection between what they were doing and this shaky person at the front of the table. It was about ‘fix the shaky person.’”

The full video interview of Michael J. Fox and Debi Brook’s talk at the CEP conference is available here. The conversation was moderated by Rockefeller Brothers Fund President and CEP Board Chair Stephen B. Heintz.

Susan Parker is owner of Clear Thinking Communications.

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Passion Needed For Data Driven Analysis in Philanthropy

Monday, June 27th, 2011

The following post originally appeared on Tactical Philanthropy on June 24:

One of the most perplexing aspects of discussions about philanthropy that I hear and read is the tendency to portray passion and emotion and data and analysis as in tension. As if it’s zero-sum.

Add passion and emotion, reduce data and analysis by the same amount.

Add data and analysis, reduce passion and emotion commensurately.

But I don’t buy it – not for a minute. I think the interactions are much more complicated than that. Indeed, I think a real focus on doing philanthropy in a strategic, analytical, data-driven way only occurs once you hit a threshold level of passionate, emotional commitment to a cause.

Of course, I am aware of the well-documented tendency of human beings to be influenced by emotional stories over data. Michael Mauboussin, an expert on decision-making, reflected at the CEP conference last month on studies in which decisions about medical treatments are found to be more powerfully influenced by anecdotes than data.

We’ve all been there, as Mauboussin noted. He described the experience of checking out a car’s reliability data, verifying that it does very well, being all set to buy it, and then hearing from a friend, “Oh yeah, I had a buddy who had one of those: he had all these problems with it.”

“Now all of a sudden … your colleague’s buddy is casting doubt on your decision,” he said. “The stories swamp the statistics.”

But, as Mauboussin notes, this isn’t a good thing. So we should not simply accept it as human nature. We fight all kinds of baser human instincts because we think they will send us down the wrong path, and this should be among them.

The fact that emotional stories can cause people to disregard overwhelming data that would lead them to a better decision isn’t something to be celebrated or exploited for the purposes of making our points or making our presentations more compelling: it’s something to be resisted. We should use stories responsibly, when they reinforce and illustrate what the data shows.

Good decision-making is hard in life. But in philanthropy, data-driven decision-making is even tougher still, because the challenges we’re working to address are deep-seated, complex, and interdependent – and because the data is often harder to come by and more open to alternate interpretations than in other domains. The work is also more emotionally intense than it often is in business or in the lab, making the lure of decision-making that is unmoored from the data all the stronger.

But, while passion and emotion are often the problem because they can lead us astray, they’re also the solution. For it is only a passionate commitment to really getting it right – to seeing results – that can provide the will and discipline necessary to do the hard work of data-gathering, strategy formulating, assessing, and analyzing.

Indeed, why would anyone do philanthropy in a strategic, data-driven way – given how much harder it is than the alternative – were it not for their passionate, emotional commitment to making a difference?

As Ed Pauly of the Wallace Foundation wrote on the CEP Blog last month, “The reason for the tools of better philanthropy is to get results that matter. The tools are not about polishing up our processes. They are about getting the results we are most passionate about.”

Perhaps this is why we have seen, in our research on strategy at foundations, that foundation CEOs and program officers often aren’t born strategic, they become strategic. It is often their frustration at not seeing results that leads them to a different approach – one based on clear and specific goals, coherent strategies, sound implementation, and relevant indicators against which they can gauge progress.

When the conditions are right, passion and emotion combine with data and analysis in a way that is less like oil and water and more like gin and tonic – forming something better together than each ever could be alone.

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Esther Duflo Explains Why She Believes Randomized Controlled Trials Are So Vital

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

Even before Esther Duflo rose to speak at the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s (CEP) 2011 conference, she had already stirred controversy. Her well-known belief in the ability of randomized controlled trails to understand the effectiveness of policy interventions in developing countries brings up strong feelings among some in the philanthropy world.

