Public Affairs Commons^™

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 …

Book Review: Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy And Making Every Dollar Count, Paul G. Putman

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

From Idea To Initiative: Real-Time Learning For A Funder Collaborative On Nonprofit Strategic Restructuring, Way-Ting Chen, Lynn Alvarez, Carrie Harlow, Shannon Johnson, Jennifer Price-Letscher

The Foundation Review

Evaluation and learning is often seen as a high-stakes, formalized process of comparing an effort at its conclusion against some standard or benchmark. More recently, formative and developmental approaches to evaluation have been created to accommodate the need for more adaptability and ambiguity in an effort.

The Nonprofit Sustainability Initiative, a multiyear collaboration of 17 funders in Los Angeles County, California, supports nonprofit organizations to collaborate and restructure in a variety of forms. As the initiative evolved, its evaluation and learning system had to have the ability to evolve with it. Real-time learning informed initiative design and refinement, aligned funders …

Learning Together: Cohort-Based Capacity Building And The Ripple Effects Of Collaboration, Sonia Taddy-Sandino, Mary Gray, Danielle Scaturro

The Foundation Review

Foundations frequently commission evaluations and are the primary audiences for findings. Grantee organizations, however, often don’t see the results, or they find in them limited value and relevance to their own work. Funders like the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation are quietly disrupting this status quo by exploring ways to fully engage grantees, co-funders, technical consultants, and evaluators in collective learning and reflection.

The foundation’s comprehensive, cohort-based capacity-building program, PropelNext, was designed to enhance the performance of promising nonprofits that serve America’s disadvantaged youth. With a combination of financial support, individualized coaching, and peer-learning sessions, grantees engage in a test-and-learn cycle …

Full Issue #11.2 On Collaborative Learning

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

More Than Listening: Harnessing The Power Of Feedback To Drive Collaborative Learning, Clare Nolan, Kim Ammann Howard, Kelley D. Gulley, Elizabeth Gonzalez

The Foundation Review

Foundations can and should do a better job of gathering feedback from and learning with both grantees and the communities they seek to serve. This type of collaborative learning has the potential to inform and strengthen foundation strategy, grantmaking practices, evaluation, and communications. Gathering meaningful input is difficult, however, given power dynamics between foundations and those they support. Even when authentic input has been gathered, it can be difficult to apply insights to ongoing work.

What does it look like for a foundation to get feedback from its grantee and community stakeholders? Much of the feedback discussions taking place in …

Executive Summary

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Designing For Emergence: The Mccune Charitable Foundation Grows Agency Across New Mexico, Marilyn Darling, Heidi Sparkes Guber, Jillaine Smith, Wendy Lewis

The Foundation Review

The impact of the inherent power imbalance in the grantmaker/grantee relationship has come into particular focus as equity and justice have become a greater priority for philanthropy. This article looks at the example of the McCune Charitable Foundation, which deliberately designed an emergent strategy approach that establishes clear goals and then created a platform to permit a reversal of that power dynamic, so that leadership for priorities comes from those closest to the work.

The authors launched a two-year project to research what emergence might look like in seven complex social-change initiatives, and how the strategy could grow agency and …

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Learning About Neighborhood Change Through Funder-Grantee Collaboration, Debra Dahab, Brooke Finn, Lois Greco, Nancy Kopf

The Foundation Review

NeighborWorks America and the Wells Fargo Regional Foundation support change in communities through a rigorous and structured collaborative learning framework that places the resident voice and experience at the center of learning. Both funders regularly engage in collaborative learning processes with their grantees and partners to support local revitalization practices and inform program and grantmaking strategies.

This article examines the key ingredients and processes needed to develop and sustain collaborative learning among grantee organizations, community residents, and other stakeholders and funding partners, as well as the critical role played by technical assistance providers.

The authors reflect on their experience with …

Evaluating For The Bigger Picture: Breaking Through The Learning And Evaluation Barriers To Advancing Community Systems-Change Field Knowledge, Thomas Kelly, Prudence Brown, Hanh Cao Yu, Marie Colombo

The Foundation Review

Foundations investing in community systems change often fail to prioritize field-level and cross-initiative evaluation questions in building initiatives. As a result, many of the documented evaluations of such investments lack translatable lessons specific and influential enough to drive related decisions and actions of others in the field.

