CEP often has a front row view of communications challenges faced by foundations. One issue foundations grapple with on an ongoing basis is getting all staff members to communicate the same messages about a foundation’s work, and specifically its goals, strategies, and grantmaking guidelines.

In light of this, I was not surprised by the following finding from the report The Communications Supercharge: How Foundations Use Communications to Advance Their Public Policy Work, recently released by USC’s Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy (bolded emphases are my own):

The interviews suggest widespread agreement that the thorniest challenge faced by these leaders is how to best integrate communications into program planning and execution. In the respondents’ views, communications is a horizontal function in a vertical world. Its place and points of intersection with other foundation activity are still somewhat ambiguous, in spite of growing levels of activity and support from top leadership levels. The challenge stems from the basic facts of foundation culture. ‘Program is king’ in foundations: grantmaking programs are vertically organized silos, presided over by program directors, initiative directors, and program officers. Communications is not seen as programs, at least not yet, in all but a very few foundations.

This is a great summary of a challenge we see frequently at CEP. The USC report is part of a heartening trend of foundations paying more attention to their communications challenges.  Also worth reading is a new report from California Healthcare Foundation (CHCF) on communicating with grantees. Spitfire Strategies will be releasing a report on the same topic at the Communications Network conference this month.

This focus on communications by foundations will be welcome news to grantees. In CEP’s surveys of tens of thousands of grantees of more than 200 foundations over recent years, clarity of communication of goals and strategy is among the areas where grantees give foundations lower marks. Hopefully, thoughtful engagement with the new resources that exist for foundations, like this study, will start to change that.

In USC’s report, foundation leaders talk about their struggle to make communications more “integral to the program planning process”—something the authors suggest is highly connected to getting all program staff communicating on message. In a recent Communications Network blog post discussing The Communications Supercharge, Marcia Sharp  writes “that when we look at the sum total of a foundation’s communications efforts, we should be looking at both the efforts of the communications department itself and the communications efforts supported through grantmaking programs.”

While it may be tempting for foundation leaders to lay all the responsibility for communications at the feet of communication professionals, both the USC report and CHCF piece make clear that this won’t lead to the desired results. Getting clear and consistent about communication is tough, painstaking work that involves everyone from program assistants to the CEO, as CEP’s case study on the Wallace Foundation makes clear. But, by looking across the foundation, and involving all the right players — as Wallace did — improvement is possible.

Improvement matters, because better communication leads to better understanding  about important philanthropic goals and the strategies to achieve them. With this understanding comes alignment, as foundations and their stakeholders work together to accomplish their shared goals.

Ignorance of the nonprofit sector — especially its scope and diversity — is rampant and has been a topic of increasing concern to me over the nine years I have been in my role at CEP.  This brief video is the best quick overview of the sector I have seen and I hope it is used to help address this issue:

For a good discussion related to this video, and the criticism of the Giving Pledge that is rooted in ignorance of the sector, check out Tactical Philanthropy.

It’s a line I have heard a number of times now, on the conference circuit, and it always generates a lot of head nods and a few approving chuckles. A speaker opens his or her comments with a lament about the foolishness of naming the sector “nonprofit.”    

In this presentation, for example, Hildy Gottlieb says, “We have come to refer to ourselves as what we are not.”  But, she declares, “We are not what we are not.” 

Gottlieb proposes a different name for the sector. “We are community benefit organizations.  Doesn’t it feel good when you hear that?” She then invites the audience to say the words “community benefit organizations” with her. (This reminded me a bit too much of Al Franken’s SNL character, Stuart Smalley.)

Aside from objecting to the fact that the word begins with “non,” Gottlieb’s issue with the term “nonprofit” appears to be, as she puts it, that “our name says we have no money.”

But that is not what it says at all. Profit is the difference between revenue and expenses that goes to the owners of a business. In a nonprofit, this difference is called a surplus and, rather than going into owners’ pockets, it goes back into the organization.

Why does this matter? It matters because this means that nonprofit organizations can pursue their mission – whatever it may be (and it may not, in fact, be ‘community benefit’ in the case, for example, of many associations) – without having to satisfy the demand for a return from business owners. 

I get Gottlieb’s point. She is a thoughtful contributor to discussions about the sector and she is committed to improving its impact. Although we share this commitment, I differ with her on this particular point because I believe that, in some important respect, we actually are usefully defined by what we are not. 

