Business Commons^™

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Aligning Evaluation And Strategy With The Mission Of A Community-Focused Foundation, Claudio Balestri

The Foundation Review

Foundations are commonly recognized as having a comparative advantage in supporting forward-looking projects and programs. In this sense, the long term represents the natural horizon in which the foundations are called to fulfill their mission to plan and develop philanthropic activities and, therefore, the time reference for assessing results.

When a mission is focused more on improving the quality of life in a specific community than on addressing a specific social problem, evaluation of outcomes becomes more challenging. While available methods can provide valuable support to measuring the impact of a foundation’s specific program, they are unlikely to provide an …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

In A Good Way: Advancing Funder Collaborations To Promote Health In Indian Country, Linda M. Bosma, Jaime Martínez, Nicole Toves Villaluz, Christine A. Tholkes, Laraye Anderson, Sarah Brokenleg, Christine M. Matter

The Foundation Review

Funders continue to be challenged by how to best promote work in American Indian communities that builds health equity, addresses community context, and reduces the disproportionate impact of commercial tobacco.

In particular, public health programs that address substance abuse and tobacco control promote the use of evidence-based practices that tend to emphasize a one-size-fits-all approach and that are rarely researched among American Indian populations. These practices, therefore, lack cultural validity in those communities.

This article examines how three organizations collaborated on work to control commercial tobacco use in Minnesota’s Indian Country, and shares lessons learned on how they came to …

Crisis Philanthropy: Two Responses To The Pulse Tragedy In Orlando, Cindy T. Rizzo

The Foundation Review

This article examines two philanthropic responses to the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016, a tragedy that particularly impacted the region’s growing Latinx LGBT community.

The Central Florida Foundation’s Better Together Fund and the Our Fund Foundation’s Contigo Fund, while organized and operating in different ways, looked to best practices in crisis philanthropy and, in the wake of the massacre, provided the region with resources to address both short- and longer-term needs.

Better Together practiced strategic philanthropy focused on addressing systemic issues. Contigo lifted up new and diverse leadership from the grassroots. Each …

Family Foundation Development In China: Two Case Studies, Shuang Lu, Chien-Chung Huang

The Foundation Review

Amid the accumulation of private wealth in China, family foundations have begun to emerge in recent decades. Little research, however, has explored this nascent phenomenon. This article examines the development of two Chinese family foundations — the Lao Niu Foundation and the Lu Jiaxiang Foundation — using document analyses and semi-structured interviews with foundation leaders.

While detailed data on program effectiveness and efficiency is lacking because of underdeveloped methods of evaluation, it is evident that both foundations have generated positive impacts on social development despite an overall lack of support for the foundation sector from Chinese government policy.

The case …

Pci: A Reflective Evaluation Framework For Systems Change, Beverly A. Parsons, Huilan Krenn

The Foundation Review

Systemic change involves deep shifts in social norms, beliefs, power, and privilege — and seldom, if ever, follows a straightforward, predictable path. Such change also requires incremental, long-term action and evaluation. To better support systemic change, how might a foundation reframe its approach to evaluation?

This article explores the interconnected dimensions of the PCI Reflective Evaluation Framework, an approach now in prototype form which is grounded in practical thinking about working within complex social systems. This article focuses on its use in advancing racial equity, describing possible applications to integrate a racial equity lens in unpacking and addressing the complexity …

Becoming Strategic: Finding Leverage Over The Social And Economic Determinants Of Health, Douglas Easterling, Laura Mcduffee

The Foundation Review

While a number of observers have offered advice to foundations on how to be more effective with the implementation, evaluation, and adaptation of their strategies, there is little guidance on how foundations should go about designing their strategies.

This study fills that gap by analyzing the strategic thinking of health conversion foundations when they determined how they would address various social determinants of health. Based on interviews conducted with the leaders of 33 foundations across the U.S., we identified four strategic pathways: expanding and improving relevant services, creating more effective systems, changing policy, and encouraging more equitable power structures.

