Business Commons^™

When To Outsource The Sales Force For New Products, Valerie Good, Roger J. Calantone

Peer Reviewed Articles

Executives and researchers continue to seek factors that lead to new product success. While prior research has suggested that outsourcing the selling function can help make the innovation process leaner and limit future liability, outsourcing can also pose risks in terms of safeguarding both customer relationships and confidential innovation capabilities. Moreover, examining the effects of outsourcing has been identified as a key research priority in recent marketing literature. Thus, using privileged access to managers in the biochemical industry, we employed a multi-group analysis of 229 new products to investigate the effect of outsourcing the sales force on new product success. …

Failing To Be Family-Supportive: Implications For Supervisors, Benjamin M. Walsh

Peer Reviewed Articles

Family-supportive supervision benefits employees in many ways. But what are the implications for the supervisors themselves, particularly when this support is not extended? Drawing on social exchange theory, we frame family-supportive supervision as a desirable resource that when withheld may trigger negative social responses from employees. We hypothesize that workplace ostracism is a mechanism through which employees sanction supervisors who fail to be family-supportive, thereby harming supervisor well-being. Study 1 captured the employee perspective and utilized an experimental design to understand whether employees engage in ostracism in response to a lack of family-supportive supervision. In Study 2, we captured the …

Economic Impact Study: Kent County Parks, Grand Valley State University, Christian Glupker

Other Faculty Publications

This study will focus on the economic impact of Kent County Parks from three perspectives:

• Spending resulting from park visitors
• Revenue generated by Kaufman Golf Course and Millennium Park beach
• Spending by Kent County Parks

How Can Foundations Promote Impactful Collaboration?, Douglas Easterling, Laura Mcduffee

The Foundation Review

Funders are increasingly looking to interagency and cross-sector collaboration as a strategy to solve complex, large-scale issues, but many collaborative groups fail to generate an impact with their work. This is due in part to funders’ own practices, such as pre-specifying the problem to be solved or limiting their grantees’ ability to adjust their strategy.

The Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts has been intentional about facilitating the effectiveness of the collaborative groups it supports. Its Health Care & Health Promotion Synergy Initiative provides long-term funding and assistance with planning, evaluation and sustainability to groups that define the problems they want …

Growth Of Community-Based Giving Days In The United States: The Landscape And Effects, Catherine Humphries Brown, Abhishek Bhati

The Foundation Review

Over the past decade, local and regional community foundations across the United States have adopted “giving days” as a means to build awareness, bolster community pride, and raise money for local nonprofit organizations. Despite the increasing prevalence of giving days, little scholarly research has empirically examined this phenomenon and its impact, particularly at the local and regional levels.

To address these gaps, this article shares the findings of a study that examined similarities and differences across communities’ giving days and sought to evaluate the extent to which those days led to more giving at the community level.

While the study …

Leveraging Effective Consulting To Advance Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In Philanthropy, Stephanie Clohesy, Jara Dean-Coffey, Lisa Mcgill

The Foundation Review

In 2018, the National Network of Consultants to Grantmakers launched an initiative to sharpen the impact of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work in grantmaking by increasing the capacity of consultants and grantmakers engaged in these efforts. Network researchers used a systematic protocol to interview consultant members about their most effective partnerships with grantmakers. Case studies drawn from those interviews yielded valuable lessons for advancing DEI in philanthropy.

In sharing some of these lessons, this article advises consultants to be prepared to help grantmakers define or refine the meaning of DEI and understand where equity fits into their values and …

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Scaling Programs With Research Evidence And Effectiveness (Spree), Nan Maxwell, Scott Richman

The Foundation Review

Foundations can serve more people by identifying and supporting effective interventions that are ready to be scaled. This article describes a process called SPREE — Scaling Programs with Research Evidence and Effectiveness — that can help funders and their grantees scale successfully. Implementing this process can assist foundations in using evaluation research as a tool to determine which interventions are likely to produce desired outcomes, and to identify which organizations are ready to scale them. The SPREE process is grounded in evaluation and implementation science frameworks and has been applied since 2016 by the Corporation for National and Community Service. …

Publicness And The Identity Of Public Foundations, Alexandra Williamson, Belinda Luke

