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Working with Grantees: The Keys to Success and Five Program Officers Who Exemplify Them

May 2010

Successful foundation-grantee relationships hinge on the prowess of individual program officers, whose abilities may vary widely within a single foundation. This research explores what grantees value in their relationships with program officers and identifies four keys to success. Five high-performing program officers share their stories.
 

Essentials of Foundation Strategy

December 2009
What separates more strategic foundation leaders from less strategic ones? This research explores the state of strategy at foundations today and identifies behaviors and practices common to more strategic leaders. Case studies and interviews included in the report highlight strategic best practices. 
 

Lessons from the Field: Striving for Transformative Change at the Stuart Foundation

December 2009

The Stuart Foundation’s Child Welfare Program provides a compelling example of what can be accomplished by a foundation that has clear goals, coherent, well-implemented strategies, and relevant performance indicators. This case study describes how Stuart implements its strategy to achieve its goal to improve life outcomes for foster youth.
 

Aligning for Impact: A Report on a Gathering of Foundation CEOs, Trustees, and Senior Executives

August 2009

More than 250 foundation leaders gathered at CEP’s 2009 conference in Los Angeles to discuss their most pressing challenges. This report distills lessons learned from conference sessions that focused on issues such as: the key elements of implementing a strategy, assessing individual and foundation performance, best ways to support grantees, what information funders should share and how to share it, and how to put all these elements together to achieve greater impact. Conference presenters included Jim Berk, chief executive officer, Participant Media; Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and How the Mighty Fall; Gara LaMarche, president and CEO, The Atlantic Philanthropies; Carol Larson, president and CEO, David and Lucile Packard Foundation; and Robert K. Ross, M.D., president and CEO, California Endowment.
 

Lessons from the Field: Becoming Strategic: The Evolution of the Flinn Foundation

March 2009
In 2002, Arizona’s Flinn Foundation began implementing a strategy that focused on boosting its state’s bioscience economy and relied heavily on building collaborative partnerships. Since that time, Arizona has had dramatic increases in jobs, research funding, businesses, and wages within the bioscience sector. This case study illustrates the benefits of taking a strategic approach to maximize a foundation’s impact. It describes how Flinn’s leaders narrowed the Foundation’s focus and assessed its performance.
 

More Than Money: Making a Difference with Assistance Beyond the Grant

December 2008
Most of foundations’ efforts to contribute ‘beyond the money’ has little beneficial impact on  grantees. More than Money: Making a Difference with Assistance Beyond the Grant reveals that only when foundation staff provide assistance beyond the grant in one of two ways do grantees report a substantially more positive experience with their funders. Three exemplary foundations are profiled: Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, Winter Park Health Foundation, and the Wallace Foundation.
 

Lessons from the Field: Aiming for Excellence at the Wallace Foundation

June 2008
Aiming for Excellence at the Wallace Foundation describes how leaders at Wallace have responded to results of the Grantee Perception Report ® (GPR), which the Foundation commissioned in 2004, 2006, and 2007. Each successive GPR enabled foundation leaders to track and hone their performance improvement efforts more sharply as they embark on a series of actions. The case illustrates the need for continuous feedback loops to inform decision making, and includes an addendum revealing Wallace's 2008 GPR results.
 

Lessons from the Field: Improving the Grantee Experience at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation

January 2008
Improving the Grantee Experience at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation describes how leaders at Packard identified and translated the elements of quality interactions and clear communications with grantees into specific work standards for their staff. The case study explores how they developed and implemented these criteria, called Grantee Experience Standards, as a way to strengthen the Foundation’s relationships with its grantees. It also documents program staff’s reactions to the standards and lessons learned from the process.
 

