 Rosabeth
Moss Kanter, leadership expert and Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor
at Harvard Business School, Bill Shore, founder and executive director
of Share Our Strength, Beverly Tatum, president of Spelman College,
John R. Healy, CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies, and Greg Avis,
board chair of Silicon Valley Community Foundation, are among featured
speakers at the March 8-9 conference in Chicago.
Over 200 senior foundation leaders from across
the United States and Canada will gather to focus on the challenges
of implementing changes within their organizations to help increase
their impact on social issues.
Assessment
to Action: Creating Change will focus on topics that include:
the challenges foundation leaders face when creating change; the
dynamics of race in the foundation boardroom; and defining, implementing,
and assessing programmatic strategies. The conference will also
highlight new research on foundation strategy, governance, and grantmaking
choices from the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP).
"Our goal is to spark a robust discussion
on how foundation leaders can successfully implement change within
their organization that leads to greater social impact. We also
hope to uncover additional insights on decision making inside foundations
and the role of strategy as they strive to meet their goals,"
said Phil Buchanan, executive director, Center for Effective Philanthropy.
Plenary sessions include:
- A dinner talk by Bill Shore, founder and executive director
of Share Our Strength, the nation's leading organization
working to end childhood hunger in the United States. Shore is
author of The Light of Conscience: How a Simple Act Can Change
Your Life and The Cathedral Within: Transforming Your
Life by Giving Something Back.
- "Findings from the Field: Foundation Strategy"–
A presentation on CEP's new study that examines how foundations
make decisions, how they define, implement, and assess strategies,
and the extent to which strategies guide their choices.
- "Foundation Strategy: The Challenge of Maintaining Focus"–
Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO, The Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation joins John W. Murphy, president and CEO of The Flinn
Foundation to describe the different approaches these two health-focused
foundations use in devising, defining, implementing, and assessing
programmatic strategies.
- "Radical Change: Two Foundations' Stories"–
John R. Healy, CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies and Greg Avis,
board chair of Silicon Valley Community Foundation describe the
major transformation process undertaken at their foundations.
The session will uncover common themes and challenges while drawing
broader insights from these two diverse examples.
The conference is co-sponsored by the Donors Forum of Chicago.
Conference funders include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation, The McCormick Tribune Foundation, The Ball Foundation,
The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, The Stupski Foundation, Spencer
Foundation, and Chicago Foundation for Women.
To register, click
here. CEP has secured a special rate at the Renaissance Chicago
Hotel that is available through February 13. To reserve lodging,
click
here or call 800-228-9290 and mention CEP's Assessment
to Action conference.
 CEP's
assessment tools helped the Rockefeller Foundation understand that
"our internal view of ourselves and our effectiveness was not
necessarily supported by external data," Rockefeller Vice President
Nadya Shmavonian told a group of foundation leaders in remarks made
public for the first time in a new CEP publication.
"Having these data sets arrayed together was
very powerful and, at times, difficult for staff," Shmavonian
said. "This was admittedly a wake-up call for the staff as
a whole."
In her remarks, Shmavonian describes in detail
the insights her organization gained when it decided to "look
outside the walls of the Rockefeller Foundation more systematically
and rigorously and test assumptions upon which much of our work
and internal practices have been based." The Foundation's
data collection efforts included commissioning a Grantee Perception
Report (GPR) and Applicant Perception Report (APR) from CEP, undertaking
a staff survey, and retaining the consulting firm Bridgespan to
benchmark operations.
The text of Shmavonian's remarks are published
in CEP
at 5: Comparative Data Enabling Higher-Performing Foundations.
The report, released today, also includes other highlights of CEP's
Five-Year Anniversary Event, held in New York in September 2006.
The report can be downloaded now for free and hard copies can be
ordered for $8 from CEP's
Web site.
Program officers within the same foundation often
relate to grantees in dramatically different ways, and an increasing
number of foundation leaders are taking steps to understand and
address this variation in program officer performance. These are
among the findings of a new CEP analysis of thousands of surveys
of grantees explored in an article in the Spring issue of the Stanford
Social Innovation Review, to be published in March.
