Business Commons^™

Lessons Learned: Lewis "Lee" Sachs, Yasemin Esmen

Journal of Financial Crises

Lewis “Lee” Sachs was counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and head of the Obama administration’s Financial Crisis Response Team in the US Department of the Treasury. Mr. Sachs led the development and coordination of the Obama administration’s Financial Stability Plan to stabilize the financial system during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–09 (GFC). He was tasked with continued coordination with the outgoing Bush administration, as well as putting together a team to develop further restructuring plans and oversee their execution. This “Lessons Learned” is based on an interview with Mr. Sachs.

Lessons Learned: Jenni Lecompte, Mercedes Cardona

Journal of Financial Crises

Jenni LeCompte was deputy assistant secretary in charge of public affairs operations at the Treasury Department during the Global Financial Crisis and later became assistant secretary, public affairs. She coordinated communications, served as a spokesperson, and advised Secretary Timothy Geithner during the crisis. This “Lessons Learned” is based on an interview with Ms. LeCompte.

Undersea Cables: The Ultimate Geopolitical Chokepoint, Bert Chapman

FORCES Initiative: Strategy, Security, and Social Systems

This work provides historical and contemporary overviews of this critical geopolitical problem, describes the policy actors addressing this in the U.S. and selected other countries, and provides maps and information on many undersea cable work routes. These cables are chokepoints with one dictionary defining chokepoints as “a strategic narrow route providing passage through or to another region."

Doing Philanthropy At The Time Of The Sustainable Development Goals: The Case Of Fondazione Compagnia Di San Paolo, Fulvio Bersanetti, Filippo Candela, Paolo Mulassano

The Foundation Review

This article outlines how strategic philanthropy can align its mission with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by describing the experience of the most important foundation of banking origin in Italy. Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo marked a milestone in 2020 in aligning with the Agenda, applying the Sustainable Development Goals as a rigorous, internationally shared methodological framework and restructuring its operations to focus on three programmatic efforts — Planet, People, and Culture — aligned with those goals.

To complete our examination of this transformation, we conducted a benchmark analysis involving nine case studies of foundations in Europe …

Walking The Talk On Sustainable Development Goals: The Case Of Community Foundations In Canada, Marta Rey-Garcia, Rosane Dal Magro

The Foundation Review

The United Nations 2030 Agenda creates an opportunity for philanthropic foundations to become more collaborative and transformative in their work toward global goals. Thus, since 2016, the extent to which foundations adopt the Sustainable Development Goals framework in their functioning has become a topic of interest. Although survey- and case-based research shows increased rates of self-reported adoption and several tools are available to help foundations to act toward the goals, there is a lack of systematic evidence about the purposes of and processes for adopting the goals among foundations.

This void is particularly relevant for community foundations, as they have …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

De La Promesa De Los Objetivos De Desarrollo Sostenible A La Acción: El Caso De Las Fundaciones Comunitarias En Canadá, Marta Rey-Garcia, Rosane Dal Magro

The Foundation Review

La Agenda 2030 de las Naciones Unidas crea una oportunidad para que las fundacionesfilantrópicas sean más colaborativas ytransformadoras en su trabajo hacia los objetivosglobales. Así, desde 2016, el grado en que lasfundaciones adoptan el marco de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible en su funcionamiento se ha convertido en un tema de interés. Aunque lasinvestigaciones basadas en encuestas y casosmuestran un aumento de las tasas de adopción por parte de las fundaciones y existen variasherramientas para ayudarlas a actuar en pro delos objetivos, faltan pruebas sistemáticas sobrelos propósitos y los procesos de adopción de losODS entre las fundaciones.

Este vacío es …

The Transformative Power Of The 2030 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, Anna Wasescha, Christa Otteson, Sarah Casey

The Foundation Review

West Central Initiative, a mostly rural community foundation and regional development organization in Minnesota, integrated the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals into its strategic plan in 2019. This article explores how aligning the U.N. goals with the foundation’s “nested strategy” of local, regional, and global goals has aligned and energized the disparate functions of the organization.

