Strengthening the Philanthropic Evaluation Field: The Walton Family Foundations Initial Exploration

In early 2021, the Walton Family Foundation (WFF) Strategy, Learning and Evaluation Department (SLED) undertook a team-based process of identifying areas of the larger philanthropic evaluation field that WFF can (1) support; (2) learn from; and (3) provide some level of leadership to as it develops and strengthens over time. With input from 18 leaders from the philanthropic evaluation field (see the acknowledgements for a list), WFF explored a wide array of topics, identifying two priority areas (below) to focus on in depth, along with other contextual issues and field needs

Learning Amid Disruption: Bouncing Forward Into a Changed World

The philanthropic sector has come to recognize the importance of bringing a systems lens to its work, seeking to influence upstream drivers of complex problems, and being adaptive in its approaches instead of implementing static, multiyear plans. Yet, integrating these concepts into practice continues to pose a challenge. Humanity United — a foundation dedicated to cultivating the conditions for enduring freedom and peace — had been grappling with this charge when the disruption caused by COVID-19 led it into a crisis response mode in 2020, similar to many other philanthropic institutions. That disruption also challenged our old ways of being, doing, and thinking, leading to new insights and actions related to equity and power-sharing. This article explores the journey Humanity United went through in 2020, focusing on the disruption as a moment to bounce forward rather than trying to preserve the past. We found ourselves rethinking our old ways of seeking to change systems and embracing the future as emergent and unpredictable. We leaned into foresight, complexity science, and emergent strategy as tools for tackling this uncertainty. We pushed ourselves at all levels of leadership and staff to understand our role, our power, and how to show up differently with our partners in the systems we collectively seek to transform

From Paper to Practice: Key Lessons for Foundations Deploying Complex Strategies

As the philanthropic field continues to explore ways to increase impact and improve outcomes, more attention has focused on models that prioritize supporting grantee cohorts and collaborative efforts with shared intent over individual grantees and isolated projects. Public policy grantmaking, field-building, collective impact and public willbuilding all offer ready examples of these kinds of complex models and approaches.While each of these models and approaches has their own nuances, they have many commonalities in how they are planned and implemented. This report explores those commonalities through the lens of one foundation's experience in implementing a complex, multi-year public will-building strategy, and what that experience suggests be in place for effective implementation. The findings highlighted in this report are specifically intended for staff of foundations and other organizations interested in learning about the deployment of strategies that rely on building a cohort of established organizations to pursue a shared intent.

Lost Causal: Debunking Myths About Causal Analysis in Philanthropy

What if philanthropic evaluations told us that changes in the world had occurred, as well as how and why they occurred, including in what ways foundation funding and grantees contributed to those changes? What if evaluations made change pathways more visible, tested hypotheses and assumptions, and generated new insights based on what happened in the “black box” of systems change strategies? This type of learning comes from causal analysis — inquiry that explores cause-andeffect relationships. Yet currently in philanthropy, particularly for strategies and initiatives that feature high complexity, few evaluations use robust techniques for understanding causality. Instead, philanthropic evaluation tends to rely on descriptive measurement and analysis. These descriptions often are rich, meaningful, and in-depth, but they remain merely descriptions nonetheless. This article challenges the myths that hold us back from causal inquiry, allowing us to embrace curiosity, inquiry, and better knowing, even (or especially) if it means learning that our assumptions and theories do not hold up. We argue that philanthropy more frequently needs to examine causal relationships, using a growing suite of methodological approaches that make this possible in complex systems. Causal methodologies can challenge and strengthen the often uncontested beliefs that underlie philanthropic interventions, while offering evidence about enabling contexts and system drivers. Strong causal analysis considers not only the funder’s model and assumptions, but also the beliefs others hold about how and why change occurs, opening the door to more equitable and less biased ways of understanding change

Strategy Design Amid Complexity: Tools for Designing and Implementing Adaptive Funding Strategies

Increasingly, foundations recognize the importance of designing adaptive strategies that can respond to complex environments and problems. Recent articles have cautioned against practices common in strategic philanthropy that hinder the ability of foundations and grantees to account for changing contexts and adapt their strategies accordingly. But understanding the importance of and barriers to adaptive strategy is not sufficient. Foundations now need processes and tools to create and implement adaptive strategies while also addressing the core dilemmas such strategies create: managing accountability in the context of adaptation, adapting at the right level, and responding to changes in context without creating too much instability for grantees. Using a case study from the Colorado Health Foundation\u27s advocacy funding strategy to increase health care coverage, this article presents a set of tools to help foundations design adaptive strategies and ideas for balancing accountability for achieving goals with adaptability throughout the course of an initiative

