Posts Tagged ‘foundation governance’

Data Point: Board Materials

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

As we head into December, many foundations are preparing for their end of year board meetings, and hoping that trustees will read and review the materials being prepared. As foundation staff assemble board books, research we conducted several years ago suggests they are likely to send their boards too much material and that much of it will go unread.

Staff do well to focus instead on the materials directly connected to topics of greatest importance to boards – which will support the important discussions that need to happen – culling out the rest.

Our research, presented in a report titled Beyond Compliance: The Trustee Viewpoint on Effective Foundation Governance, is based on survey results from 546 trustees of 53 large private and community foundations in the US, and in-depth interviews with 25 trustees. Among other things, board members were asked to indicate on a scale of 1 (“too little material”) to 7 (“too much material”) the quantity of board materials they receive. Responses to this question were categorized into three groups: “ too little material” (ratings from 1 to 3); “right amount of material” (a rating of 4) ; and “too much material” (ratings from 5 to 7).

Only 1 percent of trustees in our sample indicated that they received too little material, compared to 52 percent who said they received too much. One trustee reported, “We are sent enormous quantities of information. Seven - seven pounds a month. I weighed it once.”

It is not surprising, then, that less than half (48 percent) of trustees reported reading all materials.

Our findings suggest that if materials were more focused on key topics – and perhaps less voluminous – trustees would feel better served.

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For more about the trustee perspective on what it takes to have an effective board, see the report Beyond Compliance: The Trustee Viewpoint on Effective Foundation Governance co-authored by Phil Buchanan, Ellie Buteau, Ph.D., Sarah Di Troia, and Romero Hayman.

Ellie Buteau is Vice President – Research at the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

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Data Point: Why Aren’t Foundation Boards More Involved in Assessing Performance?

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

One of the key findings from our recent performance assessment study, titled The State of Foundation Performance Assessment: A Survey of Foundation CEOs, is that 70 percent of CEOs want their board members to be more involved in assessment. This finding is consistent with our previous research – a desire for more board involvement is one area where we have seen little change in our surveys over the years. To try to understand why this gap remains, we asked CEOs what stands in the way of greater board involvement in assessing the foundation’s performance.

 

 

One hundred seventy-three CEOs of U.S. foundations with annual grantmaking of at least $5 million responded to our survey. The 70 percent who said they wanted greater board involvement in assessment were asked to consider whether any of the four hurdles listed above hamper their board’s involvement; CEOs could select any or all of these options, as well as present other reasons on their own. They could also answer that “Nothing hampers board’s involvement” in assessment efforts.

Almost 30 percent said an impediment to board involvement is a belief among CEOs that their boards do not have a deep enough understanding of the issue areas the foundation funds. More than 20 percent saw a misalignment between the board and staff about what is possible to understand about the foundation’s impact. Just under 20 percent said the board does not support allocating the necessary resources for useful assessment. Finally, 13 percent believed that the board isn’t more involved because it doesn’t understand the foundation’s goals or strategies.

Yet a third of CEOs who would like their board to be more involved in assessment reported that nothing in particular hampers their board from greater involvement in assessment.

The most common barriers CEOs saw to board involvement in assessment seem to be easily addressable. If boards and CEOs work to make overcoming these hurdles a priority, perhaps we will begin to see more CEO satisfaction with the involvement of their boards in assessment.

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To read about current foundation CEOs’ attitudes toward assessment and what foundations are doing to understand their performance, see the report, The State of Foundation Performance Assessment: A Survey of Foundation CEOs written by Ellie Buteau, Ph.D. and Phil Buchanan and published by the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

Ellie Buteau is Vice President – Research at the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

 

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Report Watch: The Future of Philanthropy (and Your Next Board Meeting)

Friday, July 16th, 2010

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.

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The Data a Foundation Board Needs

Monday, April 26th, 2010

 The following was originally posted by the Council of Foundations on its blog, Re: Philanthropy.

What data does a foundation board member need to gauge foundation effectiveness?  That was the question we grappled with at a trustee-CEO summit session Saturday at the Council on Foundations annual conference in Denver.  Our session received invaluable help from the CEO and a trustee of a foundation that has pushed further than most: the Stuart Foundation in California.

