Nonprofit Administration and Management Commons^™

Shifting Mindsets: How Meaningful Accountability Systems Can Strengthen Foundation Learning And Improve Impact, Marc J. Holley, Marcie Parkhurst

The Foundation Review

This article explores what it looks like when a foundation attempts to integrate accountability and learning practices, and presents a framework for the unique and complementary contributions that accountability and learning can make to the work of foundations.

The article also looks at the tensions that can arise when a foundation’s internal evaluation staff attempt to design, implement, and make use of accountability systems. Specifically, it identifies three problematic perspectives that can hold foundations back from full engagement in internally driven accountability initiatives, and offers practical guidance on how to shift these mindsets to more productive practices.

It concludes by …

Building A Culture Of Learning: Teaching A Complex Organization How To Fish, Tiffany Clarke, Hallie Preskill, Abigail Stevenson, Pamela Schwartz

The Foundation Review

Many social sector organizations are looking to balance their strategic plans with an ability to respond more quickly to change as it unfolds in their communities. For many years — but gaining particular urgency in 2015 — Kaiser Permanente Community Health saw a need to better understand the progress and impact of its portfolio and use its data to adapt strategy in response to its changing context.

To increase its capacity for strategic learning, Community Health worked with FSG to develop and implement a system called Measurement and Evaluation for Learning and Outcomes. While this process was tailored to Community …

Building Principle-Based Strategic Learning: Insights From Practice, Kelci M. Price, Chera Reid, Suzanne Kennedy Leahy

The Foundation Review

Strategic learning is a powerful tool for foundations to achieve greater impact, yet foundations have struggled to create practices and behaviors that effectively support them in learning about strategy. Given that many foundations are engaged in strategic philanthropy, where they have specific conditions in the world they are trying to change, it is critical that they have the capacity to effectively learn about and improve their strategies.

This article offers three principles for strategic learning, informed by the field of strategic learning and insights from practice across three foundations. Each principle is explored in terms of what it means and …

Challenges And Opportunities In Philanthropic Organizational Learning: Reflections From Fellow Grantmakers, Jennifer Chubinski, Kelley Adcock, Susan Sprigg

The Foundation Review

As the field of philanthropy has matured, increasing attention has been paid to evaluating the impact of philanthropic investments. In recent years, the scope of evaluation has expanded to include an intentional focus on organizational learning with the goal of learning from ongoing work, informing decision-making, and ultimately improving impact.

With this momentum to carry out organizational learning strategies and share successes, the sector has not yet stopped to reflect on challenges and lessons learned in the process of building the capacity for organizational learning — the messy yet meaningful middle between a desire for learning and the implementation of …

Evaluators As Conduits And Supports For Foundation Learning, Clare Nolan, Meg Long, Debra Joy Perez

The Foundation Review

Evaluators play a critical role in supporting philanthropic learning, programming, and strategy, but evaluation and learning in philanthropy is often limited in ways that impede deeper resonance and impact.

Most philanthropic evaluation is focused on the needs of individual foundations, knowledge sharing with the broader field is limited, and foundations struggle to integrate evaluation and learning as a management tool. This article makes the case that evaluators and funders can do more to build the collective capacity of evaluators working in philanthropy in order to enhance their contributions to community change.

This article also examines the ways that evaluation in …

Full Issue #11.1

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Let Me Upgrade You: Common Measures In Public Health Accreditation Action Plans, Gurleen K. Roberts

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to understand the success rates for health departments pursuing and achieving accreditation in version 1.0 and 1.5 of the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) standards and measures. During the accreditation process, health departments that present performance gaps are asked to complete an Action Plan to specify how they plan to improve to meet the desired conformity. This study will highlight specific measures that are often included in Action Plans so that health departments pursuing accreditation can be better prepared to address these common pitfalls.