Beyond the Rhetoric: Foundation Strategy

October 2007
How do foundations maximize their impact? What is the role of strategy? Is your foundation strategic? Are you? This groundbreaking research examines the current state of decision making at large, private, U.S. foundations. Through in-depth interviews with CEOs and program officers, Beyond the Rhetoric: Foundation Strategy examines foundation leaders' view and use of strategy in making decisions. Analysis of their responses reveals four categories of decision makers ranging from nonstrategic to strategic. Beyond the Rhetoric sets the stage for future CEP research on the role of strategy in creating foundation impact, and highlights practical implications for CEOs, trustees, and program staff.
 

Assessment to Action: A Report on a Gathering of Foundation CEOs, Trustees, and Senior Executives

August 2007
In March 2007, more than 225 CEOs, trustees, and senior executives gathered in Chicago to discuss a wide range of important issues: the role of strategy and performance assessment, board functioning and the dynamics of race in the boardroom, and the challenge of inspiring — and leading — change. Among the report’s 11 articles are highlights and lessons learned from presentations by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation President and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey; former MacArthur Foundation President Jonathan Fanton; Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor at Harvard Business School; Spelman College President Beverly Tatum; and former Atlantic Philanthropies President and CEO John R. Healy.
 

Luck of the Draw

March 2007
What makes a foundation seem more or less responsive, communicative, or expert? A foundation’s leadership, assets, age, and geographic location — combined with grantees’ personalities, past experiences, and expectations — are partly responsible for how it is perceived. But our research, based on thousands of surveys completed by grantees, shows that the personalities, interpersonal styles, and expertise of program officers also share a portion of the credit — or blame — for a foundation’s reputation among its grantees.
 

CEP at 5: Comparative Data Enabling Higher-Performing Foundations

February 2007
CEP at 5 reflects on CEP’s first five years through stories and pictures from CEP's Five-Year Anniversary Event held in New York in September 2006. The report features a speech by former Rockefeller Foundation Vice President Nadya Shmavonian, who details the insights her foundation gained using comparative data to assess its performance. The report also includes a talk by CEP President Phil Buchanan on “The Foundation Effectiveness Imperative,” comments from foundation leaders, and descriptions of CEP's research agenda and assessment tools.
 

In Search of Impact: Practices and Perceptions in Foundations' Provision of Program and Operating Grants to Nonprofits

December 2006
In Search of Impact informs the debate on operating support with new data about current foundation practices, attitudes underlying those practices, and the impact on grantees of foundation choices. The report explores what motivates foundation CEOs in their decision-making, examining the tension between CEOs' sense of what is best for their foundations and what they believe will make the most positive impact on grantee organizations. In Search of Impact also probes the grantee perspective through an analysis of thousands of survey responses and a set of interviews with nonprofit leaders, revealing the importance of other grant attributes that have been overshadowed in the debate about type of support.
 

Foundation Communications: The Grantee Perspective

February 2006

Foundation Communications: The Grantee Perspective reveals the key components of effective foundation communications with grantees. Based on analyses of thousands of grantee surveys, this issue paper argues for a more holistic approach to foundation communications than is often practiced today. This report highlights best practices and provides practical management implications for foundation leaders.
 

Beyond Compliance: The Trustee Viewpoint on Effective Foundation Governance

November 2005
Beyond Compliance is based on the largest-scale research on foundation boards ever conducted and builds off CEP's earlier governance report, Foundation Governance. This report reveals the foundation trustee perspective on effective governance, which despite the variety in size and function of grantmaking boards, has five essential factors. The report offers data and findings to help trustees and CEOs utilize foundation governance optimally, with information ranging from racial composition of boards to the amount of information board members read.
 

Higher Impact: Improving Foundation Performance: Insights from a Gathering of Foundation CEOs, Trustees, and Senior Executives

August 2005
In March 2005, more than 200 foundation leaders gathered to consider the challenges of achieving higher impact through their work. Speakers whose remarks are described in the CEP report include Independent Sector’s Diana Aviv; the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Carol Larson; California HealthCare Foundation’s Mark Smith; The Greater Cincinnati Foundation’s Kathy Merchant; The Bridgespan Group’s Jeff Bradach; Global Business Network’s Katherine Fulton; and Boston Globe’s investigative reporter Michael Rezendes. This report includes viewpoints of these practitioners and distills lessons learned.
 