In …

Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Foundation Transparency: Opacity — It’S Complicated, Robert J. Reid

The Foundation Review

The perception that private foundations lack accountability has led to calls for greater transparency. The literature, however, suggests that transparency is neither a panacea nor achieved without cost, and that its positive influence on the conduct of philanthropy may be less than straightforward.

This article seeks to examine transparent and opaque practice in private philanthropy, studying the literature as well as findings from interviews with foundation staff, trustees, and grantees that sought answers to two relevant questions: Does opacity exist in private philanthropy? Have foundations and grantees developed strategies for overcoming challenges related to opacity?

U.S. tax law affords private …

Review -- Design Thinking For The Greater Good: Innovation In The Social Sector, Brenda Sipe

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Newfoundland And Labrador’S Vital Signs: Portrait Of A Foundation-University Partnership, Ainsley Hawthorn, Sandra Brennan, Robert Greenwood

The Foundation Review

Vital Signs, a national program of Community Foundations of Canada, produces annual reports of the same name that examine the quality of life using statistics on fundamental social issues. With these reports, community foundations are able to present a comprehensive and balanced picture of well-being in their communities.

The Vital Signs report for Newfoundland and Labrador is produced in partnership between the Community Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development, a university research unit with expertise in both promoting community-based research and making academic information accessible to the general public.

This article …

Middle-Range Theorizing On Logistics Customer Service, Daniel Pellathy, Joonhwan In, Diane A. Mollenkopf, Theodore P. Stank

Peer Reviewed Articles

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a systematic application of middle-range theorizing, which pays particular attention to contexts and mechanisms, can be used to extend current knowledge on logistics customer service (LCS) in a number of critical areas.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper applies Stank et al.’s (2017) framework for middle-ranging theorizing in logistics to develop a research framework and agenda that can guide future LCS research. Results are generated through a review of the LCS literature and an application of the main concepts of middle-range theorizing.

Findings – The paper outlines opportunities for middle-range research …

Voices From The Borders Of Governance: Connecting The Local Narratives Of Surplus Populations, Dan Balfour, Brittany Gray

Peer Reviewed Articles - Public, Nonprofit, and Health Administration

In the globalized political economy of the early 21st century, national borders are both porous and heavily guarded. In a fluid global economic system, governing borders has become all the more important and difficult, the last frontier of mobility. The stories of Maria that follow are emblematic of what happens when human mobility tries to follow the paths of opportunity and safety in a global society open to free movement of money and goods, but not people (at least not those of limited means). The stories presented in this paper provide an example of connecting multiple narratives (Balfour and Mesaros …

Book Review: Generation Impact: How Next Gen Donors Are Revolutionizing Giving, Elenore Garton

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Teri Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Community Foundation-Led Giving Days: Understanding Donor Satisfaction And Philanthropic Patterns, Benjamin S. Bingle

The Foundation Review

This article examines Give Local America 2016, a giving day beset by a technology failure that created challenges for donors and community foundations throughout the United States, and explores the experiences of donors as giving day participants.

Philanthropic giving days have gained popularity as opportunities for community foundations to engage new donors, create excitement about organized philanthropy, and democratize charitable giving. This article, examining survey data collected after a giving day led by a community foundation in northern Illinois, provides unique insight into donor satisfaction levels, opinions, and giving patterns.

Data suggest that giving days are not crowding out donations …

Transforming Coalition Leadership: An Evaluation Of A Collaborative Leadership Training Program, Jung Y. Kim, Todd Honeycutt, Michaella Morzuch

The Foundation Review

Effective coalitions need leaders who are able to reach beyond individual, group, and sectoral boundaries to advance a shared vision for healthy and thriving communities. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation partnered with the Center for Creative Leadership to create a one-year pilot, the Community Coalition Leadership Program, to test a new approach to providing training in collaborative leadership.

This article discusses the program, whether and how it improved participants’ individual and coalition leadership skills, and the implications for foundations and other entities seeking to increase interdependent leadership capacity within community coalitions. This article does not, however, intend to describe progress …

Inside The Black Box: Investigating Philanthropic Foundation Strategies In A Dynamic Environment, Amanda Stewart

The Foundation Review

Foundations have been described as black boxes — implying that we know very little about what happens between inputs and outputs. We do know that they operate in dynamic environments and must adopt strategies to be effective in the face of change. This article, which examines the strategies of 29 foundations operating in one southeastern state, provides fresh insights into how foundations fulfill their missions.