Methods: This study is a non-experimental, secondary …

Understanding Effectiveness Of A Diverse Board In The Nonprofit Sector: The Role Of Board Inclusion & Critical Mass Of The Diverse Board Members, Suparna Dutta

Theses and Dissertations

Using rated responses from nonprofit CEOs who participated in the 2016 BoardSource national survey, this study investigates whether nonprofit board inclusive behavior or board inclusive practices are positively correlated with nonprofit board effectiveness. It further examines whether a critical mass of racial and ethnic minority or women board members may moderate the relationship stated above. To answer these questions, the study tested six hypotheses using principal component analysis, followed by hierarchical regression analysis, and found no evidence of statistical significance in main or moderator effects. The study recommends that policymakers should frame policies that ensure mandatory quotas for women and …

Project Renew Worcester, Danni Yue, Amy Zhang, Jing Han, Omid Ashrafi, Yiming Xu

School of Professional Studies

n The client for this capstone project is RENEW Worcester which is a fledgling solar power project whose main goals are to bring renewable energy in the form of solar power into local, primarily low-income communities and are committed to the mission of making the transition off of fossil fuels to clean, renewable power. Based in Worcester, Massachusetts, they are a local chapter of Co-op Power which is a consumer-owned sustainable energy cooperative (co-op) made up of numerous different local chapters all over the New England area as well as the state of New York. The problem that we will …

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Fostering Change And Fresh Voices: Vancouver Foundation’S Youth Engagement Journey, Trilby Smith

The Foundation Review

Since 2011, Vancouver Foundation has invested significant time, energy, ideas, and money in bringing together immigrant and refugee youth and young people with lived experience of the foster care system in British Columbia.

Through its Fostering Change and Fresh Voices initiatives, the foundation has listened and worked in partnership with these young people to address the issues that affect their lives, and important progress has been made in the forms of meaningful policy changes and improved political engagement. The foundation is now in the process of returning these initiatives to the communities that inspired them.

This article describes the roles …

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 …

Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

An End To Business As Usual: Nurturing Authentic Partnerships To Create Lasting Community Change, Jeffrey Sunshine, Bernadette Sangalang

The Foundation Review

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation created Starting Smart and Strong, a 10-year place-based initiative in three California communities, to develop and test solutions that support parents, caregivers, and educators as they prepare young children to be healthy and ready for school. The initiative brings together public and private partners to create comprehensive early-learning systems and ultimately scale what works.

This article offers key insights into the foundation’s experience, three years into implementation, with managing this complex initiative and how program officers were compelled to think differently about the best roles staff can play to support grantee communities and amplify …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Creating Habits For Inclusive Change, Pennie Foster-Fishman, Erin Watson

The Foundation Review

The act of transforming community outcomes requires diverse stakeholders across an array of settings to become actors of change. While this movement to action lies at the heart of effective community change, it also remains one of the most challenging aspects of collective work.

Drawing from the ABLe Change Framework systems-change model, this article presents four processes used in numerous communities across the United States to effectively engage diverse stakeholders in taking actions to improve local systems. These processes prioritize the voices of the most disadvantaged within communities and engage them as key actors in the change process.

This article …

Book Review: Decolonizing Wealth, Juan Olivarez

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Equity For All: Building The Infrastructure For Change Through Community-First Funder Collaboratives, Ellen Braff-Guajardo, Kaying Hang, Leslie Cooksy, Monica Braughton, Fontane Lo

The Foundation Review

Foundations increasingly recognize that improving conditions in many communities requires addressing inequities in access to rights and resources. Yet there are challenges to effective investment in underresourced regions, especially when foundations have limited familiarity with the region and may assume limited local capacity to leverage philanthropic investments.

This article discusses how Sierra Health Foundation partnered with other California and national foundations to establish the San Joaquin Valley Health Fund, a collaborative whose grants focus on strengthening the capacity of communities and organizations in the Valley to advance policy and systems changes that promote health and racial equity.

This article highlights …

Community Navigation As A Field Of Practice: Reframing Service Delivery To Meet The Needs Of Communities’ Marginalized Populations, Joby Schaffer, M. Julie Patiño, P. Barclay Jones, Ladawn Sullivan

The Foundation Review

Community navigators help individuals and families access local services and assistance through a combination of referrals and interpersonal support. The Denver Foundation launched the Basic Human Needs Navigator Learning Community in February 2014 to help navigators working with local organizations and community members practicing navigation independently improve their practice and identify similarities and differences in their approaches.