Look at how being nonprofit plays out in higher education, where nonprofit colleges often deliver educations to students at far less than it costs them – thanks to fundraising (and resulting endowments). This enables institutions such as the college I attended (which had lots of money) to allow someone like me – who had virtually no family income beyond my summer earnings that could go toward tuition – to get an education. It also tends to reduce the likelihood of the kind of unethical behavior that has been well-documented at many for-profit institutions of higher education. 

A GAO report this month laid bare these practices: 

Undercover tests at 15 for-profit colleges found that 4 colleges encouraged fraudulent  practices and that all 15 made deceptive or otherwise questionable statements to GAO’s undercover applicants. Four undercover applicants were encouraged by college personnel to falsify their financial aid forms to qualify for federal aid—for example, one admissions representative told an applicant to fraudulently remove $250,000 in savings. Other college representatives exaggerated undercover applicants’ potential salary after graduation and failed to provide clear information about the college’s program duration, costs, or graduation rate despite federal regulations requiring them to do so. … Admissions staff used other deceptive practices, such as pressuring applicants to sign a contract for enrollment before allowing them to speak to a financial advisor about program cost and financing options.

Could this kind of thing happen at a nonprofit college?  Of course it could. But it’s a good deal less likely to – because the incentives are different. 

So being nonprofit matters, and we shouldn’t deemphasize that by avoiding the term. It matters because our society, to fulfill its potential, needs both organizations that are as purely mission-driven as possible as well as those that are primarily profit-driven – and it needs the healthy tension that sometimes exists between the two types of organizations. As I have noted in another blog post, perhaps more of this kind of healthy tension would have reduced the chances that BP would act with the kind of reckless disregard it did.

Much of what we take for granted in our modern lives has its roots in research conducted and supported by nonprofit organizations – often research that no for-profit company or investor would have supported. (See Claire Gaudiani’s The Greater Good: How Philanthropy Drives the American Economy and Can Save Capitalism.)  The Internet, after all, was not developed at or by a company – it had its roots on university campuses and in the Department of Defense. Eventually, it was made available for commercial use, and many great businesses as well as some great nonprofits (such as Wikipedia) took advantage of its potential. 

I don’t mean to single Gottlieb out: she seems to be one of the more thoughtful proponents of the view that the sector needs a different name. Unlike Gottlieb, some of the others who take issue with the term “nonprofit” seem to lack a sophisticated understanding of the sector. Often, they are affiliated with MBA-granting institutions, where people sometimes find it hard to imagine a human motive other than profit – and where the nonprofit sector’s role in occasionally calling companies to task may be less than appreciated. 

The first person I heard decry the term “nonprofit sector” was a professor of mine at Harvard Business School, about a decade ago. More recently, Dan Pallotta, author of Uncharitable  and When Your Moment Comes: A Guide to Fulfilling Your Dreams by a Man Who Has Led Thousands to Greatness (no, I am not making that title up), argued on his Harvard Business Review blog, “Anyone who has thought about it for more than a nanosecond agrees that ‘nonprofit’ is about the worst possible summary we could give of ourselves and our work.” 

As the CEO of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a nonprofit, I have, in fact, given the term “nonprofit” more than a nanosecond’s thought – and I am more than fine with it. I believe our particular mission is better fulfilled as a nonprofit and that this label means something important. (It is, also, of course, crucially related to tax status.) 

The nonprofit sector is vast, including organizations of stunning diversity, so it is in some respects not surprising that the term used to describe it would be a broad one. I suppose we could call the sector by a variety of names that would be fine: “independent sector” is pretty good, and I use that sometimes. But “nonprofit sector” isn’t so bad, either, and I am suggesting here that it communicates something important. It certainly isn’t a name that deserves all the derision it gets.   

Frankly, it surprises me that the need to emphasize the importance of pursuing goals other than profit needs to be articulated today, after all we’ve been through these past few years. But, apparently, it does.

My real hope, though, is that we can spend less time debating semantics and more time focusing on making the organizations in our sector – whatever we call them – as effective as they can be. Because we need them, just as we need for-profit companies and just as we need good government. About that much, I hope we can all agree.

There is a lot of rhetoric and bluster about effective philanthropy.  But one person who, over the course of his terrific career, has really focused on practical, tangible steps to make philanthropy better is Joel Orosz.