As Ford Foundation president Luis Ubiñas said in his introduction of Duflo, “Feelings runs so deep about Esther that Phil [Buchanan] actually received some tough emails about her coming to speak here to us.”

But Duflo seemed to quickly win the crowd over.

“I’m sure I’m not very dangerous,” said Duflo, professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT. “I speak with a funny French accent. I don’t bite.”

In explaining her approach, Duflo said that discussions about foreign aid often devolve into a debate about whether the aid works or not. It is impossible to resolve that debate by staying on that level, said Duflo who is founder and director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.  For one, the question of whether aid works is not particularly well defined, she said. Second, aid is a small part of developing countries’ overall budgets. For example, aid comprises about 5.7% of the budgets of African countries that receive it.

“A big part of my work is to try and shift the conversation from whether aid is good or bad to think about policy or programs instead,” Duflo said. “Another objective of my work is to think about not just the five percent [of aid], but the 100 percent.  [That is], what role this five percent can play in improving the quality of programs. I want to think about the efforts of most private donors…as not being an end in itself, but as being venture capitalism and finding the good ideas in development. In that case, think of each dollar you are spending as being multiplied many, many fold. If these programs help us identify what really works then that can be taken up as a policy on a very large scale. That is the reason for my work and the reason for placing so much emphasis on the evaluation of specific programs.”

Duflo cited several examples from the book she co-authored Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty.

“I thought I would identify surprising facts that I didn’t know and maybe you didn’t know either and that would have been difficult to know without employing the kinds of methods we work with, particularly randomized controlled trials,” she said.  “The first one is that sometimes you save money by paying people.”

Childhood vaccines are generally available for free and yet each year millions of children go without basic immunization, Duflo said. She described a randomized controlled trial of three immunization camps in rural India.  She found that by giving parents an incentive to go to the camps to immunize their children—in the form of one kilo of lentils for each child immunized—the rate of immunization increased from 6% to 38%. (For more on this topic, see Duflo’s TED Talk.)

She said it the trial showed that it actually saves money to give the lentils. The cost for a child to be fully immunized in a camp without the incentives was $50 while it was $27 in a camp with incentives. That’s because the camps must pay for a nurses’ time regardless of the number of children they immunize. At the camps with incentives, nurses immunized more children and the costs per immunization decreased.

“Because of the randomization, seeing the effect is very transparent and easy,” she said.

Duflo said that findings like these challenge what she calls the three “I”s of development policy: ideology, ignorance and inertia.

“Programs are often borne in ideology,” she said, “[An ideology that] the poor are entrepreneurs, or they are starving or they are slothful. [Programs] are conceived in ignorance of the reality of the field, and then they persist because once they exist there is a consistency for them to just continue. I think we need to fight against that.”

As an example of the three “I”s Duflo cited a government policy in India to have village education committees on which villagers serve. That policy has not worked as planned.During the question and answer period, audience members asked Duflo to expand on her ideas.

At the end of the session in response to one question, Duflo showed how she can be both soft-spoken and laser sharp in her point of view.

“From our position of being reasonably well off and comfortable, [perhaps] university professors, we tend to be patronizing about the poor in a very specific sense, which is that we tend to think, ‘Why don’t they take more responsibility for their lives?’ And what we are forgetting is that the richer you are the less responsibility you need to take for your own life because everything is taken care for you. And the poorer you are the more you have to be responsible for everything about your life….My lesson is to stop berating people for not being responsible and start to think of ways instead of providing the poor with the luxury that we all have, which is that a lot of decisions are taken for us. If we do nothing, we are on the right track. For most of the poor, if they do nothing, they are on the wrong track.”

More highlights from Duflo’s talk at CEP’s conference will be available on CEP’s YouTube channel soon.

Susan Parker is owner of Clear Thinking Communications

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Posted in Assessing Performance, Developing Strategy, Guest Author | 3 Comments »

CEP Releases 2010 Video Annual Report

Friday, June 17th, 2011

In past years, we have spent considerable time and money on nicely designed annual reports. We have received good feedback on these pieces but aren’t convinced they’re widely read – or a good use of limited resources.

