My guest today is Jeff Martin. Jeff is Director of Media Relations for
the Council on Foundations. Jeff discusses the events that led up to
bloggers being invited to attend the recent conference, plans to
provide streaming video of conference sessions next year and the need
for transparency to be embraced by foundations.
Expand this post using the link below to read the transcript.
During the Council on Foundations conference I wrote about a session called “Linking Money to Mission: Structuring Your Grants to Promote Grantee Performance” featuring Clara Miller of Nonprofit Finance Fund and Nancy Roob president of The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (EMCF). I just received copies of the presentation from both speakers and want to share some additional thoughts.
At the end of her presentation, Clara gave a list of “Enterprise Friendly Funding Principals”. Here they are:
You can find a complete discussion of the “builder or buyer” language here.
Nancy Roob’s presentation focused on EMCF’s efforts to help scalable organizations grow with quality. The example she used was Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP). In explaining the effectiveness of NFP, Roob certainly did not cite overhead rate or fund raising cost. Instead, she shared these statistics:
EMCF isn’t the only group to notice the measurable impact of NFP. If you’re interested you can The Colorado Trust’s publication "Invest in Results. The Story of The Colorado Trust’s Nurse-Family Partnership & Invest in Kids Initiative" and the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy randomized controlled trial showing a major impact on life outcomes of the mothers and their children.
In her presentation, Nancy said that one of the major questions that EMCF is trying to answer right now is how they can work more effectively with other funders. From what I know of EMCF, it seems that they have an excellent program in place and are practicing a very effective form of philanthropy. I’m sure that the evidence they are building will do a lot to convince other big foundations to join them in supporting effective, scalable organizations. But imagine the leverage they could employ if they managed to tell the story of their grantees to the public at large (which gives at an annual rate of over 7 times the level of foundations). That is the promise of things like Project-Agape. With leaders like EMCF providing data and the qualitative story of high impact nonprofits, a well-developed social networking site could channel massive philanthropic dollars to good causes.
I’m swamped today. Just enough time for two quick thoughts:
In the post Demonstrating Impact, which has become my most widely read post of the conference, I wrote:
Knickman gave as an example a project that The James Irvine Foundation did on end of life care (if readers know more about this project, email me the relevant links). He called it “the most successful failure I’ve ever seen”, because it really changed the way people approached the issue since the project really seemed like it should have worked.
Thank you to everyone who wrote to say that Knickman was referring to a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, not the James Irvine Foundation. An explanation of why the project failed and an analysis of what was learned can be found here. I found this part of the introduction to be of particular note and useful in thinking about why philanthropy should work on being more transparent:
The findings from the demonstration project at the core of the study were negative: the interventions did not achieve the goals expected. However, the large investment by the Foundation–which has totaled approximately $29 million to date–may have other payoffs. The findings clarified that changes in care at the end of life are not going to happen with marginal adjustments in the way we organize services. It takes a much more sustained effort on many fronts to refocus priorities for the care of the critically ill. Changes in social norms, professional values, and social priorities all need to be part of the solution.
SUPPORT suggests another lesson for a philanthropy that uses some of its resources to support research and analysis. The project was expensive in part because of the detailed, high-quality data-collection effort designed to measure outcomes associated with different interventions. This dataset is providing a range of collateral payoffs as the research team explores the data. For example, an important study published by some members of the team raises serious questions about the efficacy of the Swan-Ganz catheter, a common intervention to monitor cardiovascular function in critically ill patients in hospitals. Thus, investments in quality datasets can lead to important research beyond the questions that motivated the data collection.
In response to my post about using social media tools to keep the discussion started at the COF conference going, Lucy Bernholz has a question for the attendees:
Another way of asking the question Sean asks is this. You spent several days in Seattle. What question do you have that is still unanswered, that is related to what is in your inbox, and that you’d like to keep discussing? What will happen to that question if you continue with business as usual? What ways might you actually pursue an answer or a discussion about the question if you could stay in touch with other participants, speakers, or people you passed in the halls of the Seattle Convention Center?
Email me or email Lucy your thoughts.
I attended a session yesterday that focused on mission related investing (investing in ways that further the mission of the foundation). Perla Ni, founder of Stanford Social Innovation Review, has already posted on the session so I won’t duplicate her work (I met Perla last night at the awards ceremony, you should see the fireworks display of ideas that goes off when you get her talking about something she’s passionate about).
Like Perla, I was particular impressed by the passion of Doug Stamm, executive director of Meyer Memorial Trust. Guess what? Meyer Memorial has a blog. With only six posts this year, maybe what they actually have is a potential blog. I would love to hear from Doug and others at the foundation about their views on mission related investing.
They actual started the blog in 2005. Here’s their first post:
Some have advised us not to open our website to invite visitors to tell us what they think. They tell us that foundations usually keep themselves above the fray and more removed from direct and open exchange with nonprofits and anyone who happens by. But that’s not the kind of foundation we want to be. We want to open ourselves to those we serve because we think that makes us stronger and better at what we aim to do.
