Business Commons^™

Insights From Deploying A Collaborative Process For Funding Systems Change, Alison Mccarthy, Jacob Bornstein, Tiffany Perrin, Jennifer James, Bill Fulton

The Foundation Review

Many foundations are seeking to impact root causes of social issues through funding initiatives that are both technically and socially complicated and where past experience is no guarantee of success. These situations exhibit the growing need for more adaptive funding approaches, such as emergent philanthropy.

This article looks at an application of emergent strategy at the Colorado Health Foundation. It shares tools used to design the funding approach for the foundation’s Creating Healthy Schools initiative, including support for grantees in refining their grant-proposal budgets and activities, decreasing duplication, and leveraging resources more effectively.

This article will look at lessons learned, …

Editorial, Teri Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Using Technology To Monitor Honey Bee (Apis Mellifera) Winter Clusters: A Study In Comparative Advantages Of Thermal Imaging And Temperature/Humidity Sensing Technologies, Andrea Kress

Honors Projects

Introduction: Wintertime is difficult for many beekeepers, as honey bees must keep themselves warm and dry while surviving on food stores from previous seasons ^[4]. Honey bees are able to survive such cold temperatures by vibrating their bodies in a cluster, which moves throughout the hive, to keep themselves and the queen warm and dry ^[4]. Outside temperatures greatly influence the efficiency of the internal cluster of the hive ^[4]. Honey bee colonies have the most efficient (i.e. least amount of energy spent and least amount of food stores used) clusters when the outside temperature is between …

From Shelf To Screen: Marketing In The Digital Age, Anna Bouwkamp

Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Economic Impact Analysis On Olympic Host-Cities, Michael P. Overmyer

Honors Projects

When a city decides to undertake an Olympic Games, they do so with the notion that hosting the Olympics will provide many direct financial benefits to the city in addition to countless other indirect benefits. Like many activities, the Summer-Olympic Games tend to be more popular when it is warm, and this paper will focus on only the previous five Summer Olympic Games. As host cities look to cash in on the Olympic Games popularity, the number of Olympic infrastructure projects has skyrocketed, leaving many cities with facilities that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and nothing to …

Preparing For The Merit-Based Incentive Payment Structure: A Value-Based Business Plan, Ali R. Saheb

Doctoral Projects

The notion of delivering value-based care while maintaining corporate vitality in health care is a multifaceted process. Shaping a business model to reflect this process requires the alignment of quality implications, reimbursement initiatives, a framework that takes into account stipulations on reimbursement for different types of clinicians, and an understanding and preparedness for emerging guidelines and nationally recognized structures for quality indicators. When organizations recognize the need for change, but are not yet prepared to implement it, a comprehensive business plan can help the organization visualize a path to success. In this project, the foundation of requirements for a value-based …

Tuition Toss Up: An Economic Analysis Of Public And Private University Tuition And Fees, Alex Nannetti

Honors Projects

In a society where post-secondary education is a near necessity, examining the true cost of university is an important factor to consider when determining the benefits of higher education. While the long run career benefits of a bachelor’s degree are undeniable, the exponential rise in university tuition is a concern for many. This paper examines public and private universities ranked in U.S. News and World Report’s Best Colleges Ranking: National Universities Ranking and analyzes their fiscal and academic differences. Using economic analysis, the following attempts to determine if public or private universities are a better overall investment when considering the …

Hierarchy In The Medical Field, Rachel M. Eaton

Honors Projects

Prior to volunteering in a southern United States hospital setting I had only my preconceptions of hierarchy in medicine, but this hospital had a different reality. At the hospital, I noticed a decreased sensitivity to the hierarchical structure of medical professionals in the hospital. I was able to learn that these professionals intermingled very well. As a volunteer on a floor, I could not even differentiate between the different professions, as they all wore similar uniforms and interacted with everyone on the floor. While participating in this volunteer program, I noticed how the health professionals at Arkansas Children’s Hospital used …

The Laker Dream: A Short Guide For Grand Valley Students, Lucas Escalada

Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

End-Game Evaluation: Building A Legacy Of Learning In A Limited-Life Foundation, Ashleigh Halverstadt, Benjamin Kerman

The Foundation Review

This article shares the emerging hypotheses of two foundations, The Atlantic Philanthropies and the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation — each four years from sunset — about the opportunities and challenges for evaluation in the limited-life context.