This article developed from ongoing, multiyear peer learning across several foundations that collectively compiled recommendations for community systems-change funders and evaluators to implement more powerful evaluations. They are intended to help funders and evaluators engaged in these efforts build sectorwide knowledge capable of informing improved work across initiatives and communities. This article also …

Killing Silence: A Path To Increasing Homicide Solvability In Urban Communities, Dennis Thornton

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Relatively low rates of homicide solvability results in law-abiding citizens being forced to co-exist with known murderers, which is detrimental to a community’s psyche. This condition happens disproportionately in neighborhoods where crime is high, cohesiveness among its members is weak, and the citizen/police relationship is little or non-existent. This research sought to understand this phenomenon by asking,” How can murder solvability rates improve in marginalized communities?” and employing four theoretical lenses. Using the city of New Orleans as a case study and holding Social Disorganization Theory constant, Spiral of Silence, Habitus, and Dramaturgy were utilized in an attempt to understand …

Exploring, Examining, And Explaining How Participatory Governance Adds Value To Saudi Foundations’ Philanthropic Strategy, Afnan E. Koshak

Dissertations

Foundations’ flexibility, given their independence from fundraising imperatives, competition forces, and accountability pressures, enables them to invest in long-term, high-risk, multi-level experiments to deal with the increasingly complex societal problems. This flexibility, coupled with the growing role philanthropy plays in promoting social welfare across the world, is arguably what makes studies that focus on foundations’ philanthropic approaches of utmost importance.

There is a mounting interest among scholars in the governance of foundations, the systems and processes concerned with ensuring the overall strategic direction of organizations. Influenced by agency and stewardship theories, an increasing number of studies address such topics as …

A Tale Of Two Influences: An Exploration Of Downward Accountability In World Vision International, Elena Mccollim

Dissertations

International nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) face increasing accountability challenges stemming from past scandals and their claims to advance the public good. Since the 1990s, INGOs have responded with numerous reforms. The creation of the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership in 2003 and the INGO Accountability Charter in 2009 reflect sector-wide efforts to enhance accountability to mission, intended beneficiaries, and peer organizations.

Many INGOs have adopted a broad range of accountability reforms. This dissertation focuses on how World Vision, the world’s largest INGO, has done so. Downward accountability remains elusive due to such factors as INGOs’ lack of transparency toward beneficiaries; the power imbalance …

Economic Impact Of Pace University's New York City Campus, Rebecca Tekula, Adrian Rivero

Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship

No abstract provided.

Public Safety Trends In Map Communities And Matched Comparison Areas. Map Evaluation Update Number 3., Sheyla A. Delgado, Richard A. Espinobarros, Gina Moreno, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

This is the third of six updates presenting interim findings from the evaluation of the NYC Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP). As part of an evaluation of the New York City Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP), researchers from John Jay College of Criminal Justice collaborated with survey specialists from NORC at the University of Chicago to track key outcomes in MAP developments and matched comparison sites. Using the NYC Open Data portal and data from NYPD and SPARCS, the research team looked to see if the presence of MAP showed initial impacts in crime and victimization …

Cpaf Updates Vol. 20 No. 3, Stella Concepcion R. Britanico, Francisca O. Tan

CPAf Updates

In thiis issue:

• KMO learning event tackles gender-fair language in official documents, 1
• Dr. Nguyen presents ICARE activities in an international conference, 2
• CISC research team holds capacity-building activities among lakeshore communities in Libon, Albay, 4

Spatial Decision Support Systems Use In Peacekeeping And Stability Operations Analysis: Spatial Analysis For U.S. Army Civil Affairs Civil Information Management, Earnest R. Lloyd

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

Becoming a core U.S. military mission in 2005, Stability Operations deals with the political, economic, social and structural resiliency of a county or region. It is conducted to support and develop a host nation’s government, or to initiate governmental services in a non-governed area until the host nation can do so itself. Inherent in this is the provision of public goods, whether the military is the principal provider or to understand the relative public good provision levels within a given area. This understanding is known as situational awareness of the operational environment (OE), a significant issue for any military commander …

The Impact Of A Veteran Identity Among Key Personnel On Successful Outcomes In Veteran Treatment Courts, Jason D. Flake

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

Bureaucrats routinely engage in discretionary decision-making that results in the distribution of values for society. Scholars across various domains are challenged with reconciling the ostensibly contradictory values of bureaucratic policy-making and democratic governance. The theory of representative bureaucracy introduces a measure of equity, legitimacy, and responsiveness into these processes. A bureaucracy that is representative of the public it serves across various sociodemographic characteristics is posited to increase equity, legitimacy, and responsiveness in policy processes and outcomes. Although research finds evidence supporting the relationship between bureaucrats and substantive outcomes for those with shared sociodemographic characteristics, the characteristics and settings under study …

Transit, Walkability, And Economic Development In The 21st Century: Explorations From The U.S. Specialized High-Tech Zones, Pivotal Industries, And Innovative Small Businesses, Ahoura Zandiatashbar

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

The economy in the 21st century has expanded the depth of creativity, speed, and flexibility in production, high-tech industry, and innovation. Hence, the new economic norm and high dependency on innovation and creativity require educated, talented, and specialized human capital, as well as proximity to research centers and universities. Furthermore, this new knowledge economy has also favored urban spaces that support spontaneous face-to-face encounters and knowledge exchange while appealing to the talented human capital. Besides these specific urban spaces, the transportation infrastructures could have a principle role in the new economy whether through fostering local, regional, or global accessibility to …