The Foundation Review

This article investigates understandings of publicness in the context of public foundations in Australia by examining how perceptions of publicness inform and influence the practice and conduct of those grantmaking foundations. As part of a broader study on perceptions of accountability and identity in Australian foundations, the article provides empirical evidence from interviews with managers and trustees from a diverse group of public foundations suggesting that understandings and applications of two dimensions of publicness were significant: donations, or public money; and grantmaking, or public benefit. Further elements of publicness were expressed around foundations’ visibility and the transparency of their operations. …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue 11.3

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Using A Decision-Making Placemat To Inform Strategy, Christine Baker Mitton, Adrienne Mundorf, Kris Putnam-Walkerly, Susanna Krey

The Foundation Review

Strategic planning in philanthropy allows board and staff to articulate and commit to their priorities and set a plan for how to accomplish a foundation’s goals. To do so requires the processing and sharing of complex internal and external information amid the competing priorities and commitments of multiple stakeholders.

This article explores the development and use of a decision-making placemat tool to inform the strategic shift of the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland's place-based program area. The foundation has focused its work on housing, health, education, and disparities in outcomes for Cleveland, Ohio, residents who are living in poverty, …

Strengthening Support For Grantees: Four Lessons For Foundations, Anna J. Bettis, Susan Pepin

The Foundation Review

As society becomes more interconnected, the problems nonprofits are tasked with addressing require systems work. It is imperative for funders to adapt not only to the challenges faced by the organizations they fund, but also to the dynamic social systems within which they aim to effect change. This requires new approaches that are responsive to community needs and address the known challenges in grantor-grantee relationships.

This article offers a new perspective on the role of private foundations and four key lessons for strengthening funder support. These learnings build upon existing research and were gleaned from a qualitative analysis of data …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Better Together: Engaging Stakeholders In Learning And Leadership To Guide Foundation Resources Toward Adaptive Systems Change, Nadine Long, Kimber P. Richter, Jennifer Elise Avers, Rick Cagan

The Foundation Review

In 2014, the Kansas Health Foundation brought together a group of knowledgeable stakeholders from a multitude of specialties to focus on reducing tobacco use specifically among Kansans with mental illness. Over 15 months, the group and the foundation worked to learn deeply about the issue and inform action that could be taken on individual, organizational, and systemic levels.

The wealth of knowledge and experience brought by each participant to the discussion and learning about this complex issue, together from a range of perspectives, resulted in a more productive dialogue. The model proved very effective, as evidenced by the group’s success …

Below The Waterline: Developing A Transformational Learning Collaborative For Foundation Program Officers, Annie Martinie, Jaime Love, Michael Kelly, Kirsten Dueck, Sarah Strunk

The Foundation Review

Learning from fellow grantmakers is imperative in today’s ever-changing world. In late 2016, four health legacy foundations partnered to launch the Health Legacy Collaborative Learning Circle, creating an opportunity to understand not just the participating foundations’ visible investments and programs, but also the underlying behaviors, structures, and mindsets that ultimately explain why certain results were or were not achieved.

This article describes the yearlong process of creating the collaborative, and presents a new learning framework — based on the iceberg metaphor — that can be used to create learning environments that test and expand assumptions about promising approaches to common …

Book Review: Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy And Making Every Dollar Count, Paul G. Putman

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

From Idea To Initiative: Real-Time Learning For A Funder Collaborative On Nonprofit Strategic Restructuring, Way-Ting Chen, Lynn Alvarez, Carrie Harlow, Shannon Johnson, Jennifer Price-Letscher

The Foundation Review

Evaluation and learning is often seen as a high-stakes, formalized process of comparing an effort at its conclusion against some standard or benchmark. More recently, formative and developmental approaches to evaluation have been created to accommodate the need for more adaptability and ambiguity in an effort.