This article describes the strategic planning process that led to adoption of the goals, articulates how they have helped evolve the interplay of economic development and philanthropy, and identifies lessons learned from the first two years of working with the goals.

Focusing on …

A Case Study On The Use Of The Sdgs With A Collective Impact Initiative In Southwest Florida, Tessa Lesage, Aysegul Timur, Dakota Pawlicki

The Foundation Review

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals can be a useful framework on which to design, evaluate, and communicate collective impact initiatives. Using as a case study the FutureMakers Coalition, a collective impact initiative launched by the Southwest Florida Community Foundation to transform its region’s workforce, the field can gain insights into how the goals can strengthen collective impact work locally and nationally.

This article will discuss how the foundation facilitated the setting of a common agenda and the use of the Sustainable Development Goals to help build consensus among 251 active partners on how to measure progress toward the coalition’s …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Localizing The 2030 Agenda With Community Data: Lessons From The Community Foundations Of Canada’S Vital Signs Program, Beth Timmers, Alison Sidney

The Foundation Review

Drawing on case studies in Canada, this article analyzes the critical role that community indicators can play in philanthropy’s ability to localize the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the associated Sustainable Development Goals to address complex societal and environmental challenges.

Measurement is an integral component of Agenda 2030, and communities are increasingly using indicators to align their plans, inform granting decisions, and track equity and sustainability outcomes. Canada’s most extensive community-driven indicator program, Vital Signs, uses different types of data to measure the vitality of a community and support action toward improving collective quality of life; and …

Where To Start? A Tool For Thinking About The Sdgs And Community Foundation Work, Katie Leone, Tessa Lesage

The Foundation Review

The merits of advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are widely agreed upon by the global community, but designing and applying strategies to do so at the local level can be challenging. This article aims to support community foundations in moving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development forward in practical ways by exploring the use of a point-of-entry wheel to create a shared language that can help community foundations align their local efforts with the global goals.

Since 2012, Collaboratory has been exploring the potential for integrating sustainability — encompassing economic, social, and environmental pillars — as a strategic …

Sherman And His Historians: An End To The Outsized Destroyer Myth?, Mitchell G. Klingenberg

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

For years, scholars have viewed the career of William Tecumseh Sherman in light of an antiquated destroyer myth and neglected his memoirs, which were written as a military textbook. This essay reviews Sherman’s legacy and literature, both of which contributed to the advancement of modern military thought. His experiences may serve as a prescriptive text to servicemembers, providing critical lessons on military warfare and philosophy still relevant today.

The Air Littoral: Another Look, Maximilian K. Bremer, Kelly A. Grieco

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Assessing threats to the air littoral, the airspace between ground forces and high-end fighters and bombers, requires a paradigm change in American military thinking about verticality. This article explores the consequences of domain convergence, specifically for the Army and Air Force’s different concepts of control. It will assist US military and policy practitioners in conceptualizing the air littoral and in thinking more vertically about the air and land domains and the challenges of domain convergence.

The Impact Of Governance Structure On Performance Of U.S. Performing Arts Centers, Karen S. Fuller

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an analysis of the governance structures and functioning of performing arts centers (PACs) in the United States. PACs provide important public services to local communities by exposing the public to arts and culture. There are two research objectives in the analysis. The first objective is to delineate the forms of PAC governance structures. The second objective is to assess how these governance structures affect PACs’ functioning. The dissertation contributes to understanding of management of PACs. Overall, the study identified 187 PACs in the country, with at least one PAC in every state.

With respect to the first …

Community Foundations As Community Leaders: The Role Of Community Leadership In Creating Change, Colton Strawser

The Foundation Review

Community foundations claim to play an integral role in fostering philanthropy at a local or regional level across the United States, seeking to improve the quality of life for community residents. Their business model has three main components: grantmaking, fundraising, and community leadership.