This article discusses the multiyear, peer-learning project, including the general lessons the foundation learned about both navigation and the use of a learning-community approach to reach its field-building goals.

Reports from participating organizations and community members over four years suggest the efficacy of …

A Partnered Approach To School Change In A Rural Community: Reflections And Recommendations, Sara Rimm-Kaufman, Mary Fant Donnan, Dianne Garcia, Melinda Snead-Johnson, Eugene Kotulka, Lia Sandilos

The Foundation Review

With so many education policies and practices made at the local level, community-based foundations are in a unique position to support their local school districts in taking a comprehensive, systematic approach to improving the lives of young people. This article describes a research–practice partnership designed to produce school improvement in a rural community in western Virginia and reflects on a three-year collaboration among The Alleghany Foundation, two school districts, and the University of Virginia.

The partners identified challenges and strengths within the school districts and the community; gathered and analyzed existing district data and new findings from interviews and surveys …

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Goldilocks Challenge: Right-Fit Evidence For The Social Sector, Veena Pankaj

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

By Us And For Us: A Story Of Early Childhood Development Systems Change And Results In A Rural Context, Lisa Payne Simon, Kirsten Scobie, Phoebe Backler, Catherine Mcdowell, Charles Cotton, Susan Cloutier, Clare Nolan

The Foundation Review

Since 2007, the Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund — a donor-advised fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation — has invested in early childhood development in Coös County — New Hampshire’s largest and most rural and economically disadvantaged county. Community providers from a range of disciplines formed strong professional relationships and agreed on common goals and evidence-based strategies to improve services for children and families.

This article describes how local community members joined forces with the fund to create an integrated early childhood development system for Coös’ children and families. It provides background on the investment and initiative strategy, summarizes …

Thriving Communities: A Model For Community-Engaged Grantmaking, Mary Francis, Colleen Desmond, Jeffrey Williams, Jennifer Chubinski, Jennifer Zimmerman, Ashlee Young

The Foundation Review

Interact for Health is a health conversion foundation serving the three-state region of Greater Cincinnati, Ohio. Its current community change initiative, Thriving Communities, is a community-learning model that helps embed health promotion and advocacy work in communities while those communities build an equitable infrastructure with stakeholders to more rapidly spread evidence-based practices.

This article explores the three tools developed for the Thriving Communities initiative: Success Markers, the Developmental Pathway, and Relationship Mapping. Interact for Health has found that these tools build core competencies and confidence among grantees as well as a process for community engagement that produces results at the …

Riding The Seesaw Between Artist And Administrator, Elise L. Kieffer Phd

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

The road toward arts administration often begins with art practice. This can be problematic, as artists are educated and trained to be practitioners of their art form. Experience and education in the requisite administrative skills is too often learned on the job, as one is thrust into a new role with entirely new and separate responsibilities and different priorities. This disparity can lead to confused priorities, disorganization, and lack of professionalization of administrative services. Beginning with an examination of classical pragmatism and its historic emphasis on plurality, coherence and integration, moving into the contemporary applications of pragmatism as a mediating …

Bringing Legacy To Life: How Video Storytelling Inspires Multigenerational Involvement In Family Philanthropy, Kelly C. Medinger, Debbie M. Brodsky

The Foundation Review

Most family foundations go through some sort of process to define donor intent and formalize their values, whether at the beginning of their life span or after their founders’ passing. Video is a powerful tool in that process, vividly bringing stories to life for family members, older and younger alike. So how can video help foundations capture the important story of their donor intent and legacy, and use it to inspire future involvement in their mission?

With the experience of the Marion I. & Henry J. Knott Foundation serving as the backdrop, this article examines how a donor legacy video …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Splendid Legacy 2: Creating And Re-Creating Your Family Foundation, Ashley Blanchard

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.