Business Commons^™

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Learning-Circle Partnerships And The Evaluation Of A Boundary-Crossing Leadership Initiative In Health, Claire Reinelt, Dianne Yamashiro-Omi, Deborah Meehan

The Foundation Review

· Leadership development approaches that are focused on individual knowledge and skill development do not suit the leadership needs of lowincome communities and communities of color in addressing the multiple factors that influence health disparities.

· Boundary-crossing leadership is rooted in a socialjustice perspective and seeks to address the isolation and fragmentation faced by those who are working to address systemic inequities.

· A multicultural approach to evaluation honors different ways of knowing, recognizes that groups have different learning questions, acknowledges and addresses power dynamics that exist between funders and grantees, and ensures that evaluation is culturally relevant and constructive …

Leveraging Grant-Making—Part 2: Aligning Programmatic Approaches With Complex System Dynamics, David Peter Stroh, Kathleen A. Zurcher

The Foundation Review

· The purpose of this two-part article is to enable foundations to increase the leverage of their grantmaking resources by working effectively with the dynamics of complex social systems.

· This article examines how foundations can align planning, implementation, and evaluation efforts with the behavior of the social systems they seek to improve.

· Asking powerful questions of staff, board, grantees, and other stakeholders helps to transform how they think about their goals and strategies.

· In addition to using the power of questioning, foundations function more systemically by suspending their assumptions about their effectiveness and what is possible, creating …

Demonstrating The Value Of Social Service Programs: A Simplified Approach To Calculating Return On Investment, Herbert M. Baum, Andrew H. Gluck, Bernice S. Smoot, William H. Wubbenhorst

The Foundation Review

· In 2008, as charitable giving dropped by $6.4 billion, 54 percent of human service programs saw an increase in the need for their services. Additionally, 74 percent of programs specifically serving children and youth reported being underfunded or severely underfunded.

· As government and foundation grantmakers transition from charitable giving to social investment, a Gates Foundation report on eight methodologies to assist measuring social value creation finds the methodologies are many years away from being suitable for both nonprofits and grantmakers.

· To better recognize and communicate the work of frontline practitioners, there is a need to change the …

Assessing Nonprofits’ Communications Capacity: An Online Self-Assessment Tool, Anne Reisinger Whatley, R. Christine Hershey, Julia Coffman, Andre Oliver

The Foundation Review

· Foundations increasingly recognize the importance of strategic and effective communications to advance their social-change goals. This article provides a framework that helps foundations to better understand the communications capacity of their grantee partners.

· Based on a detailed analysis of a survey of 529 foundations, universities and nonprofits, the authors created a six-point index that identifies the characteristics and practices of organizations that are ranked as highly effective at using communications to advance their goals.

· The six indicators are: Involvement of organization leadership in communications, communications planning and organization-wide planning, staffing and the use of outside expertise, donor …

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Sustainability Is Made, Not Born: Enhancing Program Sustainability Through Reflective Grantmaking, Ann L. Mccracken, Kelly Firesheets

The Foundation Review

· This article explores how reflective grantmaking can lead to enduring changes in the communities that foundations serve.

· The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati's approach to evaluating and improving the sustainability of grant-funded projects is reviewed as an example.

· Their grantmaking framework includes policy and advocacy work, evaluation support, communications support, and technical assistance in addition to traditional funding of projects.

· This framework promotes sustainability of the funded work.

Philanthropy And Mistakes: An Untapped Resource, Robert Giloth, Susan Gewirtz

The Foundation Review

· Sharing and leveraging lessons learned from mistakes is an important but underutilized resource to improve philanthropic investments and nonprofit performance.

· Philanthropic mistakes extend beyond the results of program evaluations to include questions of mission, role, investment strategies, and implementation.

· Distinguishing between “constructive” and “nonconstructive” mistakes focuses attention on those factors that shape the outcomes for even the most well-designed investments.

· Sharing and reflecting upon mistakes has the potential to improve philanthropic capacities for anticipation, learning, and adaptation.

· Philanthropy must recognize the sometimes blurry lines between success and failure, constructive and nonconstructive mistakes, and philanthropic and …

Beyond The Npr Crowd: How Evaluation Influenced Grantmaking At The California Council For The Humanities, Clare Nolan, Alden Mudge

The Foundation Review

· This article describes an initiative designed to engage a broad cross section of Californians in the humanities. Initial findings from book reading groups were that participants were predominantly white, middle-aged women.

· Changing the type of programming to include poetry slams, photography, digital media, and writing programs broadened participation of various ages and ethnic groups.

· The location of the program also made a difference, with schools and community-based organizations drawing more diverse audiences than libraries.