Christy Pichel and Davis Campbell described how the Foundation has moved beyond the usual, easily available metrics to get a handle on effectiveness.  For example, the Foundation surveys its grantees regularly and looks at how it performs relative to other funders (disclosure: Stuart uses the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s (CEP) Grantee Perception Report to do this).  The Foundation learned that grantees valued deeply its program officers’ expertise – and wanted more of their time and help. The result was board approval of the hiring of additional staff. 

In the area of child welfare, Stuart is seeking better life outcomes for foster youth in California, but recognized that the state lacked an adequate data system.  So the Foundation made an investment that has led to the creation of a database that allows the Foundation – as well as grantees and government officials – to track the efficacy of efforts to help foster youth establish lifelong connections with caring adults. Stuart can now monitor whether its Child Welfare strategy is working. (For more on this, see CEP’s case study on Stuart.) 

Performance assessment for foundations is challenging (much more so than for businesses or operating nonprofits).  And, as Christy and Davis noted, you can’t understand your effectiveness if you don’t have an articulated strategy.  It’s tough work, as another California Foundation CEO, Jim Canales of the James Irvine Foundation, has been discussing on the CEP Blog in recent days. 

But, I wonder: Is there a more central board responsibility than assessing the foundation’s effectiveness? I am not sure there is.  Let’s hope more and more foundation boards and CEOs follow the lead of funders like Irvine, Stuart, Wallace, RWJF, and others and really push for the data will let them answer that deceptively simple question: “How are we doing?” 

Disclosure: CEP provides assessment tools and/or receives grant support from the foundations mentioned in this post.

Phil Buchanan is the President of the Center for Effective Philanthropy

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Our Board’s Perspective on Performance Reporting

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

In an earlier post on this blog, I pointed out that the audience for the Annual Performance Report is Irvine’s board of directors. As we delivered the fourth of these at our annual board retreat last month, we devoted some time to learning more about the board’s perspectives on the report.

There were two key themes that emerged, related to the value of context, and the appropriate frequency of the report. Regarding context, board members expressed in numerous ways how much they value the contextual information that the report provides.  Two sections stood out in this regard: first, a table that describes how Irvine’s funding compares to other funders in our program areas, and second, a section on program context indicators, where we provide broader indicators related to our programs, such as per capita public spending for the arts across the U.S. or data on high school drop-out rates in California. This latter section is not meant to suggest that our work will necessarily affect those numbers, but rather to expose the board to broader data sets that help contextualize our program work. 

The positive reaction to these sections of the report underscores for me how important it is to help our boards gain a deeper understanding of the environment for the Foundation’s activities. We can explain our goals and strategies and describe grants aligned with them, but there will always be a missing piece if the board is not able to contextualize our foundation’s work. The board’s feedback encourages us not only to consider other ways to use the report to provide such context, but also to explore how we can shape other board materials and meetings in ways that expose them to the broader environment for our work.  

The second main theme from our board discussion related to timing. The board questioned whether it is possible to report on foundation performance in such a comprehensive way within a 12-month period. My earlier post described the tension between reporting on activities and describing impact and outcomes, and the timing question became a related point. The board encouraged us to consider a more streamlined Annual Performance Report that might be complemented by a comprehensive report that examines a multiyear period. The discussion led us to recognize a potential mismatch in timing between annual reports and longer-term program goals that operate on a three- to five-year timeframe. 

The discussion with the board also encouraged us to revisit the question of audience. We developed this performance assessment framework with the board as the primary audience, but now that we are committed to posting these reports on our website, we also need to give further thought to what other audiences might want to learn. With more foundations providing online grants databases and with the broad adoption by foundations of websites as the primary communications tool, traditional annual reports may be less relevant. With all of this in mind, we are considering how we could integrate more elements of the Annual Performance Report to the board into our traditional annual report to the public. 

Most of these ideas are still in development, and we have not yet settled on answers. In fact, we are still digesting the board retreat discussion and its implications. I welcome your thoughts on these subjects. 

In my final post I will make the case that, various challenges and difficulties notwithstanding, performance assessment is a vital part of being an effective foundation.

Jim Canales is President of the James Irvine Foundation 

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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.

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