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Articles 31 - 60 of 303
Full-Text Articles in Business
Book Review: Changing Systems, Changing Lives: Reflecting On 20 Years, Kennedy Musyoka, Emily Irungu, Margaret F. Sloan
Book Review: Changing Systems, Changing Lives: Reflecting On 20 Years, Kennedy Musyoka, Emily Irungu, Margaret F. Sloan
The Foundation Review
No abstract provided.
Community Building As A Philosophy, Not An Initiative, Anne C. Kubisch, Kasi Allen, Max Gimbel
Community Building As A Philosophy, Not An Initiative, Anne C. Kubisch, Kasi Allen, Max Gimbel
The Foundation Review
What happens when a foundation invests in community building for the long haul? The Ford Family Foundation, a rural embedded funder in southern Oregon, has made that transition over the past decade. The result is a transformed organization with a 10-year strategic plan focused on helping rural communities build the futures that they want to see — places where children and families can thrive.
The foundation is pursuing community building not as a stand-alone strategy or “initiative,” but as a philosophy that guides local community development efforts based on capacity building and grantmaking based on partnerships. The shift to a …
Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens
Editorial, Teri Behrens
A Promising Place-Based Collaborative Impact Investing Fund Strengthens Community And Informs Philanthropic Practice, Benjamin Kerman, Clara Miller
A Promising Place-Based Collaborative Impact Investing Fund Strengthens Community And Informs Philanthropic Practice, Benjamin Kerman, Clara Miller
The Foundation Review
A recent evaluation of the Western New York Impact Investment Fund adds to the proof-of-concept literature regarding “doing good and doing well” while pointing to experience-based best practices in philanthropic impact investing. Born of a collaboration between regional and national philanthropies, the fund brings together corporate, individual, and philanthropic investors to deliver an inclusive impact investment mechanism. Founded in 2017, the fund evolved from concept to operating entity, focusing on mitigating capital gaps, longterm economic decline, and wealth divides.
Evaluation at Year 5 describes how the professionally managed, collaboratively governed fund has attracted and deployed capital, contributing to ecosystem improvements …
The Field-Building And Grantee Experimentation Role Of Foundations In Impact Investing As Illustrated By A Gender-Lens Investing Case Example, Courtney Bolinson, Laura Allan
The Field-Building And Grantee Experimentation Role Of Foundations In Impact Investing As Illustrated By A Gender-Lens Investing Case Example, Courtney Bolinson, Laura Allan
The Foundation Review
This article argues for foundations to play two critical roles in the impact investing ecosystem: to commission and/or support research that helps build more equitable and socially just impact investing and to fund grantee-specific experimentation in areas of impact investing and social enterprise that are nascent or developing.
To illustrate what this can look like, this article presents action research conducted on gender-lens investing, describing in detail a 2019 Mastercard Foundation grant to Engineers Without Borders Canada. The project involved two main goals: testing and developing gender-lens investing tools and processes with seed-stage investees during pre- or post-investment phases and …
The Ford Foundation’S Work To Build The Field Of Impact Investing, Margot Brandenburg, Abeda Iqbal
The Ford Foundation’S Work To Build The Field Of Impact Investing, Margot Brandenburg, Abeda Iqbal
The Foundation Review
Impact investing has grown dramatically over the past 15 years, with foundations playing a critical role through their program-related and, increasingly, mission-related investments. A smaller number, including the Ford Foundation, have dedicated grant and other programmatic resources toward growing the field. Without this funding, the metrics, engagement, policies, and norms needed to underpin capital markets at scale will be slow to materialize.
This article looks back at the long history of aligning financial investments with social values; touches on the Ford Foundation’s pioneering role in the emergence of PRIs as a tool to stretch grantmaking budgets; and details the impact …
Donor-Advised Funds And Impact Investing: A Practitioner’S View, Sam Marks
Donor-Advised Funds And Impact Investing: A Practitioner’S View, Sam Marks
The Foundation Review
Any discussion of foundations embracing impact investing must include some discussion of one of the largest — and growing — sources of philanthropic capital: donor-advised funds. These philanthropic accounts allow donors of all sizes to access many of the functions of a private foundation, including the potential to invest for impact. Sponsors of these funds, however, face unique challenges in catalyzing impact investments.
Like the larger institutional foundations that have led the way as mission investors, sponsors must often educate and inspire governance boards and investment committees. Unlike foundations with professional program staff, decisions regarding philanthropic resources at sponsors of …
Using Foundation Capital For Good: Opportunities In The Balance Sheet, John Sherman, Veronica Olazabal
Using Foundation Capital For Good: Opportunities In The Balance Sheet, John Sherman, Veronica Olazabal
The Foundation Review
Foundations increasingly use their full balance sheets to unlock more of their capital for good. They look beyond conventional grantmaking to pursue their charitable purposes in many ways that exemplify innovative, full-balance sheet approaches: investing in nonprofit and for-profit companies that offer clear social and financial returns; investing their corpus in companies whose products and services align with their missions; using social bonds to inject new resources into their programs; offering guarantees to help grantees manage risk; and avoiding companies whose practices run counter to their grantees’ efforts.