Joel recently announced his decision to retire from his position at Grand Valley State University due to his battle with cancer.  Joel will continue to serve as an advisor at the GVSU Johnson Center and to write on philanthropy – and so will keep up his efforts to make philanthropy better. Still, I think his announcement warrants a very big “thank you” for all he has done to this point. 

Mine is only one, limited perspective on his contributions – I first met Joel less than a decade ago – but I wanted to offer it here.

Joel is the author of two important books on grantmaking: The Insider’s Guide to Grantmaking and Effective Foundation Management: 14 Challenges of Philanthropic Leadership – and How to Outfox Them.  The latter book, as I wrote at the time of its publication, should be required reading for every foundation leader, trustee, and new donor.  It is even more timely now than it was when it was published in 2007, as billionaires line up with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to take the Giving Pledge.

The book opens with these words:

Foundations fail.  Not invariably, of course, nor always egregiously, but far too often.  If the Gospel according to St. Luke is correct – if of those to whom much is given, much is expected – than foundations, which are given so much in the way of resources and the freedom to deploy them, are not delivering expected results. …. This is not entirely the fault of foundation leaders, for the simple sounding act of giving away money to good causes is fraught with unexpectedly knotty complexities.  This is hardly a novel insight; back in 1967, Warren Weaver, a longtime vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation, wrote that “giving away money wisely is extraordinarily subtle and difficult task, with moral, social and intellectual complications that keep the conscience active and the mind bothered.”

Joel goes on to say, however, that the “lion’s share of the blame for poor performance … can be laid at the leadership’s door.”  He argues that “the failures of foundations” arise from “predictable challenges and recognizable dilemmas.”  His book seeks both to lay out those challenges and dilemmas and to offer wise counsel on how to overcome them, and it succeeds beautifully.

Joel is a deep thinker and an incredibly gifted writer, and his writing is pragmatic in a way much writing about philanthropy is not.  But Joel has never been content to just write.  His passion to improve philanthropy inspired him to be the founding director of the Grantmaking School at the Johnson Center.  The School seeks to educate grantmaking professionals “on topics such as strategic grantmaking, due diligence, ethics and accountability.”   

Some – most notably the scholar Peter Frumkin – have questioned whether Joel’s efforts to foster greater professionalism in the field of philanthropy represent a step forward or something to be resisted – even feared.  I had the privilege of participating in a Hudson Institute debate with Joel and Peter a couple of years ago and walked away thoroughly convinced that it is Joel who is on the right side of this one.  I have a clear memory of my favorite moment of an exchange in which both Peter and I grew rather testy while Joel remained ever calm and affable.  Joel, in a light-hearted and humorous way that only he could pull off, said this:

I don’t want to caricature your position too much, Peter. Maybe just a little. But it reminds me very much of Pat Paulsen’s position on Vietnam when he was running. He said, some people say we should escalate and that’s clearly wrong, and some people say that we should precipitously withdraw, and that’s wrong. His position was to “keep messing around like we have been.”

Joel is convinced that we need to build on experience and learn from failures in order to chart a path toward more effective philanthropy, resulting in more positive impact on people, issues, and communities.  No more “messing around like we have been.”

In this interview on the GVSU web site, Joel takes issue convincingly with the notion that becoming more professional in philanthropic work means being rigid or uncreative, arguing that this perspective is a “smokescreen that’s thrown up by people who really want to continue to have total freedom to be arbitrary.”

In contributing so much, Joel has drawn on his experience as a program director at the W.K Kellogg Foundation, where he established and developed the Foundation’s Philanthropy and Volunteerism program area.  He has served on numerous boards and is a member of CEP’s Advisory Board.  In that capacity, in which I hope he will continue, he has contributed significantly to our work – offering counsel on draft reports, encouraging me and my colleagues here (when we really needed it), and serving as a guest blogger on the CEP blog.

Joel has been nothing short of inspiring in responding to the news that he was fighting a brutal disease.  His letter of July 15 announcing his retirement begins:

I remember reading once about a professional football player who concluded that the time had come to hang up his cleats.  When a reporter asked him why he had decided that his playing days were over, the athlete responded: “I knew it was time to leave when my brain began writing checks that my body could not cash.” I used to chuckle about that anecdote, but no longer, for now I am living it.

Joel is courageous in every sense of the word and is the kind of person who makes those around him better, as anyone who has interacted with him understands.  He has certainly made philanthropy better. 

