My second comment was more in response to Don - just saying it seems that publicization has to come before centralization (although I agree both should happen).

Every foundation website I’ve seen has a list of grantees and a list of publications, but no way to see substantive information about what particular grantees do and what the evidence is that it works (and never, ever anything about grantees that have been turned down). As to the list of publications, it’s generally (a) incredibly long (b) alphabetized [thanks, guys, that's useful] (c) all the publications I look are incredibly general pieces with either “lessons learned” or “program accomplishments” filled with sweeping statements and no details or evidence. I have called a bunch of them asking for more of the information I have in mind (what did your grantees DO? What did you measure and what did you see?) and just gotten nowhere. There are hundreds of foundations so it’s possible I’ve just missed the good ones, although I know I haven’t missed the Wallace Foundation.

If I had found any good information, I’d harp more on the fact that I’ve never seen a meaningful attempt to organize it and make it usable to a casual party. But I haven’t found any good information.

I am exactly the guy these people should be targeting with their communications: someone who just wants information concrete and useful enough to help me with my decision of where to donate, and is willing to put in a good deal of legwork to get it. I haven’t gotten a single useful thing from a single foundation. Where’s the beef?

The main problem, as Holden points out, is that there’s no single place to go to get this information. It almost seems that philanthropy needs something akin to the education field’s ERIC (Educational Resources Information Clearinghouse). A centralized repository of lessons learned would be fantastic.

Another problem that Sean alludes to is getting people to admit their failures. While Dr. Knickman suggests that scientists aren’t called failures when their experiments don’t work, they also tend not to be published. (The dynamics of academic publication are another discussion entirely….) His essential point, however, is right on target — great success often comes as the culmination of repeated failure. It seems like we could all enjoy greater success if we learned from each others’ failures. As the saying goes, “Experience is learning from your mistakes. Wisdom is learning from others’ mistakes.”