Business Commons^™

Strategy Resilience: Getting Wise About Philanthropic Strategy In A Post-Pandemic World, Jewlya Lynn, Clare Nolan, Peter Waring

The Foundation Review

Public and private systems worldwide have been disrupted by COVID-19, cutting across all types of philanthropic priorities. Amid this uncertainty, some philanthropic strategies have struggled to find their footing while others have adapted easily, harnessing previously unanticipated opportunities to achieve change. Why have some philanthropic strategies been more successful than others? What wisdom can we draw from this moment that can help us prepare for the future?

During times of crisis, the concept of resilience is frequently applied to nonprofit organizations and their leaders. This article flips the vantage point toward funders, proposing a theory to explain what makes some …

A Neighborhood-Based Family Center Redesign Process: Taking A Systems Perspective, Patricia Bowie, Richard Sussman

The Foundation Review

This article describes how the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, with a subset of its grantees and their program recipients, teamed with the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities to redesign its evaluation process.

The foundation’s shift from traditional program evaluation to a more participatory, learning-focused approach resulted in new tools to assess variables that had been previously unexamined but were critical to program success.

This article examines the redesign process and those new tools – the data from which are being used to improve employee engagement and front-line practice as part of a cross-agency learning network – …