Business Commons^™

Maximizing Return: An Evaluation Of The Walton Family Foundation’S Approach To Investing In New Charter Schools, Matthew Carr, Marc Holley

The Foundation Review

The Walton Family Foundation’s social-impact goals include reform of the American K-12 education system by increasing the number of highquality schools available to low-income students. One of the foundation’s signature strategies toward this end is to support charter schools.

This article presents the findings of a study that suggests the foundation’s investment approaches to charter school startups have been successful in supporting the creation of high-quality seats for low-income students. Specifically, the foundation has invested in charter schools where test-score performance has shown greater improvements than at local district schools and charter schools that have not received foundation funding.

These …

Redefining Expectations For Place-Based Philanthropy, Katelyn Mack, Hallie Preskill, James Keddy, Moninder-Mona K. Jhawar

The Foundation Review

This article discusses how The California Endowment has used a midcourse strategic review to refine Building Healthy Communities, aiming to provide insight for other place-based initiatives and to add to the body of knowledge about how to support transformative community change.

With Building Healthy Communities, the endowment is taking a new approach to community change using a dual strategy to build community capacity in 14 places and scale the impact of its local efforts through statewide policy advocacy and communications. In 2013, it commissioned a strategic review to reflect on what it has learned from the first three years of …

The Impact Grants Initiative: Community-Participatory Grantmaking Modeled On Venture Philanthropy, Adin Miller, Elisa Gollub, Ilana Kaufman, Adina Danzig Epelman

The Foundation Review

· The Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund (JCF) launched the Impact Grants Initiative (IGI), a model of grant making based on venture philanthropy, but offering high engagement opportunities for previously unaffiliated local donors and community leaders.

· Before adopting the IGI model, the JCF used a community-participatory grantmaking approach that had become stale in engaging its donors, community leaders, and professional staff. Younger existing and potential donors were developing interests in documented outcomes, metrics, and impact, and those interests did not align with JCF’s grantmaking approach.

· IGI builds on the concepts of venture philanthropy, combining theories and techniques …

Climbing The Mountain: An Approach To Planning And Evaluating Public-Policy Advocacy, Sam Gill, Tom Freedman

The Foundation Review

· This article proposes a new methodology for planning and evaluating public-policy advocacy. The methodology is designed around a series of stages, each with a different set of strategic planning and assessment requirements.

· The article suggests that both planning and evaluative approaches that fail to take account of the necessary stages required to develop and then implement an advocacy strategy will likely assign the wrong indicators of success.

· This analysis is based on direct experience working with both policy processes and a wide range of foundations and nonprofits that have invested in public-policy advocacy, including the Rockefeller, Ford, …

The Role Of Culture On New Product Development Decisions, Sudhir H. Kale

Sudhir H. Kale

This study investigates the effect of culture on the evaluation of new products. We contrast decision-making outcomes between East Asians and Westerners. East Asians tend to view the future as dynamic, nonlinear, and changeable and do not emphasize immediate gain and loss. In contrast, Westerners believe that the future is static, linear, and predictable and pay more attention to the past and present. We hypothesize that given a poor performance forecast, East Asians are more likely than their Western counterparts to continue a new product whereas Westerners are more likely to halt development. However, providing future market demand information moderates …

Raising The Bar – Integrating Cultural Competence And Equity: Equitable Evaluation, Jara Dean-Coffey, Jill Casey, Leon D. Caldwell

The Foundation Review

· 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 use of such a lens is paramount when evaluating a program whose goals touch on issues of equity or inclusion. …

Survey Instruments Used To Evaluate Foundation-Funded Nonprofit Capacity- Building Programs: Considerations For Organized Philanthropy, Catherine H. Brown

The Foundation Review

· Alongside a growing interest in nonprofit capacitybuilding programs has come a growing concern with the impact of these programs, especially by organizations that fund them. This article describes how the McKinsey Organizational Capacity and Assessment Tool and, to a lesser extent, the Abt Associates survey have been used to assess changes in nonprofit capacity as part of nonprofit capacity-building programs.

· Drawing on field experience with both survey instruments in the context of a foundationfunded nonprofit capacity-building program, this article compares the respective benefits and costs of these instruments from the perspective of evaluators as well as survey respondents. …

2014 North County Senior Connections: Needs Assessment And Asset Mapping, Mary Jo Schumann, Crystal Trull

Seniors

In December 2013, the Rancho Santa Fe Foundation (RSFF) commissioned the Caster Center for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Research (Caster Center) at the University of San Diego to conduct a Phase I research study to provide RSFF Grants and Projects Committee (GPC) with relevant data and research needed to help make informed decisions about a new program titled “North County Senior Connections” (NCSC).