What do you think? Are we being naive or do you think this is a healthy move for a foundation?
They got 31 comments (I’ve never gotten that big of a response) with all 31 telling them that starting a blog was a great idea. Maybe with a little coaxing, MMT can join the blogging community and enter the conversation on a regular basis.
Throughout the conference, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has been pointed to again and again as an innovator who is embracing transparency. Guess what? They have a blog:
Pioneering Ideas was launched in 2006 by the Pioneer Portfolio, the grantmaking area within RWJF charged with scouting innovative ideas that may drive breakthrough improvements in the future of health and health care. Pioneer looks to support unconventional, often higher-risk projects that go beyond incremental improvements to seek transformative change. You’ll come across several in browsing the blog – posts highlight projects that are redesigning the personal health records of the future, outlining new policy approaches to combat antibiotic resistance, and applying video games to improving health, to name a few.
Included under that umbrella of innovation is room to test new models of doing philanthropy. For instance, you’ll read below that we’re launching the second in a series of online, open-source idea competitions with Ashoka’s Changemakers initiative. "Disruptive Innovations in Health and Health Care: Solutions People Want," kicks off May 2…
I’ve blogged on disruptive innovation before – the area continues to intrigue me as ripe with opportunity for philanthropy. In my view, what distinguishes philanthropies from charities or government organizations is that we possess the vision, assets and staying power to drive this type of transformative change. We also know from experience how to discover, test and leverage fresh "disruptive innovations" of our own.
This is philanthropy as it should be – summoning the forces of disruptive innovation and retooling to improve the health, health care and quality of life for everyone in America.
Michael Gilbert, blogging from the COF conference, posts the top five challenges facing philanthropy as identified by Council on Foundation members.
I think that collaboration, communications and effectiveness can all be addressed by embracing social media tools (blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc). These tools can also help tackle capacity building and relations. Technology is never a panacea, but these tools are the building blocks to overcoming these challenges.
With 12 Council on Foundation conferences under her belt, Lucy Bernholz reflects on this year’s conference:
The 2007 Council on Foundations Conference made some significant changes to its structure, but its pretty much “inside-the-beltway” kind of stuff, probably not of much interest to those outside the conference… But I have seen a few things of potential interest on a broader scale.
Read the rest here.
Lucy also attended the Philanthropic Fault Line session that I was interested in but could not attend:
Can we facilitate the discussion, informed by thoughtful provocation, open to anyone with an opinion, and moderated over time toward actual strategies for change? We’re not making any progress in the old manner of small, closed conversations that devolve into kvetching. Perhaps we can enhance the thought and practice by bringing video, blogs, written materials, comments, panel discussions and specific proposals for change to these issues – and shining some light on these closed door, “same old, same old” topics.
Read her full post here.
The moderator of almost every session I’ve attended here in Seattle has begun by saying that they really wanted the session to be discussion rather than just having speakers talk at the crowd. All 100+ people in the room would nod their heads and then a traditional conference format unfolded with a Q&A at the end. Conference sessions simply aren’t the place for a discussion. There’s to many people and too much authority vested in the speakers for any real conversation to emerge. But discussing the topics raised at the conference is what blogs are for.
As conference participants head back to their respective foundations, remember that online the discussion is really heating up. Did you enjoy the session “Changing Poverty Through Profit”? Did you know some people refer to this set of topics as Micro Loan Sharking? Were you interested in the mission aligned investing concepts that came up in a number of session? The online discussion of foundation investment policies held here in January was called “unprecedented” by the Aspen Philanthropy Letter. Did Clara Miller and Nancy Roob get you thinking about growth capital and scaling nonprofits? Listen to my interview with Clara Miller that will be posted tomorrow and then leave your comments or questions. Is your foundation experimenting with transparency? Let me know what you’re doing and I’ll showcase your project.
At the end of the Demonstrating Impact session, Mark Sedway had a stack of written questions from the audience that had not been answered. He announced that he would be posting them at the Philanthropy Awareness Initiative and asking the panelists to blog their answers. You don’t have to wait until next year to learn more about the subjects we’ve all explored over the last few days. The information capabilities of the web are already being utilized by a number of people to learn and discuss philanthropy. Spend some time on the blogs I list in the right-hand column or at least use the Chronicle on Philanthropy’s Give and Take blog to stay on top of the discussion.
Last night, Jeff Martin, who had invited me to attend the conference and two foundation staff members, got into a debate about foundation payout rates. It was a good debate, with the two foundation employees holding diametrically opposed views. I told Jeff that he should invite them to record a podcast (online audio) and post it to the Council on Foundations website. Everyone thought is was a good idea. It would take about 20 minutes and cost about $20 or less to make happen. These tools are available, they’re effective and cheap. Nonprofits have been quick to start using these tools. Now it is time for Council on Foundations members to do the same. I believe deeply that we are witnessing a Second Great Wave of Philanthropy. I see the way that technology has revolutionized many industries including the financial services industry that I work in. The time is now for philanthropy to embrace information technology and accelerate the cultural significance of philanthropy as a defining aspect of the early 21st century.