For that, I wanted simply to say, “Thank you, Joel.”

In her blog post of last week, Linda Wood described the benefits to philanthropy when funders participate in “more truth-telling and candor.”  Her comments are right in line with the findings we report in Working with Grantees: The Keys to Success and Five Program Officers Who Exemplify Them. But it can be difficult for program officers to create the conditions in which grantees can be totally honest about what’s working and what isn’t.

In his video interview, Chris Kabel, one of the high-performing program officers highlighted in the report, talks about the art and science of building strong relationships with grantees. According to Kabel, the ‘art’ portion of the equation is the ability to create trust with one’s grantees. That trust, he says, helps grantees feel safe enough to share their challenges – rather than sweeping them under the rug. The result is a partnership focused on solutions that can lead to more effective philanthropy.

To learn more about the elements of positive funder-grantee relationships, we encourage you to view interviews with three of the program officers featured in the report.

Alyse d’Amico is Vice President – Programming, Communications, and Development at CEP.

“Talk about sharing sensitive material! Wow.” This was just one of a number of similar comments the Haas, Jr. Fund received from nonprofit and foundation colleagues reacting to the level of truth-telling and candor shown in short video clips we recently posted of executive directors talking about coaching. 

In these videos, successful, highly regarded nonprofit executive directors describe the issues that they are working on with their Haas Jr.-funded coach. We hear from a long-time executive director and public official pushing through fear to take on work that would be new and risky. From another about the difficulty of taking a different leadership stance when she moved from the #2 position to the #1 executive director role for the first time. From still another about how to assess whether she would continue to be the right leader for the organization’s next phase. 

Hardly unique challenges for nonprofit leaders. But what seems to have struck a chord is their willingness to “tell it like it is”: to acknowledge strengths and weaknesses and to describe the value and impact of reaching out for support. 

What would it take for truth telling and candor to catch on in philanthropy, so that comments like these don’t feel like such a breath of fresh air? Much has been written in recent years about the need for greater honesty, transparency and even partnership between funders and grantees. 

A year ago, the Skoll Foundation introduced the notion of “radical transparency,” based on the experience of Forge, an international organization (led by executive director, Kjerstin Erickson) that used the Skoll community as a sounding board for deep organizational issues. Most folks in philanthropy understand well the steep risks of investing in start-up nonprofits. Yet the philanthropy blogosphere – and even the Wall Street Journal – was rightly abuzz when this social entrepreneur went “open kimono,” to quote the blogs, and took a candid and humble approach to reaching out for advice and financial help. And, it worked; they raised money. 

We can also thank the Center for Effective Philanthropy who got the ball rolling in the direction of truth-telling when it started the anonymous Grantee Perception Report that gives foundations, often for the first time, the unvarnished truth about how helpful – or not – they are to their grantees’ efforts. And, it worked; foundations have begun to change their practices as a result. 

Grantmakers for Effective Organizations has also called for funders to look at how they get in the way of their own grantees’ effectiveness. GEO’s leader, Kathleen Enright, has urged us to build the trusting grantee relationships that allow for candor, and to experiment with ways to see the world through the eyes of those we intend to serve. 

At the Haas, Jr. Fund, our leadership investments have been a rich source of learning about what leaders need to be successful. With dedicated resources, our grantees are able to tap what’s tried-and-true about strategy, boards, fundraising, executive leadership, and teams; but they are also given resources to experiment with out-of-the-box ways of working and leading. We have been struck by the importance of making sure that what matters to us as funders does not crowd out dialogue about what matters most to our grantees. How can we create the conditions to simply ask, what do you need? Not your staff. Not your board. And, for the moment, not even your end beneficiaries. What do you as a leader need to do your best work? 

As the anonymous foundation that stepped forward to provide funding for Forge put it, “When a funder balances power and becomes a partner, the truth comes out. When a funder expresses their support for someone’s work and the desire to fund what is needed most, the truth comes out.” 

Linda Wood is Senior Director, Leadership and Grantmaking at the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund.

*****

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The views expressed in the CEP blog by guest bloggers are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

When it comes to soliciting feedback from grantees, the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund in San Francisco walks the talk. Thoughtfulness, candor, feedback from grantees, and constant improvement are an integral part of how I’ve seen the Fund do its work.  