Few, if any, of the problems philanthropy seeks to address can be solved within a brief, defined time frame. Limited-life foundations can only strive to move the ball down the field before they sunset, and then enlist others to carry the work forward. Given this reality, these foundations are obligated to make a deliberate effort to share what they have learned with the …

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.

Evaluation At Sunset: Considerations When Evaluating A Program As It Concludes, Blair Beadnell, Holly Carmichael Djang, Jan Vanslyke, Barbara Andersen

The Foundation Review

While the benefits of beginning evaluation efforts at a program’s inception are well known, for a variety of reasons many organizations are unable to do so and instead begin these efforts closer to a program’s conclusion.

Previously reported findings from a sunset evaluation of the Orfalea Foundation’s School Food Initiative showed positive outcomes of the initiative’s activities and provided recommendations for organizations interested in engaging in similar efforts. Because the evaluation was begun as the foundation’s activities were winding down, it required creative design approaches.

This article uses the evaluation of the Orfalea Foundation’s initiative to provide a case example …

Partnership With Government: An Exit Strategy For Philanthropies?, Colin Knox, Padraic Quirk

The Foundation Review

This article is a case study of Atlantic Philanthropies’ work in Northern Ireland, where it supported three thematic intervention areas: aging; children and young people; and reconciliation and human rights. Atlantic, a limited-life foundation that has been making grants since 1982 in eight countries, will close down by 2020 and is engaged in an exit strategy.

Atlantic’s original funding approach involved supporting key nongovernmental organizations to drive and advocate for change; its work helped to support and consolidate the peace process in that country. Its exit strategy has involved a formal partnership arrangement with the Northern Ireland Assembly to take …

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Barbara Kibbe

The Foundation Review

What do funders leave behind when they exit? What is lost? Are there approaches to exits that are more effective at preserving the results of good work? Through interviews with 19 professionals who have experienced or are currently working through a foundation exit, this article draws on stories of more than a dozen such exits to fill the gaps in what is known about how to exit well.

This article discusses four areas where foundation exits present particular challenges and where there are significant opportunities to improve practice – deciding on and planning to exit, funder leadership, clear communication, and …

Exiting From Large-Scale Initiatives: Lessons And Insights From A National Scan Of Philanthropy, Hanh Cao Yu, Moninder-Mona K. Jhawar, Daniela Berman

The Foundation Review

This article shares insights and lessons from a research project commissioned by The California Endowment in early 2016 to inform the planning for its transition out of Building Healthy Communities, a 10-year, place-based, policy- and systems-change initiative. The goal of the nationwide study, which included literature reviews and interviews with 30 executives and directors from 17 foundations, was to tap into philanthropic leaders’ accumulated wisdom about exiting out of similar initiatives.

In generalizing the study’s findings for the broader philanthropic audience, this article presents a guiding framework for exit and sustainability planning in the form of a set of recommendations …

Exiting Is A Natural Part Of Philanthropy — Learning From It? Not So Much., Debra Joy Perez

The Foundation Review

Commentary

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Changing In Place: The Skillman Foundation, Detroit, And The Good Neighborhoods Initiative -- How Did A Hometown Grantmaker Conduct And Conclude Its Largest-Ever Initiative?, Marie Colombo, Bob Tobin

The Foundation Review

At work where Detroit’s kids live. In 2006, the Skillman Foundation committed $100 million to a decade-long investment in six neighborhoods. (See Figure 1, page 83.) Through this Good Neighborhoods Initiative, the foundation directed a majority of its grantmaking toward an intensive focus on changing the conditions where, at the time, one-third of Detroit’s children lived. The goal was to ensure that children in those places were safe, healthy, welleducated, and prepared for adulthood.

