Developing Strategy

Developing strategy is a tough assignment for foundation leaders, and there are few forces compelling them to tackle it. Funders do not face the competitive pressures that influence corporations, and private foundations do not have the fundraising imperatives that drive nonprofit charities. Further complicating strategy formulation is the fact that many funders have a grantmaking structure that involves several distinct programs, each with its own goals.

Yet most foundation leaders believe that strategy increases a foundation’s ability to create impact.

CEP believes there are three core elements of foundation effectiveness: Clear goals, coherent well-implemented strategies, and relevant performance indicators.

You can’t develop a strategy without clear goals and you can’t measure progress against those goals or know whether your strategy is the right one without relevant performance indicators.

Are you concerned that if your foundation becomes more strategic it  will appear arrogant and less receptive to outside perspectives and feedback from stakeholders?

Our findings indicate that just the opposite is true. More so than other categories of decision makers in our study, strategic respondents frequently seek advice from stakeholders — grantees, experts, and others. Read a case study to learn how the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation does this well.

Does your foundation have trouble saying ‘no?’

Learn how other foundations manage the challenges of staying focused. Leaders from Robert Wood Johnson and Flinn Foundation describe how they “closed the door gently” on grantees who no longer meshed with their strategies Read the case study.


 
In our 2009 report, Essentials of Foundation Strategy, we follow up on the results reported in Beyond the Rhetoric with a large-scale quantitative study of decision making. The report tests our definition of strategy on a larger population of foundation leaders and identifies four key characteristics that differentiate those who are more strategic from those who are less strategic.