Recently, we were interviewing staff from Haas, Jr. for a new CEP case study on understanding the field – the Fund is an exemplar in gathering and sharing expertise in its fields of work. One staff member we spoke with was Linda Wood, senior director, leadership and grantmaking.

Knowing how important good leadership is for its own success, the Fund has established a program area that provides access to leadership development for nonprofits. In the course of our conversation about her work in that area, Linda mentioned videos of grantees describing their leadership coaching experience that the Haas, Jr. Fund has posted on its website.  People reacted with surprise, Linda said, at how openly the folks in these videos share what that coaching has been like for them.

Because honesty and transparency are also CEP’s watchwords, we were delighted when Linda offered to share her thoughts about these videos in a blog post.  We hope you will join the conversation as she ponders, “What would it take for truth telling and candor to catch on in philanthropy?”

Kevin Bolduc is Vice President, Assessment Tools at CEP.

One of my great frustrations about the discussions and debates in philanthropy over the nine years I have been in this job is the tendency of those writing about philanthropy to posit false dichotomies.  So of all the excellent passages in the Monitor Institute report I blogged about on Friday, entitled What’s Next for Philanthropy, this one may have been my favorite.  

“We hope that the years ahead turn out to be a time when the best philanthropic leaders reject the ‘either/or’ thinking that has characterized so much of the past 10 years, too often devolving into silly debates and artificial polarities. 

Perhaps this is already occurring. The distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ philanthropy is fading, we’re glad to say, as it’s slowly been dawning on ‘old’ philanthropists what is new, while gradually occurring to the ‘new’ philanthropists what is not new. Convictions that were once trumpeted confidently are now more lightly held. That’s good, and speaks well of a growing sophistication and maturity that can shape the years ahead. 

As we all ask ourselves what will be needed, we find ourselves agreeing with our colleague Eamonn Kelly, who argues that the wisest leaders have to learn to reckon with what he calls ‘creative tensions.’ 

In philanthropy, this means, among other things: 

• Feeling the urgency for short-term results and having stamina for the long-term
• Holding onto autonomy and looking for every opportunity to coordinate and align with others
• Insisting on rigor and evidence and taking risks despite uncertainty
• Adopting strategies that maintain some top-down direction and letting go enough to unleash bottom-up energy
• Looking for solutions that combine great analysis and unbridled creativity
• Understanding that execution is important because we know what works and that innovation is important because what we already know isn’t yet enough
• Rejecting false dichotomies is the philosophy that underlies the next practices we outline here. And it’s one way around many of the barriers to change that have held philanthropy back from reaching more of its potential.” 

Phil Buchanan is President of CEP.

Two new must-read reports seek to look into philanthropy’s future.  Lucy Bernhoz with Ed Skloot and Barry Varela focus on the role of technology in their piece,  Disrupting Philanthropy.  Katherine Fulton, Gabriel Kasper, and Barbara Kibbe of the Monitor Institute take on similar issues in their What’s Next for Philanthropy: Acting Bigger and Adapting Bigger in a Networked World .

 From Disrupting Philanthropy: 

“On the cusp of the first modern foundation’s centennial, we may be looking at the dawn of a new form of organizing, giving, and governing that is better informed, more aware of complex systems, more collaborative, more personal, more nimble, and ultimately, perhaps, more effective.” 

From What’s Next for Philanthropy: 

“An intimidating range of forces – globalization, shifting sectoral roles, economic crisis, and ubiquitous connective technologies, to name just a few – are changing both what philanthropy is called upon to do and how donors and foundations will accomplish their work in the future.” 

The authors of What’s Next comment on Disrupting, writing: 

“Berhnolz and her co-authors argue that the increased availability of data provides the platform for more-informed decision-making and, in turn, creates demand for more data and increases expectations for transparency and openness.  Over time, access to the data allows people to make new connections; to create new information; and, to investigate, understand, and act on the information in new ways. 

This argument builds on the case that the Center for Effective Philanthropy has made over the past 10 years as it has endeavored to create new rigor and new data upon which to base decisions in philanthropy.  Now external forces outside philanthropy are turbo-charging existing data streams, creating a powerful force that will mitigate the insularity and inward focus that characterizes so much of philanthropy today.” 

My take: two thought-provoking reports underscoring how much is changing in the world, and in philanthropy, and how aware we need to be of those changes and what they mean for our efforts to maximize the positive impact of philanthropy.  I have quibbles, of course, but I recommend both reports.  

