Business Commons^™

Participatory Decision-Making In Contested Societies: Examples From The Field Of Community Philanthropy, Avila Kilmurray

The Foundation Review

This article examines participatory, placebased philanthropy in two locations, Northern Ireland and Palestine, drawing on the work of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland’s Fair Share Programme and the Dalia Association’s Village Decides initiative.

The article considers the rationale for a participatory grantmaking approach as well as the manner in which local communities and residents experienced the methodology, and describes and evaluates the role com-munity philanthropy org-anizations played in providing an important added-value dimension to traditional grantmaking.

The fact that both Northern Ireland and Palestine are politically contested societies is factored into the analysis presented by the author, who conducted …

Effective Consulting Partnerships To Philanthropy, Ellen Irie, Kim Ammann Howard, Ria Sengupta Bhatt, Naomi Orensten

The Foundation Review

This article explores the realm of partnerships among consultants who are supporting philanthropy, surfaces the forms those philanthropy-consulting partnerships take, and describes their benefits and inherent challenges. It also describes what foundations most need to know about initiating and supporting philanthropy-consulting partnerships.

Types of consulting partnerships are a function of the needs they address and the contexts in which they were initiated. A useful way of looking at consulting partnerships is according to their structure – whether the relationship with the client is primarily horizontal or vertical in nature. In a vertical structure, a client hires a consultant, who in …

Shine A Light: The Role Of Consultants In Fostering A Learning Culture At Foundations, Jared Raynor, Ashley Blanchard, Marieke Spence

The Foundation Review

Noticeably absent on the list of reasons foundations cite for engaging consultants is learning – a particularly important attribute for foundations that grapple with complex issues in dynamic environments.

Consultants are particularly well positioned to help foundations in the learning process. They help organizations understand and create models and frameworks, implement strategies and mechanisms within them, overcome roadblocks to learning, and put them on a path toward a dynamic and sustainable learning culture.

This article proposes that being explicit about the value of fostering a learning culture in a foundation within the context of any consulting engagement will enable both …

Balancing Content And Process Expertise In The Practice Of Foundation Consulting, Chris Cardona

The Foundation Review

Despite foundations’ frequent recourse to consultants, little, if anything, has been written on the expertise required of foundation consultants and how they cultivate it. This article looks at the types of expertise that these consultants bring to their work and for which their clients hire them.

This expertise falls into three categories: process expertise, or what the consultant does with the client; content expertise, or what the grantmaker does; and hybrid expertise, consultant processes that are their own subject areas.

This article also offers examples of how content, process, and/or hybrid expertise might combine to address particular foundation needs, and …