Assessing The Success And Evaluating The Benefits Of Government-Sponsored Regional Internet-Trading Platforms For Small And Medium Enterprises: A Western Australian Perspective, Denise E. Gengatharen

Denise E Gengatharen

The Internet has been viewed as an opportunity for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to efficiently compete in the global arena with their larger counterparts by overcoming distance and size. However, research has shown that actual uptake of Internet e-commerce by SMEs has been lagging behind that of larger companies. Fearing a growing digital divide between large companies and SMEs, some governments have taken specific measures to encourage SME participation in ecommerce. One of the more direct government initiatives to hasten the progression of SMEs on the e-commerce adoption curve is the creation, sponsorship and management of regional Internet trading …

Machine Learning Techniques And Use Of Event Information For Stock Market Prediction: A Survey And Evaluation, Paul D. Yoo, Maria H. Kim, Tony Jan

Maria Kim

This paper surveys machine learning techniques for stock market prediction. The prediction of stock markets is regarded as a challenging task of financial time series prediction. In this paper, we present recent developments in stock market prediction models, and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. In addition, we investigate various global events and their issues on predicting stock markets. From this survey, we found that incorporating event information with prediction model plays very important roles for more accurate prediction. Hence, an accurate event weighting method and a stable automated event extraction system are required to provide better performance in financial time …

Informing Destination Recommender Systems Design And Evaluation Through Quantitative Research, Ulrike Gretzel, Yeong-Hyeon Hwang, Daniel Fesenmaier

Ulrike Gretzel

Purpose - Destination recommender systems need to become truly human-centric in their design and functionality. This requires a profound understanding of human interactions with technology as well as human behavior related to information search and decision-making in the context of travel and tourism. This paper seeks to review relevant theories that can support the development and evaluation of destination recommender systems and to discuss how quantitative research can inform such theory building and testing. Design/methodology/approach - Based on a review of information search and decision-making literatures, a framework for the development of destination recommender systems is proposed and the implications …

An Evaluation Of The World's Major Airlines' Technical And Environmental Performance, Amir Arjomandi, Juergen Seufert

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

In this empirical study, we apply bootstrapped data envelopment analysis (DEA) models under variable returns to scale to examine both the environmental and technical efficiencies of airlines. Using the regional classification of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), we chose 48 of the world's major full-service and low-cost carriers from six different regions, and then estimated their performance over the period 2007-2010. Our empirical results show that many of the most technically efficient airlines are from China and North Asia, whilst many of the best environmental performers are from Europe. We also found that although the number of environmentally oriented …

Evaluation Of National And Industry-Specific Interventions On Coir Industry In India - A Special Reference To Kerala, Roshni Narendran

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

The purpose of the study is to delineate the impact of national and industry-specific government interventions and the influence of political parties in power. The study employs an interrupted time series design from the annual national coir export data (1970-2012) published by the Coir Board. The study concludes by highlighting that the significance of economic environment has a greater impact on the trends of coir exports than industry-specific interventions. A seminal finding of this study is that there is a significant difference in the coir exports during the period of governance by the two political fronts in Kerala.

If You Build It, They Will Come: Creating The Space And Support For Real-Time Strategic Learning, Jewlya Lynn, Rebecca Kahn, Phillip Chung, Scott Downes

The Foundation Review

· Learning is a key tool for foundations seeking to improve their effectiveness, and they are beginning to use evaluation to learn about and improve their strategies. The Colorado Trust took this a step further and integrated strategic learning into a grant strategy, including supporting learning coaches for 14 of their grantees.

· The strategic learning framework consisted of three steps: systematic data collection, collective interpretation of information, and the use of that interpretation to improve strategies.

· This article reviews four of the cases, including three grantees and the foundation as a case, identifying methods of learning and resulting …

A Mixed Methods Evaluation Of The Coastal Roots Program, Jenna Lachenaye

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Few evaluation-based studies of the LSU Coastal Roots™ program have been conducted over the 14-year life of the project. Teacher participant numbers and the scope of the program have grown since its inception, changing the face and shape of the program in each manifestation. A goal free approach to a mixed methods evaluation was employed to meet the exploratory nature of the investigation and to remain open to the myriad of possibilities within the program as it exists today. The exploratory sequential design employed qualitative methods in the early stages of the project through the collection and analysis of interview …

Goal-Free Evaluation: An Orientation For Foundations’ Evaluations, Brandon W. Youker, Allyssa Ingraham

The Foundation Review

· Goal-free evaluation (GFE), in program evaluation, is a model in which the official or stated program goals and objectives are withheld or screened from the evaluator.

· Several obstacles must be overcome in persuading foundations and programs to consider GFE as a viable option, because both tend to view goal attainment as intuitively and inextricably linked to evaluation.

· This article presents the case for GFE as a perspective that belongs in a foundation’s toolbox. In particular, this article demonstrates GFE’s actual use, highlights aspects of its methodology, and details its potential benefits.