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Strengthening Youth Leadership In A Metropolitan Region: Examining Lessons From A Multiyear Community Foundation Initiative, Katie Richards-Schuster, Katie G. Brisson

The Foundation Review

This article examines the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan’s launch of a broad-based, multilayered strategy to promote youth leadership in the region, and showcases what can be accomplished when foundations invest in such strategies.

In partnership with the University of Michigan School of Social Work and the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University, the foundation helped develop comprehensive programs aimed at building the capacity of youth-serving organizations to engage youth as leaders, support a youth-driven research assessment and social-justice project, and provide funds for youth-run efforts aimed at strengthening the region’s schools and communities.

As …

Following The Money: An Analysis Of Foundation Grantmaking For Community And Economic Development, Keith Wardrip, William Lambe, Mels De Zeeuw

The Foundation Review

The article challenges the perception among some in the field of community and economic development that small and socioeconomically distressed metro areas do not attract a proportional share of grant capital from the nation’s largest foundations.

The analysis presented in this article reviewed nearly 169,000 community and economic development grants made by the largest foundations between 2008 and 2013 to identify metro- area characteristics that are associated with higher levels of grant receipt.

The density of nonprofit organizations and the presence of large, local foundations are shown to be consistently significant predictors of grant receipt. After controlling for these and …

Knowledge As Leadership, Belonging As Community: How Canadian Community Foundations Are Using Vital Signs For Social Change, Susan Phillips, Ian Bird, Laurel Carlton, Lee Rose

The Foundation Review

The concept of “community” in community foundations is being reframed – less strictly tied to the specific locales that originally defined their boundaries and increasingly about a process of engagement and a resulting sense of belonging.

The greatest asset of a community foundation is not the size of its endowment, but its knowledge of community and ability to use this knowledge for positive change.

This article explores the Canadian network of community foundations’ use of the reporting tool Vital Signs to implement a knowledge-driven approach to leadership and how it is using this knowledge in more inclusive, engaged models of …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Community Innovation Network Framework: A Model For Reshaping Community Identity, William P. Moore, Adena M. Klem, Cheryl L. Holmes, June Holley, Carlie Houchen

The Foundation Review

The REACH Healthcare Foundation created its Rural Health Initiative to encourage the development of innovative strategies to improve access to health care and reduce health inequities in three rural counties in Missouri and Kansas. The intent was to develop a systematic, sustainable, and coordinated approach to community change that would increase the odds of breaking through the persistent barriers to health care access for the rural poor and medically underserved in these counties.

This article discusses the foundation’s original approach to the initiative and how it adjusted that approach in response to its rural partners’ experiences. It reflects on the …

Foundation Support Of Immigrant Communities: Insights From A Survey Of Immigrants In Minnesota’S Twin Cities, Nicole Martinrogers, Ryan Evans, Paul Mattessich

The Foundation Review

Immigration brings both benefits and challenges to communities. This article provides insight into the needs of these communities and offers suggestions for how foundations can consider immigrant and refugee communities in their work.

This article combines information from Minnesota Compass, a foundation-governed social-indicators initiative, and Speaking for Ourselves, a study of immigrants and refu- gees in Minnesota’s Twin Cities metropolitan area that identifies the needs and strengths immigrants bring to our communities.

The results can help guide foundations and their grantees on how to improve a community’s quality of life for immigrants and refugees – to the benefit of all …

Partnering For Impact: Developing The Mcknight Foundation’S Carbon Efficiency Strategy, Gayle Peterson

The Foundation Review

This case study challenges us to redefine our definitions of community and philanthropic practice as we tackle global climate change — one of the most Wicked Problems facing our planet and our people. Driven by a deep commitment to “walk the talk,” CEO Kate Wolford and McKnight Foundation leadership committed $100M of the foundation’s endowment to find solutions to global warming. This bold step required building a new type of partnership with McKnight’s team of financial advisors — Mellon Capital Management, Mercer, and Imprint Capital (now Goldman Sachs). McKnight and Mellon Capital had to build a new cross sector partnership …

Review: Peter Klaus And Stefanie Müller, Eds. The Roots Of Logistics: A Reader Of Classical Contributions To The History And Conceptual Foundations Of The Science Of Logistics (Berlin: Springer, 2012)., Daniel Pellathy

Peer Reviewed Articles

Book Review: Peter Klaus and Stefanie Müller, eds. The Roots of Logistics: A Reader of Classical Contributions to the History and Conceptual Foundations of the Science of Logistics (Berlin: Springer, 2012). Cloth and paperback. 427 pp. ISBN-13: 978-3642439186.

