Business Commons^™

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 …

Back Matter

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 …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

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.

Full Issue

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. …

The Community University Experience: Shift The Power Or Share The Power?, Graciela Hopstein

The Foundation Review

The recent growth of community organizations and collectives can be seen as a consequence of social movements that have emerged in defense of human and civil rights. This article reflects on an initiative implemented by Instituto Rio, a community foundation based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, within the context of this expansion of community philanthropy.

The initiative — the West Zone Community University — works to strengthen civil society actors so they can lead efforts to secure civil and human rights, decentralize the production and sharing of knowledge, and construct a public, democratic space for local communities. The analysis will …

Thinking Big: Community Philanthropy And Management Of Large-Scale Assets, Mary Fifield

The Foundation Review

This article presents three case studies — from Ghana, the U.S., and Canada — to examine how community philanthropy might scale up to support community asset management and increase the power of communities to determine their own development with much greater and more complex financial investments.

Community philanthropy institutions have become increasingly popular — especially in the Global South, where they serve to harness local assets, cultivate local capacities, and build trust among diverse stakeholders. Although bilateral donors and other international development funders are beginning to recognize the power of these local organizations, they are usually considered small-scale actors.

As …

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Analyzing The Social Value Of Bucharest Community Foundation Programs: Social Return On Investment, Cristina Vaileanu

The Foundation Review

In search of a suitable method to measure the social impact of its programs after five years in operation, the Bucharest Community Foundation turned to social return on investment (SROI) analysis to determine the social value produced by one of its grants programs. The internationally recognized method measures the social, environmental, and economic impact of a project or program, quantifiably analyzes outcomes from the perspective of stakeholders, and assigns a monetary value to those outcomes. Assigning a monetary value to a project outcome may help the project team, donors, and the impacted community to evaluate its benefits in comparison with …

Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Who Benefits From Giving Circles In The U.S. And The U.K.?, Angela M. Eikenberry

The Foundation Review

Giving circles have emerged around the world as an alternative to mainstream, bureaucratic philanthropy. This article examines the types of organizations that benefit from giving circles in the U.S. and the U.K., drawing on data from interviews, surveys, observations, and documentation collected in both countries.

The findings show that giving circles tend to fund certain types of organizations — often those that are small and locally based, startups and newer organizations that are reorganizing or transitioning, those that have a business orientation, and those that can engage members or show significant impact in relation to their size.

While some populations, …

Community Philanthropy In Russian Remote Areas, Julia Khodorova, Larisa Avrorina

The Foundation Review

Russia’s “back country” — remote, nonindustrial areas that are home to almost 40 percent of the population — was largely excluded from the changes brought about by perestroika. People who live in these areas, where NGOs are almost never present, are often unaware of the resources available to address local issues. These regions require new development models that focus on fostering community engagement, and the community foundation model has proven to be the most useful and adaptable.

This article is based on the results of research conducted by CAF Russia in 2016 on the development of community foundations in remote, …

Building Vietnamese Community Philanthropy: Understanding The Experiences And Expectations Of Donors To The Lin Center For Community Development, Dana Doan

The Foundation Review

Vietnam’s steady economic growth over the past two decades interacted with existing patterns of inequity, social exclusion, and geographic disparities to widen the gap between those who can and cannot obtain quality education, a stable income, and access to quality basic services. Meanwhile, after the World Bank classified Vietnam as a lower middle-income country in 2010, several international and bilateral donors announced plans to gradually decrease their development assistance.

It was under these circumstances that Vietnam’s first community foundation, the LIN Center for Community Development, was established in Ho Chi Minh City in 2009. Its mission is to build a …

#Shiftthepower: Community Giving As A Critical Consciousness-Raising Tool, Susan Wilkinson

The Foundation Review

This article proposes that foundations committed to community-led development must be prepared to invest in efforts that empower the community. In particular, there is potential for funders willing to challenge the top-down nature of the current aid and development system through use of critical conscious-raising to claim a transformative role in shifting from a “recipient” to a “citizen” approach to community development.

For foundations to assist communities in criticizing this power imbalance and using the insights that result to challenge the system requires the “three-legged stool” of community philanthropy — strengthening capacities, developing assets, and building trust — to become …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Jason Franklin

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

The Missing Link For Maximizing Impact: Foundations Assessing Their Capacity, Melinda Fine, Jared Raynor, Jessica Mowles, Deepti Sood

The Foundation Review

A rapidly changing, global sociopolitical environment requires foundations to be nimble in maximizing opportunities to advance their agendas. At the same time, grantmakers are establishing ever more ambitious goals that often require grantees to function at peak capacity. Why, then, have more foundations not assessed their own institutional capacity?

This article discusses an assessment of 54 foundations that participated in taking a new tool, developed for funders by TCC Group, to explore five core capacity areas shown to be central to organizational effectiveness. The Foundation Core Capacity Assessment Tool’s findings should not be seen as a report card, but rather …

The Philanthropy As One Big Impact Investment: A Framework For Evaluating A Foundation’S Blended Performance, Rohit T. Aggarwala, Claudine A. Frasch

The Foundation Review

While some foundations have put their entire focus on impact investing, philanthropy still lacks the tools that enable such investments to be made with the same rigor as the best financial investments and philanthropic grants. This reveals a more fundamental problem: We do not currently manage foundations as the integrated portfolios that they are.

This article proposes a framework for evaluating a foundation’s blended performance that enables both grantmaking and endowment investing to be evaluated jointly, and thus also allows a complete evaluation of how impact investments could improve — or fail to improve — overall performance.

The article demonstrates …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.