As the newest addition to the community foundation operating model, community leadership remains the least examined component in terms of how these foundations define and pursue it. This article seeks to contribute to the literature on the challenges and benefits community foundations encounter in pursuit of a community leadership role.

Utilizing an exploratory design, interviews with leaders …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Brazilian Foundations And The Responses To Covid-19, Marcos Paulo Lucca-Silveira, Pietro Rodrigues, Marketa Jerabek, Marcia Kalvon Woods, João Paulo Vergueiro

The Foundation Review

This article aims to systematically analyze the contribution of corporate and family foundations in the fight against COVID-19 in Brazil, one of the countries most affected by the pandemic. Despite its resultant economic and social crisis, the pandemic has sparked an unprecedented wave of philanthropy in Brazil. It is estimated that more than $1.2 billion has been raised and donated by corporations, corporate and private foundations, crowdfunding, and fundraising campaigns.

Foundations, in particular, have played an important role in financing relevant scientific work, supporting public policies, and assisting nonprofit organizations and vulnerable communities. And while there is increasing knowledge about …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Tfr 13.3 Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Assessing Philanthropic Impact: How The W.K. Kellogg Foundation’S Building Bridges Initiative Supported The Field Of Philanthropic And Nonprofit Studies, Peter C. Weber, Robert Long

The Foundation Review

In the 1990s, nonprofit management education was an emerging discipline with few established academic centers seeking to increase connectivity, build out the field, and gain financial sustainability. While organized philanthropy supported this development, foundations’ impact on individual programs and the field more broadly is unclear.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Building Bridges Initiative, a $13.5 million, five-year program to fund nonprofit academic centers as a strategy to increase the nonprofit sector’s capacity, exemplifies the potentials and limits of a private foundation’s engagement with emerging academic disciplines. This article assesses the long-term sustainability of grant investments and to what degree successful projects …

Book Review: The Upswing: How America Came Together A Century Ago And How We Can Do It Again, Michael Layton, Tory Martin

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Lost Causal: Debunking Myths About Causal Analysis In Philanthropy, Jewlya Lynn, Sarah Stachowiak, Julia Coffman

The Foundation Review

What if philanthropic evaluations told us that changes in the world had occurred, as well as how and why they occurred, including in what ways foundation funding and grantees 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-andeffect relationships.

Yet currently in philanthropy, particularly for strategies and initiatives that feature high complexity, few evaluations use robust techniques for understanding causality. Instead, philanthropic evaluation tends …

Learning Amid Disruption: Bouncing Forward Into A Changed World, Rachel Reichenbach, Jewlya Lynn, Jen Heeg

The Foundation Review

The philanthropic sector has come to recognize the importance of bringing a systems lens to its work, seeking to influence upstream drivers of complex problems, and being adaptive in its approaches instead of implementing static, multiyear plans. Yet, integrating these concepts into practice continues to pose a challenge.

Humanity United — a foundation dedicated to cultivating the conditions for enduring freedom and peace — had been grappling with this charge when the disruption caused by COVID-19 led it into a crisis response mode in 2020, similar to many other philanthropic institutions. That disruption also challenged our old ways of being, …

Donor-Led Community Engagement: A New Model For In-Kind And Philanthropic Giving?, Jessica K. A. Word, Connor Gahre

The Foundation Review

While philanthropic relationships between nonprofits and businesses are complex and ever evolving, the dominant pattern is one where the process is largely managed by the nonprofit, with businesses providing little more than monetary resources or in-kind donations in response to specific “asks.” This article explores the Transformative Impact Model, a new approach to corporate donor-led giving employed by the Wynn Resorts Foundation that allows community partners to take ownership of capital improvement projects.

In support of two such projects for a pair of nonprofits in Las Vegas, Nevada, the foundation not only lent its expertise, but also leveraged its professional …