Business Commons^™

The Development And Operation Of Foundations In China, Qun Wang

The Foundation Review

Chinese foundations flourished in the 21st century, and empirical studies emerged to address multiple aspects of their activities and relations with the government. Yet there has been little research synthetically reviewing their development and operation. As a result, we often lack the knowledge of the context in which these organizations interact with state and society.

This article divides the history of Chinese foundations into three phases: in search of identity, 1978–2004; in search of legal status, 2004–2016; and in search of the role in civil society, from 2016 onward. Within those three periods, it also examines overseas foundations and their …

Archiving Forward And Backward: Two Perspectives On Capturing The Impact Of Limited-Life Foundations, Lori Eaton, Phoebe Kowalewski

The Foundation Review

Foundations that document their knowledge through an archives are creating a rich legacy of information. Archives preserve and provide access to the raw data that allow researchers to study and analyze grantmaking and its impact on people and communities.

Limited-life foundations may have an even greater incentive to capture their work in an archives: Once they close their doors, much institutional knowledge is lost. By examining two specific cases — the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation, which began planning for its archives early it its work, and the Atlantic Philanthropies, which began the process later — this article discusses what …

Sustainable Development Goals: Exploring A Foundation’S Contribution Through Text Analysis, Filippo Candela, Marco Demarie, Paolo Mulassano

The Foundation Review

Compagnia di San Paolo, an Italian grantmaking foundation, conducted a text analysis using a set of keywords extracted from grantees’ project descriptions to measure how successfully its work aligned with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and to identify interrelationships among the goals themselves.

This article describes the foundation’s research methods and shares the results of its analysis, which found significant contributions to the goals in a number of areas funded by the Compagnia and less alignment in others. The analysis is particularly noteworthy in its identification of an unintentional pattern of convergence between the foundation’s activities and the …

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 …

A New Tool For New Times? Using Geographic Information Systems In Foundations And Other Nonprofit Organizations, Jeffrey L. Brudney, Christopher R. Prentice

The Foundation Review

The literature on nonprofit organizations exhorts them to understand and develop their communities’ strengths and capacities. Yet, identifying those communities, appreciating the conditions that affect them, and integrating organizational stakeholders can pose difficulties for any nonprofit, including foundations.

This article examines how a tool relatively new to nonprofits — geographic information systems — can be used to support community building by bringing together different stakeholders. A geographic information system is designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographic data, thus allowing an organization to map its community and share that visualization with its stakeholders.

This article …