Also looking to a different future is Mario Morino in his latest “Chairman’s Corner: ‘Social Outcomes’ Lifting Sights, Changing Norms.”  Mario’s essay, also a must-read (and a much shorter read), calls on funders to “get the right people in the room to define an initiative focused on bringing the innovative outcomes-focused management practices on the periphery of our sector into the core.”  Mario makes an impassioned plea for building on the too-few historical exemplars to make a “missionary sell.” 

“Over the past century, the nonprofit world has produced some very good examples of managing to outcomes—from the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission´s role in the eradication of hookworm in the American South to ClimateWorks´s systematic efforts today to catalyze measurable reductions in carbon emissions. Unfortunately, such examples are outliers. I believe that outcomes-based management and performance-management systems for nonprofits are still at the ‘missionary’ stage.”  

Not sure what to do at your next foundation board meeting?  Ask your board to read each of these three pieces and spend two hours asking, what does this mean for us, as we seek to maximize our impact? What should we be reconsidering about our strategies to achieve our goals in light of the points these authors make?  

It will be time very well spent. 

Phil Buchanan is President of CEP.

This is widely seen to be a rare moment of potential dramatic change in the American system of K-12 education.  Yet, in all the debate about what are the best strategies for improving educational outcomes for our young people, we hear precious little about the perspectives of young people themselves.  

That’s what CEP’s YouthTruth initiative, which I discussed in my last post, is all about.  CEP launched YouthTruth two years ago and is now seeking multi-year funding support to expand the project over the next 3 years. 

Some may ask, What is CEP, which focuses on helping foundations improve their effectiveness, doing surveying intended beneficiaries? 

My response is, How could we not at least try?  If we see the views of grantees, policymakers, declined applicants, and board members as crucial to better philanthropic decision making, how could we turn our back on those whose views should matter most – the people whose lives a funder seeks to improve?  

We see YouthTruth and the Beneficiary Perception Report as a “proof of concept” opportunity— a chance to demonstrate that funders can make better decisions when they hear from intended beneficiaries in a rigorous, comparative way.  We also see it as a chance to test, through analysis, the link between perceptions and outcomes.  Do changes in certain student perceptions connect to changes in key student outcomes?  Establishing that connection would allow for the development of the kind of actionable and timely indicators that can prevent mistakes and create opportunities for driving more positive impact. 

There is much debate about the right way to assess school performance, and I am not expert enough to weigh in on that one.  But I have to believe that, as we debate the future of education in this country, we need to hear from students about their experiences.  Particularly now, as we experiment with alternate approaches to educating our youth, we should be doing everything possible to ensure our interventions are having their intended impact.  Setting up good systems to hear from students should be an important part of the approach to assessment: student perceptions have a place alongside other important metrics, such as test scores and graduation rates. 

Even my nine-year old daughter and her friends, who just completed the third grade, have a valuable perspective on their education.  Surely, then, surveying high school students makes sense.  Yet, despite all the surveys out there, few are delivered on a comparative, large-scale basis, and few are turned around in a timely and understandable enough way to inform decision making.   

YouthTruth isn’t the only effort to hear from intended beneficiaries of philanthropy.  There are a number of other, promising, efforts to hear from intended beneficiaries.  But, collectively, we have a long way to go.  So why aren’t we doing better? 

I think funders know they should listen to their intended beneficiaries, just as companies know they should listen to their customers – yet all too often act in ways that demonstrate that they did not.  See this recent story on Dell Computer for a stunning example of how a company that has been held up in countless business school case studies dissed its customers by apparently knowingly delivering a faulty product. Or think even of vaunted Apple’s initial responses to complaints about the IPhone 4.  So often the initial reaction of a powerful entity, when facing tough feedback, is to deny the legitimacy of the perspective of those on the ground – the end user, the intended beneficiary.  

Look, most of us know, intellectually, that we should listen to the perspectives of the intended beneficiaries of our work.  But knowing something and really doing it are two different things.  Because it takes real discipline and courage – not to mention hard work – to engage this kind of feedback in meaningful ways. 

I invite every funder that cares about improving education in the United States to contact us to talk about YouthTruth and our multi-year plan for the project.  I hope you will consider joining the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Stuart Foundation in investing in an effort to hear from – and learn from – those you seek to help. 

Phil Buchanan is President of CEP.