The article, co-authored by CEP's Kevin Bolduc,
Phil Buchanan, and Ellie Buteau, PhD, draws on the results of CEP's
experience presenting Grantee Perception Report (GPR) results to
more than 100 foundations, and on statistical analyses that explore
what influences grantees' experiences and that categorize
program officers based on their perceived performance.
These findings, and their implications, will be
addressed at a session at CEP's March 8-9 conference, Assessment
to Action: Creating Change. Jan Jaffe, project leader at
GrantCraft, will join Kevin Bolduc on a panel to be moderated by
Stephanie McAuliffe, director of human resources and organizational
effectiveness and directed grantmaking at The David and Lucile Packard
Foundation.
In response to requests from foundations, CEP will
be conducting an additional round of grantee surveys in June as
well as its regular rounds in February and September. Those who
sign up by April 2 can participate in this new June survey round
and receive Grantee
Perception Report (GPR) results this fall.
The GPR provides a comprehensive view of foundation
performance from the perspective of grant recipients and presents
foundation leaders with comparative data on grantee perceptions
of foundation performance on a variety of dimensions. It is based
on a comprehensive survey of grantees covering issues such as interactions
during the grant, the application and reporting processes, and perceived
foundation impact. The GPR is presented in person by experienced
CEP staff who facilitate conversations on how foundations can improve
their work.
The GPR has been commissioned by over 100 foundations.
For more information about participating, please
contact Judy Huang,
associate director, at (617) 492-0800 ext. 204 or John
Davidson, manager, at (617) 492-0800 ext. 207.
 Which
better enables grantees to make impact – unrestricted operating
support or support for specific projects? Foundation and nonprofit
executives have long debated this question. CEP's report, In
Search of Impact: Practices and Perceptions in Foundations' Provision
of Program and Operating Grants to Nonprofits, released
in December 2006 adds much needed data to this ongoing discussion.
The study revealed that to make the most impact
on their grantee organizations, foundations should make larger,
longer term operating grants than are generally in play today. Furthermore,
these grants must be accompanied by high-quality interactions; clear
communications of goals and strategy; and demonstrated expertise
and external orientation – dimensions that CEP has identified
as highly valued by grantees.
With mentions in the Wall Street Journal,
Chicago Tribune, and The Chronicle of Philanthropy,
In Search of Impact has sparked further discussion about
which type of support is best. In fact, practitioners and researchers
are sharing their reactions to the report on CEP's web site. "This
report provides important information on the relationship between
types of support – program versus operating – and the
partnership of grantee and grantor. It suggests that this issue
might be more complex than we have been positioning it…,"
notes Robert E. Eckardt, senior vice president for programs and
evaluation, The Cleveland Foundation.
Not only has the report fostered dialogue, it has
inspired new thinking. Kristen Kidder, executive director of The
Thomas-Dale District 7 Planning Council, a grant-receiving organization,
suggests foundations consider a fresh model of grantmaking. "Perhaps
there is a need for a new paradigm that allows for 'emerging relationship'
grants, 'deepening relationship' grants, and 'established relationship'
grants to be made."
To read Eckardt and Kidder’s reactions in
full along with those of others, or to join the dialogue, click
here.
In a February 5 op-ed in The Chronicle of Philanthropy,
CEP Executive Director Phil Buchanan and Grantmakers for Effective
Organizations' Executive Director Kathleen Enright debunk
myths about foundation effectiveness and offer ways that foundations
can improve their performance.
"The most common myth
is that foundation effectiveness can be boiled down to a single
number," write Buchanan and Enright. "Many talk of 'social
return on investment' – basically measuring the amount spent
relative to what results were achieved – as the ultimate foundation
performance measure. Conceptually, this is the right measure. There's
just one problem: it is nearly impossible to calculate."
To read the op-ed, click
here.
Effective Matters
is a quarterly newsletter published by the Center
for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), a nonprofit organization focused
on the development of comparative data to enable higher-performing
foundations. CEP's mission is to provide management and governance
tools to define, assess, and improve overall foundation performance.
If you have questions about this newsletter or
would like general information about CEP and its activities, please
contact Alyse
d'Amico at 617-492-0800 ext. 206.
Permission to use, copy, and/or distribute this
document in whole or in part for noncommercial purposes without
fee is hereby granted, provided that this notice and appropriate
credit to the Center for Effective Philanthropy is included in all
copies. |