The Nonprofit Sustainability Initiative, a multiyear collaboration of 17 funders in Los Angeles County, California, supports nonprofit organizations to collaborate and restructure in a variety of forms. As the initiative evolved, its evaluation and learning system had to have the ability to evolve with it. Real-time learning informed initiative design and refinement, aligned funders …

Learning Together: Cohort-Based Capacity Building And The Ripple Effects Of Collaboration, Sonia Taddy-Sandino, Mary Gray, Danielle Scaturro

The Foundation Review

Foundations frequently commission evaluations and are the primary audiences for findings. Grantee organizations, however, often don’t see the results, or they find in them limited value and relevance to their own work. Funders like the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation are quietly disrupting this status quo by exploring ways to fully engage grantees, co-funders, technical consultants, and evaluators in collective learning and reflection.

The foundation’s comprehensive, cohort-based capacity-building program, PropelNext, was designed to enhance the performance of promising nonprofits that serve America’s disadvantaged youth. With a combination of financial support, individualized coaching, and peer-learning sessions, grantees engage in a test-and-learn cycle …

Full Issue #11.2 On Collaborative Learning

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

More Than Listening: Harnessing The Power Of Feedback To Drive Collaborative Learning, Clare Nolan, Kim Ammann Howard, Kelley D. Gulley, Elizabeth Gonzalez

The Foundation Review

Foundations can and should do a better job of gathering feedback from and learning with both grantees and the communities they seek to serve. This type of collaborative learning has the potential to inform and strengthen foundation strategy, grantmaking practices, evaluation, and communications. Gathering meaningful input is difficult, however, given power dynamics between foundations and those they support. Even when authentic input has been gathered, it can be difficult to apply insights to ongoing work.

What does it look like for a foundation to get feedback from its grantee and community stakeholders? Much of the feedback discussions taking place in …

Executive Summary

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Designing For Emergence: The Mccune Charitable Foundation Grows Agency Across New Mexico, Marilyn Darling, Heidi Sparkes Guber, Jillaine Smith, Wendy Lewis

The Foundation Review

The impact of the inherent power imbalance in the grantmaker/grantee relationship has come into particular focus as equity and justice have become a greater priority for philanthropy. This article looks at the example of the McCune Charitable Foundation, which deliberately designed an emergent strategy approach that establishes clear goals and then created a platform to permit a reversal of that power dynamic, so that leadership for priorities comes from those closest to the work.

The authors launched a two-year project to research what emergence might look like in seven complex social-change initiatives, and how the strategy could grow agency and …

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Learning About Neighborhood Change Through Funder-Grantee Collaboration, Debra Dahab, Brooke Finn, Lois Greco, Nancy Kopf

The Foundation Review

NeighborWorks America and the Wells Fargo Regional Foundation support change in communities through a rigorous and structured collaborative learning framework that places the resident voice and experience at the center of learning. Both funders regularly engage in collaborative learning processes with their grantees and partners to support local revitalization practices and inform program and grantmaking strategies.

This article examines the key ingredients and processes needed to develop and sustain collaborative learning among grantee organizations, community residents, and other stakeholders and funding partners, as well as the critical role played by technical assistance providers.

The authors reflect on their experience with …

Evaluating For The Bigger Picture: Breaking Through The Learning And Evaluation Barriers To Advancing Community Systems-Change Field Knowledge, Thomas Kelly, Prudence Brown, Hanh Cao Yu, Marie Colombo

The Foundation Review

Foundations investing in community systems change often fail to prioritize field-level and cross-initiative evaluation questions in building initiatives. As a result, many of the documented evaluations of such investments lack translatable lessons specific and influential enough to drive related decisions and actions of others in the field.

This article developed from ongoing, multiyear peer learning across several foundations that collectively compiled recommendations for community systems-change funders and evaluators to implement more powerful evaluations. They are intended to help funders and evaluators engaged in these efforts build sectorwide knowledge capable of informing improved work across initiatives and communities. This article also …

Communicating For Project Management Success: Pro-Tips From Accidental Project Managers, Annie Bélanger, Preethi Gorecki, Jesus Espinoza

Presentations

Library professionals are often asked to lead projects; yet, few are given the training to proceed with confidence. This session will address major aspects of a successful project communication and management: understanding how to propose projects; skills and tools to initiate, plan, and manage projects efficiently and effectively; and knowing how to wrangle the tasks that make up projects. We will also cover how to communicate and lead through influence within a project team setting.

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.