Philanthropy’S Civic Role In Community Change, Patricia Auspos, Prudence Brown, Anne C. Kubisch, Stacey Sutton

The Foundation Review

· This article describes six key roles for philanthropic organizations’ engagement in communities. It draws on Living Cities, a consortium of financial organizations, private foundations, and public sector organizations that has been working since 1991 to improve distressed neighborhoods in 23 cities.

· The six civic roles described are (a) convening and leveraging diverse networks of relationships, (b) developing local data and plans for community change, (c) leveraging new resources on behalf of communities, (d) mobilizing political will, (e) framing new messages about community development and communicating more strategically, and (f) generating and testing new ideas and building and sharing …

Using Community-Based Participatory Evaluation (Cbpe) Methods As A Tool To Sustain A Community Health Coalition, Leslie Aldrich, Daniel Silva, Danelle Marable, Erica Sandman

The Foundation Review

· Participatory evaluation has set the standard for cooperation between program evaluators and stakeholders. Coalition evaluation, however, calls for more extensive collaboration with the community at large.

· Integrating principles of community based participatory research and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Strategic Prevention Framework, which guides much coalition work, into coalition evaluation has proved useful to foster community affiliations and support reciprocal relationship building. The resulting evaluation method, named community based participatory evaluation (CBPE), takes time, money, and skilled personnel but can lead to more accurate results and coalition sustainability.

· The CBPE method has proved essential …

Effective Advocacy Evaluation: The Role Of Funders, Johanna Morariu, Kathleen Brennan

The Foundation Review

· This article addresses the role of funders in supporting advocacy and advocacy evaluation work.

· The growth and strengthening of the advocacy evaluation field has lessened the “hard to measure” stigma attached to advocacy grantmaking.

· An increasingly broad array of evaluation designs and methods better capture advocacy data, enable rapid analysis and learning, and foster accountability.

· Based on a study of advocacy grantees and a study of advocacy grantmakers, the authors conclude that supporting evaluation and capacity building, providing multi-year funding commitments and core support, and creating custom reporting requirements and timelines are strategies that funders can …

Supporting Asian-American Civic Engagement: Theory And Practice, Wing Yi Chan

The Foundation Review

· This paper is a review of relevant research related to the civic engagement of Asian-American youth.

· Little work has been done to understand the civic engagement activities of Asian-American youth. However, unique promoters and barriers to Asian- American youth civic engagement exist, given this group’s distinct historical, cultural, and sociopolitical experiences.

· Asian-American youth may have two different ethnic and racial identities, and these identities may be related to different kinds of civic engagement. Asian-American students who have a stronger pan-Asian identity are more aware that their fate is linked with other Asian-Americans and therefore are more likely …

Foundation Readiness For Community Transformation: Learning In Real Time, Prudence Brown, Marie Colombo, Della M. Hughes

The Foundation Review

· This article describes the internal structures and processes adopted by The Skillman Foundation to support the iterative practice of “learning and doing” in the first phase of a rapidly evolving, ambitious community change enterprise in six Detroit neighborhoods.

· The foundation invested in its own and its partners’ capacity to learn in real time so that together they could adjust and readjust their strategies in response to initial results and, in doing so, deepen their working relationships and build further capacity for effective implementation.

· Challenges to supporting this learning culture included increased visibility and pressures to produce results …

Youth Civic Engagement For Dialogue And Diversity At The Metropolitan Level, Barry Checkoway

The Foundation Review

· Youth civic engagement can take various forms, of which intergroup dialogue is one. Some forms – such as electoral participation – are inappropriate for young people.

· This article describes Youth Dialogues on Race and Ethnicity in Metropolitan Detroit, the nation’s most segregated metropolitan area.

· High-school-age students participated in intraand intergroup dialogues, metropolitan tours, residential retreats, and community action projects.

· Youth participants increased their knowledge of their own racial and ethnic identities and those of others, increased their awareness and understanding of racism and racial privilege, and developed leadership skills and took actions to challenge racism in …

Proving Foundation Impact On Public Policy Empirically: The Case Of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation And Consumer Choice For Adults With Developmental Disabilities, Ann Whitney Breihan

The Foundation Review

· Foundations that work on national public policy issues face challenges in demonstrating impact.

· This case study of how the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s initiative to support choice of program provider for developmentally disabled adults uses some advanced statistical techniques to demonstrate the impact of the foundation’s funding.

· This study suggests that to get the greatest impact on policy change, foundations should consider offering modest competitive grants to governmental departments; spending the funds in regional groupings; and focus on jurisdictions that have demonstrated interest in the policy area by spending their own funds.