Turning the Table on Assessment: The Grantee Perception Report® (GPR)

June 2005
This book chapter describes the origins of the Grantee Perception Report®(GPR), illustrates lessons learned, and provides examples of changes made by foundations that have used this tool. It also reports on some of the broadly applicable insights gained from CEP's large-scale surveys of grantees. (This material is excerpted from the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) book, A Funder's Guide to Organizational Assessment.)
 

Listening to Grantees: What Nonprofits Value in Their Foundation Funders

April 2004
What do nonprofits really think of foundations? Listening to Grantees draws on CEP's survey of  3,200 grantees of 30 of the largest foundations in the United States. The report reveals what really matters to nonprofits — and what doesn't — in their relationships with their foundation funders. It also details implications for foundation leadership and program staff.
 

Assessing Performance at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: A Case Study

March 2004
With a mission to improve the health and health care of all Americans, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is working in a complex environment on complicated issues. This case study examines how RWJF set out to design a foundation performance assessment system that combines programmatic impact and operational effectiveness into a simple scorecard that its board and staff believe is critical to RWJF's understanding and improvement of overall organizational performance.
 

Foundation Governance: The CEO Viewpoint

February 2004
In the wake of increased scrutiny from lawmakers and the public, foundation boards have received significant press attention, much of it negative. Yet little research exists on the distinctive challenges of foundation governance. Foundation Governance: The CEO Viewpoint highlights the opinions of CEOs of the largest foundations in the United States as a first step in a major study on effective foundation governance. The report identifies what foundation boards are doing in response to recent scrutiny and explores key attributes of foundation boards seen to be most effective by CEOs.
 

Foundation Effectiveness: A Report on a Meeting of Foundation CEOs, Senior Executives, and Trustees

January 2004
In October 2003, 100 foundation leaders — CEOs, trustees, and senior management — gathered to discuss four themes of foundation effectiveness: strategy selection, funder-grantee relationships, performance assessment, and governance. Participants heard talks by Michael Bailin, former president of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Edward Skloot, former executive director of the Surdna Foundation, and others; participated in interactive panels; and candidly shared their experiences in making their foundations more effective. This report includes viewpoints of these practitioners and distills lessons learned.
 

Lessons Learned From a Gathering of Foundation Leaders

January 2003
CEP's report on lessons learned from its November 2002 seminar features reports on talks by foundation leaders such as Joel Fleishman of Duke University; Paul Grogan, CEO of The Boston Foundation; Ricardo Millett, former CEO of Woods Fund of Chicago; Anne-Marie Soulliere, President of the Fidelity Foundation; Lew Sandy, former executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; and others. Topics covered include the role of the foundation board in ensuring accountability and descriptions of varied approaches to understanding foundation performance.
 

Indicators of Effectiveness: Understanding and Improving Foundation Performance

August 2002
Indicators of Effectiveness describes current practices in foundation performance assessment and provides a framework for overall performance assessment, based on CEP's research during the Foundation Performance Metrics Pilot Study. The Pilot Study included a survey of CEOs of the country's largest foundations, a survey of grantees of 23 foundations, in-depth interviews with foundation CEOs and trustees, and analysis of publicly available data.
 

Toward a Common Language: Listening to Foundation CEOs and Other Experts Talk About Performance Measurement in Philanthropy

February 2002
While evaluations of specific grants, or even clusters of grants, are widely used in assessing grantee performance, Toward a Common Language examines what information might be useful in assessing overall foundation performance. The report is based on 74 discussions, including 18 interviews with CEOs of major foundations, and describes the growing interest in performance metrics among foundation leaders and a common language for thinking about overall performance.
 
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