But I want to echo Maggie’s comments a bit as way of pushing back on the idea that it is an entirely false dichotomy. I think underlying my key point is the notion that foundations should think carefully about what can and should distinguish their communications from the fundraising materials of their grantees.

Because private foundations don’t have to raise funds, their communications should be about pushing on some of the complexities and stickiness of their issues. Too many foundation annual reports are laundry lists of their grants with a few nice stories (and, of course, no acknowledgement of failure or struggles or even surprises). Frankly, if I want nice stories, I’d rather hear them from the organizations and people doing the work on ground - ie: I’m going to go look up the grantees’ website or annual report. If a foundation’s communications are going to add value, they need to be focused on the areas where foundations add value. To generalize, that’s in how the foundation has puzzled through the strengths and weaknesses in choosing grantees, and perhaps in how it has made connections among them or worked with public officials, etc.

Now the Tipping Point Community is a nonprofit so they do compete for the same donor dollars in their community - in this sense, sure they should be conveying they are better than the next nonprofit and you the donor should give to us because…. that’s different than a foundation position.

I just think that if a foundation touts they are the best, kuddos to them. They can award themselves a plaque. However, if they are the best at grantmaking and can demonstrate why, then the platform for thier message could be to share how they got to be the best so that learned practices are shared with other foundations for the improved performance.

Look at this page from the Tipping Point Community: “The Tipping Point Community concept is simple - we fight poverty in the Bay Area. But we do it better than anyone else and here’s how”

That’s a kind of communication that foundations do not engage in, but that I think would finally start to generate the positive media interest that is needed.

The trick it seems to me is choosing when, how, and to whom to communicate these various messages based on what you’re trying to acheive.

As to recognizing the intellectual rigor of foundation work, though, come on. You are talking about the 10%- what about the 90% that recruit mediocre talent; are content with just making some grants; and generally miss every opportunity to do important work?

“Part of the reason that the news media, or the public for that matter, aren’t paying deep enough attention to what foundations are trying to do with their money could be because people who work for philanthropic entities typically refer to themselves as grant makers and say their primary work is grant making. When they do that — for shorthand or out of habit — they, too, are contributing to the perception that there’s little more to their stories than that they give away money.

The missions of foundations all involve bettering people’s lives. They focus on a wide array of concerns, such as eradicating and controlling disease, dealing with both the causes and effects of poverty, increasing access to high-quality education, and much more. But more important, the grant choices they make and the money they invest are intended to achieve specific and, where and when possible, measurable results.

When reporters cover the business world, they produce articles when new products or strategies are announced, when money is made or lost, and when companies grow or fail. And in between the coverage of those developments, enormous attention is paid to the types of businesses they are, what underlies the decisions companies make, and what they could do to become more successful.

That same approach should guide philanthropy coverage. Reporters should be encouraged to provide in-depth and analytic coverage about the underlying problems in society that foundations are trying to solve, the likely results of their investments, and follow-up coverage about what did or didn’t happen.

In that same vein, routine progress reports about what’s being done, and what’s being achieved — even learned — over the course of the project, instead of waiting until it’s over, would keep the news media (and the public, too) focused on the work.”

It is nice, but (as Sean posted earlier today) I think the implicit connotation in “nice” or “good” is that giving away money is easy work. Now, it’s not terribly hard work as work goes, but my colleagues in philanthropy do work hard at their jobs.

Similarly, among those who know a little more about philanthropy, people describe foundations as organizations that make people who want to do good things jump through a lot of needless hoops to get money. That’s not entirely false, we sometimes have too many hoops, but again, it makes it seem like we are trying to be gatekeepers rather than fair judges or strategists.

What people don’t understand, what’s missing in both those views of philanthropy is any conception of the intellectual rigor and reflectiveness that good foundations bring to their work. Philanthropy is about tough decisions. That to me is where foundations really fail: we don’t communicate about the sticky issues we grapple with and how/why we make decisions. We can be compelling partners to government officials and to the public by being thought partners, by saying, “We’re trying to deal these big problems, too, and here’s how we’re going about it and here’s what we’re learning along the way.”

Foundations are black boxes not because of what they fund and its ultimate impact, but because we are terrible at explaining how we do it and why you might want or need a professional, knowledgeable staff to do it.

In fact, I see far more of this activity today than I ever have in the 16+ years I’ve been involved in foundation communications.

I do take the point, too, that we need to tell stories that resonate.

Maybe the real message is to learn how to connect with audiences so that we say sticks.

Toward that end, the Communications Network (thanks to the support from the Packard Foundation) is developing a “toolkit” to help foundation communicators assess their work. The more we know about what works (and what doesn’t) the better we’ll get at effectively communicating — and being heard.