Community-Based Collaboration: A Philanthropic Model For Positive Social Change, Lynda Frost, Susan Stone

The Foundation Review

· A highly publicized incident served as a catalyst for the Austin, Texas, community, convened by the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, to address gaps in the behavioral health system.

· The foundation worked with the local behavioral health authority, the mayor’s office, police and sheriff’s departments, and the city health department to design the Austin Mayor’s Mental Health Task Force. The task force was succeeded by a monitoring committee that identified six focus areas in which to develop action plans and monitor community progress.

· This collaborative process aimed to strengthen public commitment to behavioral health services and create …

Scope, Scale, And Sustainability: What It Takes To Create Lasting Community Change, Tina R. Trent, David M. Chavis

The Foundation Review

· This article examines success factors that relate specifically to the ability of a comprehensive community initiative (CCI) to achieve the scope and scale required to generate community-level outcomes and to sustain those positive impacts over time.

· The CCIs selected for study represent a wide range of goals, strategies, and organizational structures.

· Six factors were found to cut across scope, scale, and sustainability. These factors include having a single broker or entity that holds the vision of the change effort; clearly defined roles; alignment among interventions, resources, and geography; meaningful community engagement; competent leadership and staff; and strategic, …

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

New Voices At The Civic Table: Facilitating Personal And Social Change, Laura T. Pinsoneault, Linda Nguyen

The Foundation Review

· This article describes six pilot initiatives of the Alliance for Children and Families -- New Voices at the Civic Table (New Voices), a philanthropy-funded effort to challenge human service organizations to integrate civic engagement as a permanent part of their infrastructure.

· All six New Voices models included common elements: leadership training, civic education, experiential learning, participatory decision-making, networking, and reflective evaluation.

· Each also reflected one of four primary variations to civic engagement based on their community needs and demands: self-efficacy, constituent involvement, mobilizing, and organizing.

· Results demonstrate that civic engagement in human services not only produces …

Setting The Table For A Sustainable And Just Food System, Kien Lee, Kolu Zigbi, Marjorie Nemes

The Foundation Review

· As consumers and producers, people of color have been affected disproportionately by systemic problems in the food system.

· This article describes the Diversifying Leadership for Sustainable Food Policy initiative, a joint effort of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to build the capacity of organizations led by people of color to engage in policy and advocacy work.

· Grantees successfully built their capacity to engage in policy work (e.g., increased capacity to identify policy targets), increased their organizational capacity (e.g., diversified boards), improved their communities’ capacity (e.g., created opportunities for dialogue and improved …

Finding The Win In Wicked Problems: Lessons From Evaluating Public Policy Advocacy, John Sherman, Gayle Peterson

The Foundation Review

· Many of the social issues private foundations and other philanthropies attempt to address — poverty, homelessness, global climate change — are wicked problems. That is, they defy easy definition, lack permanent solutions, and have multiple stakeholders.

· The wicked problems framework helps make explicit the challenging nature of the issue to be addressed, requires an inclusive style of leadership that seeks stakeholder involvement, and demands candid exchange among stakeholders about the nature of the problem and effectiveness of efforts to address it.

· A wicked problems framework provides a set of criteria and questions for evaluators of advocacy efforts …

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Evaluating A Voter Outreach Initiative, Amy Dominguez Arms

The Foundation Review

· This article describes an initiative designed to increase voting rates among low-income and ethnic groups in southern and central California communities.

· A rigorous evaluation demonstrated that participation rates could be increased by up to 10% among these groups.

· Using local, well-trained canvassers and making contact during the four weeks preceding the election were some of the more effective practices.

A Road Made By Walking: Participatory Evaluation And Social Change, Janet Rechtman

The Foundation Review

· This article describes how participatory evaluation was used in a Ford Foundation–funded project to promote mixed-income housing in Atlanta.

· The project resulted in an increase in mixedincome housing, but also in social outcomes such as increased knowledge about housing issues.

· Validity and reliability of the findings are demonstrated through feedback from the community members, rather than through statistical methods.

Children’S Futures: Lessons From A Second-Generation Community Change Initiative, Karen E. Walker, Claire Gibbons, Marco Navarro

The Foundation Review

· This article describes Children’s Futures, a 10-year initiative in Trenton, N.J., that seeks to improve the health and well-being of children from 0 to 3 years old and ensure that they are ready for school.

· During the first five years, the initiative was successful in implementing a number of evidence-based practices to improve children’s health, such as providing home visits to pregnant women, measuring and improving the quality of day care centers, and improving the use of information systems to track childhood immunizations.

· Efforts to provide services for fathers and improve home-based child care were not successful; …