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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
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- Evaluation (5)
- Complexity (3)
- Philanthropy (3)
- Systems change (3)
- Emergence (2)
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- Equity (2)
- Foundations (2)
- Strategy (2)
- Accountability (1)
- Adaptive systems (1)
- Alignment (1)
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- Building culture (1)
- Capacity (1)
- Capacity building (1)
- Causal analysis (1)
- Changemaking culture (1)
- Collaboration (1)
- Culture (1)
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- DAF sponsors (1)
- DAFs (1)
- Donor-advised funds (1)
- Emergent strategy (1)
- Evaluate (1)
- Foundation (1)
- Foundation culture (1)
- Foundation impact (1)
- Foundation norms (1)
- Foundation strategy (1)
Articles 1 - 15 of 15
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Editorial, Hanh Cao Yu
Passing In The Dark: Making Visible Philanthropy’S Hidden And Conflicting Mental Models For Systems Change, Jewlya Lynn, Julia Coffman
Passing In The Dark: Making Visible Philanthropy’S Hidden And Conflicting Mental Models For Systems Change, Jewlya Lynn, Julia Coffman
The Foundation Review
While the need for philanthropy to focus on systems change as a way to scale and sustain impact is now widely accepted, we see the sector largely failing to recognize that there are different mental models for how to change systems. Sometimes the approaches foundations use are based on competing mental models or models that are not a good fit for the systems, problems, strategies, or practices they are using.
We see two mental models for systems change being used in philanthropy: systems dynamics and systems emergence. Strategies that use the systems-dynamics mental model aim at points of high leverage …
Systems Thinking For Social Change: A Practical Guide To Solving Complex Problems, Avoiding Unintended Consequences, And Achieving Lasting Results, Hilda Vega
The Foundation Review
Editor’s Note: This article, first published in print and online in 2015, has been republished by The Foundation Review with minor updates.
A Foundation’S Theory Of Philanthropy: What It Is, What It Provides, How To Do It – With 2024 Prologue, Michael Quinn Patton, Nathaniel Foote, James Radner
A Foundation’S Theory Of Philanthropy: What It Is, What It Provides, How To Do It – With 2024 Prologue, Michael Quinn Patton, Nathaniel Foote, James Radner
The Foundation Review
Editor’s Note: This article, first published in print and online in 2015, has been republished by The Foundation Review with minor updates.
This article argues that philanthropic endeavors should be undergirded by a theory of philanthropy. Articulating a theory of philanthropy is a way for a foundation to make explicit what is often only implicit, thereby enabling internal and external actors to pose and resolve significant questions, understand and play important roles more fully and effectively, and improve performance by enhancing alignment across complex systems.
A theory of philanthropy articulates how and why a foundation will use its resources to …
Goal-Free Evaluation: An Orientation For Foundations’ Evaluations – Updated 2024, Brandon W. Youker, Allyssa Ballard
Goal-Free Evaluation: An Orientation For Foundations’ Evaluations – Updated 2024, Brandon W. Youker, Allyssa Ballard
The Foundation Review
Editor’s Note: This article, first published in print and online in 2014, has been revised for The Foundation Review with substantive additions, new examples, and minor updates.
Goal-free evaluation is a model in which official or stated program goals and objectives are unknown by the evaluator, serving as a counter to assessing impact solely according to goal achievement. Foundation-supported program evaluation, however, has historically focused on goal attainment as intuitively and inextricably linked to evaluation.
This focus has persisted despite the fact that goal-free product evaluations have been a norm for more than 75 years. Yet persuading funders to consider …
The Soft Stuff Doesn’T Have To Be Hard: Foundation Investments In Grantee Workers Are Necessary, Valuable, And Measurable – With 2024 Prologue, Rusty M. Stahl
The Soft Stuff Doesn’T Have To Be Hard: Foundation Investments In Grantee Workers Are Necessary, Valuable, And Measurable – With 2024 Prologue, Rusty M. Stahl
The Foundation Review
Editor’s Note: This article, first published in print and online in 2022, has been republished by The Foundation Review with minor updates.
There is an urgent need for funder investments in the ability of grantee nonprofit organizations to support their staff. Such investments, when done well, can yield significant value for individuals, organizations, and fields of work or movements. Furthermore, the value of these investments can be evaluated and communicated.
This article explores the reasons for and implications of the inadequate response by funders, offers a path forward for designing investments in grantee staff, and documents how funders can capture …
Raising The Bar — Integrating Cultural Competence And Equity: Equitable Evaluation – With 2024 Prologue, Jara Dean-Coffey, Jill Casey, Leon D. Caldwell
Raising The Bar — Integrating Cultural Competence And Equity: Equitable Evaluation – With 2024 Prologue, Jara Dean-Coffey, Jill Casey, Leon D. Caldwell
The Foundation Review
Editor’s Note: This article, first published in print and online in 2014, has been republished by The Foundation Review with minor updates.