The initiative concluded in 2016, ultimately spanning 11 years and involving $122 million in grants, which represented 67 percent of the Foundation’s total grant spending in …

Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

The Legacy Of A Philanthropic Exit: Lessons From The Evaluation Of The Hewlett Foundation’S Nuclear Security Initiative, Anne Gienapp, Jane Reisman, David Shorr, Amy Arbreton

The Foundation Review

As its seven-year Nuclear Security Initiative wound down in late 2014, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation engaged ORS Impact to conduct a summative evaluation. That evaluation yielded insights pertinent to future work on nuclear security and other fields where policy-related investments, strategies, and goals are prioritized, as well as insights regarding Hewlett’s approach to the initiative exit.

During the life of the initiative, significant changes in the geopolitical landscape influenced both the relevance and the expected pace of advancement of its established goals and targets. Rather than focusing on whether identified targets had been achieved in a narrow “success/failure” …

The Economic Impact Of The Huron River, Grand Valley State University, Paul Isely, Christian Glupker, Erik E. Nordman, Julie M. Cowie, Hailey Lamay

Other Faculty Publications

The Huron River and Huron River Water Trail are estimated to have the following economic impact on the five-county region in which they are located:

• $53.5M in annual economic output, which is the sum of $29.9M in direct spending and $23.6M in indirect and induced spending
• 641 local jobs added to the region
• $628M in added property value
• $150M in annual environmental value
• 2.6M visitor days

New Frontiers In Logistics Research: Theorizing At The Middle Range, Theodore P. Stank, Daniel Pellathy, Joonhwan In, Diane A. Mollenkopf, John E. Bell

Peer Reviewed Articles

Logistics has evolved from a description-based discipline to one based upon theoretical grounding from other business disciplines to define, explain and understand complex interrelationships, resulting in the identification of the discipline’s primary domain and major concepts – the “what’s” of logistics. General theories, however, lack the domain specificity critical to understanding the inner workings within key relationships – the how’s, why’s and when’s – that drive actual outcomes. Middle-range theorizing enables researchers to focus on these inner workings to develop a deeper understanding of the degree to, and conditions under which, logistics phenomena impact outcomes as well as the mechanisms …

The Economic Impact Of The Frederik Meijer Gardens And Sculpture Park, Grand Valley State University, Christian Glupker, Paul Isely

Other Faculty Publications

The Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park supports or contributes: • 804 jobs in Kent County annually

• A $75.2 million economic output annually
• Visitors from outside the county who directly spend $19.6 million at businesses around Kent County annually.
• Construction that created 39 jobs during the last year.
• 86% of the visitor spending is the result spending by individuals that do not live in Kent County.
• Nonresidents spent an average $129 per group outside the venue during their visit to Meijer Gardens while in Kent County.

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Aiming High: Foundation Support For State Advocates Brings Universal Children’S Health Coverage Within Reach, Sheila Dunleavy Hoag, Debra J. Lipson, Victoria Peebles

The Foundation Review

To help close the children’s health insurance coverage gap in the United States, in 2011 the Atlantic Philanthropies created the Kids- Well Campaign. KidsWell’s theory of change posits that if advocates could leverage new funding and coverage opportunities created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, they could expand the number of children with health insurance coverage.

This article presents the major results of the KidsWell evaluation, which found substantial progress in achieving KidsWell interim policy changes and coverage outcomes. But advocates still have a full agenda, which means grantees and funders need to redouble efforts to educate the …

Lessons About Evaluating Health-Coverage Advocacy Across Multiple Campaigns And Foundations, Leslie Foster, Mary Harrington, Sheila Hoag, Debra Lipson

The Foundation Review

This article draws on a dozen years’ experience in evaluating major consumerhealth advocacy initiatives to build the knowledge base about advocacy evaluation. The authors explain how their evaluations were strengthened by articulating a detailed theory of change and emphasizing assessment of interim outcomes from many perspectives and methods.

Even with comprehensive data and integrated analysis, however, some ambiguity in the results is inevitable; there is no completely objective way to determine the effectiveness of an advocacy initiative. Moreover, sometimes solid or even exceptional advocacy efforts do not lead to desired policy outcomes. Advocacy initiatives that fail initially may be groundwork …