Lost Causal: Debunking Myths About Causal Analysis in Philanthropy – With 2024 Prologue

Editor’s Note: This article, first published in print and online in 2022, has been republished by The Foundation Review with minor updates. What if philanthropic evaluations told us that changes in the world had occurred, as well as how and why they occurred, including whether what foundations funded and grantees did contributed to those changes? What if evaluations made change pathways more visible, tested hypotheses and assumptions, and generated new insights based on what happened in the “black box” of systems change strategies? This type of learning comes from causal analysis — inquiry that explores cause-and-effect relationships. Yet currently in philanthropy, particularly for strategies and initiatives that feature high complexity, few evaluations use robust techniques for understanding causality. Instead, philanthropic evaluation tends to rely on descriptive measurement and analysis. These descriptions often are rich, meaningful, and in-depth, but they remain merely descriptions nonetheless. This article challenges the myths that hold us back from causal inquiry, allowing us to embrace curiosity, inquiry, and better knowing, even (or especially) if it means learning that our assumptions and theories do not hold up. We argue that philanthropy more frequently needs to examine causal relationships, using a growing suite of methodological approaches that make this possible in complex systems. Causal methodologies can challenge and strengthen the often uncontested beliefs that underlie philanthropic interventions, while offering evidence about enabling contexts and system drivers. Strong causal analysis considers not only the funder’s model and assumptions, but also the beliefs others hold about how and why change occurs, opening the door to more equitable and less biased ways of understanding change

When Backbone Organizations Become the Funder: The Use of Fiscal Intermediaries in the Context of Collective Impact

Intermediary organizations are increasingly being engaged to work with grantees in the context of collective impact and similar collaborative approaches that aim to solve significant societal problems. At times the backbone organization – the group providing support to the collective effort – takes on the work of a fiscal intermediary. This dual role has two distinct functions: engagement of collaborative partners to advance a shared agenda, and distributing funds while holding those partners accountable. This article explores the complexities of the dual relationship by using examples from the Social Innovation Fund, a White House initiative, and Got Your 6, a collective-impact campaign that seeks to bridge the civilian-military divide. Given that the intersection of fiscal intermediaries and backbones is a relatively new phenomenon, there is a gap in the literature about the challenges organizations playing this dual role may face. But the benefits may outweigh the challenges if the dual role is deployed effectively; participants in the case studies offer insights into this. The foundation community would be well served to explore the alternative approaches to integrating funding with backbone roles as they work with their collective-impact partners. Collectively, a field of practice can be built if funders continue to experiment with how to better integrate the disparate roles and share the results of those experiments

If You Build It, They Will Come: Creating the Space and Support for Real-Time Strategic Learning

· Learning is a key tool for foundations seeking to improve their effectiveness, and they are beginning to use evaluation to learn about and improve their strategies. The Colorado Trust took this a step further and integrated strategic learning into a grant strategy, including supporting learning coaches for 14 of their grantees. · The strategic learning framework consisted of three steps: systematic data collection, collective interpretation of information, and the use of that interpretation to improve strategies. · This article reviews four of the cases, including three grantees and the foundation as a case, identifying methods of learning and resulting changes in strategies. · Effective strategic learning in real time requires a comprehensive approach where each element of a funding strategy is aligned around the concept of learning and putting learning to use

If You Build It Will They Come? Lessons from Project Health Colorado and Building Public Will to Achieve Access to Health

This report discusses the findings from the evaluation of Project Health Colorado (PHC), The Colorado Trust's (The Trust) three-year strategy aimed at building public will to achieve access to health for all Coloradans. Through a blend of community-based strategies, including advocacy, leadership, networkbuilding and grassroots mobilizing, as well as an overarching communications campaign, PHC was designed to engage individuals and organizations in a statewide discussion about access to health and how it can be improved. The strategy was supported by a $7.6 million grant from The Trust and$2 million from the Colorado Health Foundatio

Tactics for negotiating agreements through collaborative decision-making processes

January 2006.Includes bibliographical references.Negotiation has been used in many natural resource dialogues, including a wide range of watershed issues. According to the legislation authorizing the Interbasin Compact Charter, a framework for negotiation is an essential component of building a lasting model for addressing water disputes in Colorado (C.R.S. 37-75-105(3)a). A negotiation framework has many different shapes, drawing not only from the most traditional negotiation literature, but also from literature on mediation, facilitation, policy dialogues, consensus processes, decision-rules, and information and fact gathering processes. Collectively, this is a body of literature that addresses the need for collaborative decision-making processes to find solutions to disputes between multiple stakeholders. It identifies tactics for participants to navigate a conflict, move from exploration to the development of proposals, and eventually reach outcomes that benefit one or all parties