Whether implicit or explicit, social justice and human rights are part of the mission of many philanthropies. Evaluation produced, sponsored, or consumed by these philanthropies that doesn’t pay attention to the imperatives of cultural competency may be inconsistent with their missions.
The American Evaluation Association’s Statement on Cultural Competence provides those who produce, sponsor, and use evaluation an opportunity to examine and align their practices and policies within a context of racial and cultural equity and inclusion. The …
Donor-Advised Funds And Impact Investing: A Practitioner’S View – With 2024 Prologue, Sam Marks
Donor-Advised Funds And Impact Investing: A Practitioner’S View – With 2024 Prologue, Sam Marks
The Foundation Review
Editor’s Note: This article, first published in print and online in 2022, has been republished by The Foundation Review with minor updates. Any discussion of foundations embracing impact investing must include some discussion of one of the largest — and growing — sources of philanthropic capital: donor-advised funds. These philanthropic accounts allow donors of all sizes to access many of the functions of a private foundation, including the potential to invest for impact. Sponsors of these funds, however, face unique challenges in catalyzing impact investments.
Like the larger institutional foundations that have led the way as mission investors, sponsors must …
Emergent Learning: A Framework For Whole-System Strategy, Learning, And Adaptation – With 2024 Prologue, Marilyn J. Darling, Jillaine S. Smith, James E. M. Stiles, Heidi Sparkes Guber
Emergent Learning: A Framework For Whole-System Strategy, Learning, And Adaptation – With 2024 Prologue, Marilyn J. Darling, Jillaine S. Smith, James E. M. Stiles, Heidi Sparkes Guber
The Foundation Review
Editor’s Note: This article, first published in print and online in 2016, has been republished by The Foundation Review with minor updates.
The field of philanthropy is exploring what it takes to achieve impact in complex environments. The terms “adaptive” and “emergent” are beginning to be used, often interchangeably, to describe strategies by which funders can tackle complexity. This article proposes distinguishing between the two and explores more deeply how the research into complexity can inform philanthropic practice.
While approaches like systems mapping, scenario planning, and appreciative inquiry have been put forward as useful approaches to expanding perspectives and seeing …
Lost Causal: Debunking Myths About Causal Analysis In Philanthropy – With 2024 Prologue, Jewlya Lynn, Sarah Stachowiak, Julia Coffman
Lost Causal: Debunking Myths About Causal Analysis In Philanthropy – With 2024 Prologue, Jewlya Lynn, Sarah Stachowiak, Julia Coffman
The Foundation Review
Editor’s Note: This article, first published in print and online in 2022, has been republished by The Foundation Review with minor updates.
What if philanthropic evaluations told us that changes in the world had occurred, as well as how and why they occurred, including whether what foundations funded and grantees did contributed to those changes? What if evaluations made change pathways more visible, tested hypotheses and assumptions, and generated new insights based on what happened in the “black box” of systems change strategies? This type of learning comes from causal analysis — inquiry that explores cause-and-effect relationships.
Yet currently in …
Internal Culture, External Impact: How A Changemaking Culture Positions Foundations To Achieve Transformational Change – With 2024 Prologue, Amy Celep, Sara Brenner, Rachel Mosher-Williams
Internal Culture, External Impact: How A Changemaking Culture Positions Foundations To Achieve Transformational Change – With 2024 Prologue, Amy Celep, Sara Brenner, Rachel Mosher-Williams
The Foundation Review
Editor’s Note: This article, first published in print and online in 2016, has been republished by The Foundation Review with minor updates.
This article argues that a foundation’s internal culture is critical to achieving large-scale social change, but that efforts to build a changemaking 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 largescale social change: a focus on outcomes, transparency, authenticity, collaboration, racial equity and inclusion, continuous learning, and openness to risk.
This article offers insights into …
Four Network Principles For Collaboration Success – With 2024 Prologue, Jane Wei-Skillern, Nora Silver
Four Network Principles For Collaboration Success – With 2024 Prologue, Jane Wei-Skillern, Nora Silver
The Foundation Review
Editor’s Note: This article, first published in print and online in 2013, has been republished by The Foundation Review with minor updates.
This article identifies a set of four counterintuitive principles that are critical to collaboration success and offers insights for how nonprofit leaders can ensure that their collaborations can have an impact that is dramatically greater than the sum of the individual parts.
Based on a decade of research developing detailed case studies on a range of successful networks, the authors have identified a common pattern of factors that are essential to effective networking.The principles are to focus on …