So, this year, we’re trying something different: a video annual report in which I speak to the highlights of 2010.

2010 Annual Report

In addition, all the documents that are relevant to learning about CEP – including our complete audited financials, Form 990, strategic plan, and a complete list of our funders – are also continually updated on our site. External assessments of our work are available here – in their entirety.

We’re interested in your feedback.

• Is this a good approach to communicating about what we accomplished in 2010?
• Is there anything else you’d like to know about CEP’s work, our finances and operations, or anything else?

We’re committed, at CEP, to being transparent – on the theory that a tax advantaged nonprofit seeking to achieve its mission should have no secrets. So we share information we think might be of interest to our funders, clients, and broader audience.

I’m interested to know if you think we’re missing anything. What else should we make available?

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Challenging Without Silencing

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011

Often, I write in this space about CEP’s research, our work with foundations, or my thoughts on the nonprofit sector more broadly. But, today, I want to reflect instead on one of my own challenges as a leader of a nonprofit with 33 incredibly smart, committed staff.

I’ll be clear at the outset – I don’t have the answers on this one, far from it. And, quite frankly, I’d love advice from readers of the CEP Blog.

My challenge is this: how to get the best out of people by encouraging them to feel comfortable to speak up while simultaneously fostering a culture in which people constantly challenge each other in order to get to the best solutions.

To me, it often feels hard to figure out how to do both at once.

I think most of us have been in situations where we know the best ideas and insights are not being heard. The discussion is shut down. Opportunities for improvement or innovation are lost. Staff members sitting around a meeting table are holding their tongues, feeling “silenced.” Only later, out of earshot of the “leaders,” do their voices, and perspectives, come out.

But I think most of us have probably found ourselves at the other extreme, too. I am talking about situations in which a group endlessly exchanges ideas and thoughts as if they are all equally valuable – with such an emphasis on being non-judgmental that no decision ever gets made.

As a leader, I sure don’t want to contribute to either dynamic.

I thought a lot about this during CEP’s conference a few weeks ago as I reflected on the wisdom of the speakers who addressed us and how they apply to my own leadership responsibilities. These are important issues for foundation leaders – our audience – but, frankly, I was thinking about my own role here. As a leader, my job is to get the best out of everyone at CEP, such that we implement our organizational strategy as effectively as possible.

But it’s also my job to know when to cut off debate and discussion – when we need to move on. Or when to prevent certain topics from being brought forward at all, because I feel I can see that they will distract from more important work.  Or when to challenge something that doesn’t seem to quite hold together – and that isn’t being challenged by others.

It’s a difficult dance, and one that has to change as the leader reads the natural tendencies of those around him or her. Some people are more comfortable with vigorous debate, relishing it, even; others need to be drawn out, or are made uncomfortable with vigorous disagreement.

Sometimes, with some people, vigorous debate crosses a line and starts to feel personal. At that point, it’s rarely productive.

I’ve read dozens of books on leadership and organizational change, even taken courses on it. But if there is a magic formula, I haven’t found it. I feel like I make a mistake, in one direction or another, almost every day.

I will think, later, “I should have pushed harder on that point.” Or, “I pushed too hard, and it shut down the discussion too soon.”

I also wonder how much is really up to the leader, and how much is beyond his or her control – subject to the mysterious mix of personalities, dynamics, and work habits that shape an organization’s culture?

Still, as someone in a leadership position, I am not willing to give up the notion of my own relevance so easily! And so I struggle with whether I am getting the balance right: between being the nurturer and the challenger; between being the mediator and the prosecutor; between being the hard-charging coach and the impartial referee – or even assuming the role of the opposing team.

Maybe others have figured out how to strike the right balance better than I have?  If so, I’d love to learn from you.

Phil Buchanan is president of CEP.

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