The article is based on a research study that used semistructured interviews to explore how foundations approached grantmaking. Interviewees discussed the multiple and simultaneous roles played by grantmakers in addition to their traditional check-writing function. …

Philanthropy: Evidence In Favor Of A Profession, Heather L. Carpenter

The Foundation Review

Philanthropic employees have been cautious in implying that they are pursuing a career in philanthropy. Karl Stauber (2010) presented an argument in support of such caution: that philanthropy failed to meet all seven standards posited by Burton J. Bledstein, that when met, define a profession.

This article presents a literature review and findings from a survey of 500 members of the Council on Foundations that offer evidence for the counterargument that philanthropic work requires specialized education and training to master a set of core competencies.

While this article does not argue for or against the question, determining whether philanthropy as …

Funder Collaborations — Flourish Or Flounder?, William Porter, Kelly James, Robert Medina, Barbara Chow

The Foundation Review

Funders regularly collaborate to leverage their influence, channel their funding, and mobilize grantees in the same direction. Our sector’s default assumption is that more collaboration is better — even as too many collaborations end with a whimper instead of a bang. Why do some funder collaborations flourish, and others flounder?

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Education First participated in a half-dozen joint funding efforts to support the success of the Common Core State Standards in the nation’s K–12 public education system. Looking critically at these efforts, we learned lessons about why some collaborations are more effective.

Funder collaborations …

Looking In The Mirror: Equity In Practice For Philanthropy, Ashlee Young, Jaime Love, Nancy Csuti, Christopher J. King

The Foundation Review

Philanthropy still needs to be reminded that there is no such thing as a post-racial America, and that systemic racism continues to underlie the problems foundation funding attempts to address. While many foundations have found it challenging to address equity in their grantmaking, they have found that process far more comfortable than addressing equity within their own organizations.

This article will describe the efforts of three foundations in various stages of seeing themselves through an equity lens: the Consumer Health Foundation, The Colorado Trust, and Interact for Health. This article will discuss why these foundations are on this journey, what …

Generative Philanthropy: Long-Term Investments In Economic Opportunity, Bob Giloth

The Foundation Review

Generative philanthropy is a collaborative investment practice that tests prototypes and identifies new opportunities that, over time, can focus direction and generate momentum for change. It is an incremental, decentralized approach to investment in communities.

This article’s purpose is to clarify the theory and practice of generative philanthropy and contrast it with other approaches. It provides an in-depth discussion of the meaning of generative philanthropy, offers five examples of the approach related to economic opportunity, and draws lessons for future practice.

Generative philanthropy offers a framework for understanding and enriching philanthropy’s long-term role and collaboration with partners from a developmental …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Considerations For Measuring The Impact Of Policy-Relevant Research, Megan Collado, Lauren Gerlach, Caroline Ticse, Katherine Hempstead

The Foundation Review

Philanthropy, and the research and analysis it supports, has an important role to play in informing policy and making government more effective. Yet all too often, foundations and other research funders struggle to understand whether and how their investments have affected policy.

This article highlights the findings of an 18-month pilot project conducted by AcademyHealth to help the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation better understand the impact of a subset of the foundation’s research grants, across investment types, on health insurance coverage and health reform, and to help inform how the foundation may more systematically track and measure the impact of …

Liberal Vs. Professional Advertising Education: A National Survey Of Practitioners, Robin Spring, Alex Nesterenko

Peer Reviewed Articles

The issue of liberal vs. professional education is central to the conversation about advertising education. Practitioners influence the development of advertising curricula, so it is necessary to have data representing their views. A national survey was conducted with 366 practitioners in the United States. Findings show that practitioners believe a four-year college degree is important. They also believe that the best educational format includes a balance of liberal and professional education. Practitioners believe soft skills should be taught, though the most attainable entry-level jobs require digital technology skills. Digital technology also is identified as the most significant challenge for the …