Editorial, Teri Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Building A Field: Blue Shield Of California Foundation's Strong Field Project Leaves A Legacy And Valuable Lessons, Hanh Cao Yu, Jennifer Henderson-Frakes, Lucia Corral Peña

The Foundation Review

Relatively few comprehensive evaluations have assessed the principles, elements, and impacts of philanthropic organizations’ field-building endeavors. To help fill this gap, this article shares the results of a five-year evaluation of a large-scale field-building initiative: Blue Shield of California Foundation’s Strong Field Project.

The project’s goal was to strengthen the domestic violence field by equipping it with a critical mass of diverse individuals and organizations to lead a stronger movement to end domestic violence in California. Its approach aimed to strengthen field leadership and organizations, and to create vibrant collaborative networks.

Evaluation data show that the project achieved much of …

Key Ingredients For School Food Systems: An Evaluation Of The Orfalea Foundation’S School Food Initiative, Holly Carmichael Djang, Barbara Andersen, Tatiana Masters, Jan Vanslyke, Blair Beadnell

The Foundation Review

In 2007, the Orfalea Foundation launched a nine-year strategic effort aimed at empowering public school districts in California’s Santa Barbara County. The purpose was to implement food-service operations that offered nourishing meals and to create a culture that prioritized the health and wellness of children and families.

The initiative, which involved 84 schools and more than 50,000 students, assessed the capacity of the county’s school food services, including existing skill levels and equipment needs. Striving to tailor programming to specific needs, the foundation emphasized stakeholder involvement throughout the process.

The foundation took a number of steps to understand the value …

Developing A Framework For Grant Evaluation: Integrating Accountability And Learning, Shelley Scherer

The Foundation Review

Despite broad consensus among foundations on the value of capturing grant outcomes, there is no consensus on what to evaluate and how to define success, which makes it difficult for staff and grantees to navigate and apply multiple interpretations of evaluation “best practices.”

This article presents three questions designed to help foundations develop a framework for grant evaluation that reflects their beliefs about accountability and learning, balances evaluation costs and benefits, acknowledges the diversity of grants within the foundation’s portfolio, and allows their grantees to understand the foundation’s expectations for evaluation reporting.

A key takeaway from this article, drawn from …

Enhancing Foundation Capacity: The Role Of The Senior Leadership Team, Melissa A. Berman

The Foundation Review

This article examines the issue of foundation organization design and assesses how foundation leaders might think about their organizations as institutions.

Noting that any organization structure inhabited by human beings creates silos and territorial issues, foundation leaders are increasingly using two primary mechanisms to minimize these artificial barriers and maximize collaboration: enhanced headquarters functions to help integrate across the organization, and senior leadership teams.

This article reviews the structure, roles, responsibilities, and value-add of senior leadership teams at 19 foundations. The senior leadership team plays a crucial role in foundations, functioning as an advisory group to the president and chief …

The Art And Science Of Place-Based Philanthropy: Themes From A National Convening, Giannina Fehler-Cabral, Jennifer James, Hallie Preskill, Meg Long

The Foundation Review

This article shares insights and implications generated at a convening titled Is This a Better Place? The Art and Science of Place Evaluation. Participants included funders, evaluators, and community partners who came to discuss and share effective learning practices and the role of evaluation in place-based work.

Place-based work requires a long-term investment in collaborative partnerships to create, nurture, and sustain local and systemic changes. In order to support this complex work, partners have to incorporate approaches that are nimble, iterative, and responsive to the changing needs of a “place” over an initiative’s life span.

