Business Commons^™

Widening The Aperture: A Case Study Of Widening The Definition Of Evidence For Strategy, Jennifer James, Sandra Hilliard

The Foundation Review

The need to “widen the aperture” to consider different types and sources of evidence is paramount to sharpening grantmaking strategies that are in service of those we seek to serve. This article describes an underlying process of identifying and applying equity considerations in the evidence considered for strategy development in the context of a large, national foundation.

The aim was to develop a “common evidence base” — the core of which was a database library — and what was understood from the evidence was synthesized to bring together what was currently known, the edges of the foundation’s understanding, and emerging …

A Year Of Learning: Educating The Philanthropic Community About Racialized And Stigmatized Nonprofits, Shariq Siddiqui, Rafeel Wasif, Abdul Samad

The Foundation Review

Islamophobia and a lack of legitimacy heavily impact Muslim-led nonprofits and limit their relationships with philanthropy in the United States, resulting in an anemic, continually underfunded sector. This article explores that disconnect within a discussion of the Year of Learning, a unique series of virtual workshops that brought together foundations and nonprofits serving the Muslim American community.

Among the barriers to more effective relationships that emerged from the workshops were the presence of Islamophobia within society at large and philanthropy in particular, a hesitance among U.S. foundations to fund faith-based work, and a lack of capacity among Muslim-led nonprofits. Also …

Place-Based Philanthropy With An Adaptive Lens: Actively Balancing Community-Driven And Foundation-Driven Orientations, Douglas Easterling, Tanya Beer, Kristen Burwell Naney, Mina Silberberg, Laura Gerald, Adam Linker

The Foundation Review

With place-based philanthropy, a foundation provides extensive, long-term support for a comprehensive mix of programs within specific communities, with the expectation that this will produce benefits at a communitywide level. One of the key questions in designing a place-based initiative is how much the foundation will control local decision-making.

In some initiatives, the foundation dictates the issues that community groups must address and/or the nature of the planning process that will be used to develop solutions. This sometimes produces ineffective or irrelevant solutions. In contrast, other initiatives allow local groups considerable discretion in naming the issues and choosing the solutions, …

A Team's Journey Toward More Equitable Philanthropic Research And Evaluation Practices, Kimberly A. Spring, Maria Fernanda Mata, Jeffrey Poirier, Allison Holmes, Amir François

The Foundation Review

This article describes the journey of the Research and Evaluation team at the Annie E. Casey Foundation to develop an approach that would allow us to rethink and deepen how we, as funders of research and evaluation, center equity in our practice.

In particular, we explain how, through this process, we began to focus on what it means to orient research and evaluation toward participant owners and came to examine the assumptions, expectations, habits, and values that we held. These experiences have presented us with opportunities to learn and be open to new ways of engaging in our work.

We …

Learning, Unlearning, And Sprinkling In: Our Journey With Equitable Evaluation, Jane Mosley, Leigh W. Quarles, Jason L. Williams

The Foundation Review

The Health Forward Foundation recently completed a two-year journey with the Equitable Evaluation Initiative as a practicing partner. This partnership provided us with the support to push for change that better aligned with our new focus, prioritizing racial equity and economic advancement.

The partnership also allowed us to explore a number of questions fundamental to our work in learning and evaluation: what we really know about the impact philanthropy is making in our communities; how we can explain that to board members, and how we honor the personal experiences of the people we serve.

In this article we discuss our …

A Journey Into Equitable Practice: Doing More, Doing Differently, And Doing Better, Bree Bode, Sarah Panken, Annie Murphy, Marci Scott

The Foundation Review

The mission of the Michigan Fitness Foundation is to encourage and facilitate active lifestyles and healthy food choices through education, environmental awareness, community participation, and policy leadership. The article shares how a three-year engagement with the Equitable Evaluation Initiative led the foundation to see its grantmaking, programming, and evaluation practices anew through an equity lens.

Through naming and noticing the ways in which traditional grantmaking has contributed to the inequities that philanthropy seeks to address, the foundation was able to change its own way of working — specifically by going beyond the standard written grant proposal to actually sit with …

In Conversation: Two Community Foundations In Dialogue About Their Equitable Evaluation Framework™ Practice, Madeline Brandt, Kelly Casey, Jean-Marie Callan, Joel Hicks-Rivera, Kim Leonard, Madeline Nguyen, Elena Tamanas Ragusa, Cierra Stancil, Kimberlee Salmond, Becky Seel, Kate Szczerbacki

The Foundation Review

This conversation between staff at the Oregon Community Foundation and the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving shares how we are infusing the Equitable Evaluation Framework™ into our practice as we aim to be less extractive, shift power, and honor all ways of knowing and being as valid. In sharing this conversation, we want to pull the curtain back and offer a behind-the-scenes view into the conversations, realities, and challenges involved in doing this kind of work.

We sat down together for 90 minutes on a Wednesday afternoon, and the following is a rough transcript of our time together. The intention …