This article looks at the structures, pathways, and tools for foundations wanting …
Defining Your Double Bottom Line: Philanthropy And The Investment Landscape, Stephane Ligonde, Garrett De Temple, Tuokpe Ajuyah
Defining Your Double Bottom Line: Philanthropy And The Investment Landscape, Stephane Ligonde, Garrett De Temple, Tuokpe Ajuyah
The Foundation Review
Grantmaking traditionally has been at the heart of philanthropy, whereas impact was the exclusive expectation of any desired result. While there is still a place for this kind of pure push for change, many investors today expect more, leveraging the power of the markets to invest in a way that is both impactful and able to maximize their financial rewards. This is particularly true of foundations with an eye toward supporting the perpetuity of their missions and organizations.
This approach also offers a range of innovative mission-based benefits, including extending the utility of philanthropic capital and generating more capital to …
Leveraging Foundation Balance Sheets For Greater Impact: Piloting A Pooled Guarantee Program, Jane Reisman, Jim Baek, David Newsome, Christine Ryan
Leveraging Foundation Balance Sheets For Greater Impact: Piloting A Pooled Guarantee Program, Jane Reisman, Jim Baek, David Newsome, Christine Ryan
The Foundation Review
A guarantee instrument is a credit enhancement tool that can enable philanthropies to unlock millions or billions of dollars for societal impact. The Community Investment Guarantee Pool, created in 2019 by a collaboration of philanthropies and allied impact investors, or guarantors, is a novel initiative that uses guarantees to leverage the balance sheets of foundations and other institutional investors for enhancing the credit of intermediaries in the affordable housing, small-business, and climate markets. As the guarantees are unfunded, foundations continue to keep their endowment invested in the conventional market.
This article describes the Community Investment Guarantee Pool, details its theory …
Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens
The Soft Stuff Doesn’T Have To Be Hard: Foundation Investments In Grantee Workers Are Necessary, Valuable, And Measurable, Rusty Stahl
The Foundation Review
There is an urgent need for funder investments in the ability of grantee nonprofit organizations to support their staff. Such investments, when done well, can yield significant value for individuals, organizations, and fields of work or movements. Furthermore, the value of these investments can be evaluated and communicated.
This article explores the reasons for and implications of the inadequate response by funders, offers a path forward for designing investments in grantee staff, and documents how funders can capture and communicate the value of these “talent investments.”
Powerful myths serve as barriers to widespread funder investment in grantee staff, and the …
Advancing Philanthropic Strategy Through Evaluative Thinking: One Foundation’S Approach, Christine Baker, Margaret Eigsti, Kathryn Racine, Laurence O’Connell
Advancing Philanthropic Strategy Through Evaluative Thinking: One Foundation’S Approach, Christine Baker, Margaret Eigsti, Kathryn Racine, Laurence O’Connell
The Foundation Review
The Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland supports Catholic sisters and their ministries in northeast Ohio through the grantmaking, partnership, capacitybuilding, and evaluation efforts of its Catholic Sisters Program Area. The decline of sisters actively engaged in ministry, due both to their rising median age and a decades-long decline in their overall numbers, called for a reconsideration and likely revision of the CSPA existing theory of change.
Unlike other strategic approaches at the foundation, such as ending homelessness or improving health equity, transitioning from sister-led to lay-led leadership of ministries remained largely unexplored: Basic research was lacking, and model practices …
Learning As We Go: How Emergent Process Supports Sustainable Community And Philanthropic Change, Elizabeth Myrick, Rachel Mosher-Williams, Laurie Zierer
Learning As We Go: How Emergent Process Supports Sustainable Community And Philanthropic Change, Elizabeth Myrick, Rachel Mosher-Williams, Laurie Zierer
The Foundation Review
Beginning in 2014, PA Humanities, one of 56 state and territorial humanities councils across the country, drew upon the work of Orton Family Foundation to deploy the Community Heart & Soul method, which centers community planning and civic engagement around connecting people to each other, and to the many assets of the places they live, through individual storytelling and collective narrative building.
Between 2015 and 2018, PA Humanities awarded matching grants to three locations in Pennsylvania — Greater Carlisle, Meadville, and Williamsport — to pilot PA Heart & Soul, a humanities-based, resident-driven community planning process that cultivates a shared sense …
Book Review: In Defence Of Philanthropy, Nabih Haddad
Book Review: In Defence Of Philanthropy, Nabih Haddad
The Foundation Review
No abstract provided.
Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens
The Yin And Yang Of Equity-Centered Philanthropy, Douglas Easterling, Laura Mcduffee, Sabina Gesell
The Yin And Yang Of Equity-Centered Philanthropy, Douglas Easterling, Laura Mcduffee, Sabina Gesell
The Foundation Review
Foundations face two competing imperatives when they commit to advancing equity. On the one hand, they are counseled to support and follow the lead of community-based groups that are on the front lines of social change. On the other hand, they are also being challenged to use their power and influence to act boldly to change inequitable structures, policies, and institutions. These two orientations, yin and yang, can take a foundation in different directions and thus cause confusion and internal conflict.
The challenge for a foundation is to balance and integrate the two orientations into a comprehensive and effective approach …