The convening produced a number …

Getting Real With Strategy: Insights From Implementation Science, Douglas Easterling, Allison Metz

The Foundation Review

Foundations are increasingly coming to appreciate the importance of strategy. But simply having a strategy – even an explicit strategy – does not guarantee that a foundation will actually achieve its goals.

To implement a strategy effectively, a foundation needs to operationalize it in the form of specific functions that staff will carry out and needs to create an organizational infrastructure that supports the strategy. The field of implementation science offers a set of tools for helping foundations address these tasks.

After introducing some general principles of implementation science, this article describes in depth the concepts of practice profiles, which …

Using Implementation Science To Translate Foundation Strategy, Allison Metz, Douglas Easterling

The Foundation Review

New strategies sometimes require foundations to shift their staffing, organizational structures, administrative processes, and, possibly, their culture. The field of implementation science offers guidance to foundations as they effectively implement strategies that depart from prevailing practice.

This article focuses on two specific tools from implementation science: the practice profile and the Implementation Drivers Assessment. The practice profile answers the question, "What does the strategy require of particular foundation staff?" The implementation drivers analysis explores the broader question, "What does the strategy require in the way of organizational change within the foundation?”.

These two tools were used by the Kate B. …

Appendix - Program Officer Practice Profile - Using Implementation Science To Translate Foundation Strategy, Allison Metz, Douglas Easterling

The Foundation Review

APPENDIX Program Officer Practice Profile

The Foundation Review 8.2 Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Partnerships, Paradigms, And Social-System Change, Patricia Jessup, Beverly Parsons, Marah Moore

The Foundation Review

Social systems structures stem from underlying paradigms that are made up of beliefs, perspectives, and assumptions. Changing paradigms is a powerful way to change social systems. Such change is difficult and old paradigms keep pulling systems back to their former state.

This article examines three types of partnerships that focus on these deep structures and paradigms, and that go beyond implementing a project or initiative to create fundamental, lasting change in the underlying beliefs, perspectives, and assumptions on which such systems are grounded.

The functions of each type – project focused, formal-systems-focused, and community-grounded partnerships – are identified, along with …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Critical Team-Building Tools In Philanthropy, Ali Webb, Michael F. Bell

The Foundation Review

Using the experience of a team at a large, U.S.-based foundation over a four-year period, this article examines four essential tools for cultivating high-performing teams in the philanthropic sector.

The tools are giving and receiving feedback, the art of appreciations, organizing meetings to produce accountability, and assessing team communication styles, all applied with a racial equity lens. Use of these tools resulted in a more cohesive team that performed well when buffeted by changing priorities and substantial global problems.

The tools are likely applicable in every sector. But when used by foundations where large-scale social issues are the crux of …

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Honors Projects Brochures, Kaitlyn Balboa

Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Internal Culture, External Impact: How A Change-Making Culture Positions Foundations To Achieve Transformational Change, Amy Celep, Sara Brenner, Rachel Mosher-Williams

The Foundation Review

This article argues that a foundation’s internal culture is critical to achieving large-scale social change, but that efforts to build a change-making culture too often are left out of strategy conversations.

While there is no one culture that suits every foundation, a particular set of characteristics must be present in those that seek large-scale social change: a focus on outcomes, transparency, authenticity, collaboration, racial equity and inclusion, continuous learning, and openness to risk.

This article offers insights into why culture can be challenging for foundations to address and maintain, examines cases of successful culture change at foundations, and offers advice …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Teri Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Enhancing Funders’ And Advocates’ Effectiveness: The Processes Shaping Collaborative Advocacy For Health System Accountability In South Africa, Barbara Klugman, Waasila Jassat

The Foundation Review

This article describes the roles of five advocacy groups that built collaborative initiatives to address the collapsing health system in South Africa.

The findings presented are based on retrospective reviews of annual reports, organizational evaluations, interviews, and focus group discussions with each of four participating organizations and existing literature on the fifth.

The key findings, for both advocacy groups shaping alliance strategies and for funders, are that flexible funding and a shared value system among groups with diverse capacities, constituencies, and reputational resources is a good approach for enabling adaptive and innovative strategies for holding the public sector accountable.