Managing Up in Down Times

Examines issues confronting foundation senior management during both up and down economic cycles. Focuses on the concepts of resource stewardship, change management, and achieving successful results

Evaluating Innovation

In their pursuit of the public good, foundations face two competing forces -- the pressure to do something new and the pressure to do something proven. The epigraph to this paper, "Give me something new and prove that it works," is my own summary of what foundations often seek. These pressures come from within the foundations -- their staff or boards demand them, not the public. The aspiration to fund things that work can be traced to the desire to be careful, effective stewards of resources. Foundations' recognition of the growing complexity of our shared challenges drives the increased emphasis on innovation. Issues such as climate change, political corruption, and digital learning andwork environments have enticed new players into the social problem-solving sphere and have con-vinced more funders of the need to find new solutions. The seemingly mutually exclusive desires for doing something new and doing something proven are not new, but as foundations have grown in number and size the visibility of the paradox has risen accordingly.Even as foundations seek to fund innovation, they are also seeking measurements of those investments success. Many people's first response to the challenge of measuring innovation is to declare the intention oxymoronic. Innovation is by definition amorphous, full of unintended consequences, and a creative, unpredictable process -- much like art. Measurements, assessments, evaluation are -- also by most definitions -- about quantifying activities and products. There is always the danger of counting what you can count, even if what you can count doesn't matter.For all our awareness of the inherent irony of trying to measure something that we intend to be unpredictable, many foundations (and others) continue to try to evaluate their innovation efforts. They are, as John Westley, Brenda Zimmerman, and Michael Quinn Patton put it in "Getting to Maybe", grappling with "....intentionality and complexity -- (which) meet in tension." It is important to see the struggles to measure for what they are -- attempts to evaluate the success of the process of innovation, not necessarily the success of the individual innovations themselves. This is not a semantic difference.What foundations are trying to understand is how to go about funding innovation so that more of it can happenExamples in this report were chosen because they offer a look at innovation within the broader scope of a foundation's work. This paper is the fifth in a series focused on field building. In this context I am interested in where evaluation fits within an innovation strategy and where these strategies fit within a foundation's broader funding goals. I will present a typology of innovation drawn from the OECD that can be useful inother areas. I lay the decisions about evaluation made by Knight, MacArthur, and the Jewish NewMedia Innovation Funders against their program-matic goals. Finally, I consider how evaluating innovation may improve our overall use of evaluation methods in philanthropy

Community Philanthropy and Social Media

Summarizes trends in technological adoption by community foundations since 2005 and the role online marketplaces, social networks, wikis, and other resources play in community philanthropy. Discusses emerging developments and their implications

Better Together: Regional Alliances and Small Community Foundation Sustainability

Examines the role regional alliances play in helping community foundations achieve financial sustainability, focusing on those with less than $20 million in assets. Includes five case studies that represent a distinct alliance model

Philanthropy and the Social Economy: Blueprint 2017

"Blueprint 2017" is an annual industry forecast about the ways we use private resources for public benefit. It provides an overview of the current landscape, points to major trends, and directs your attention to horizons where you can expect some important breakthroughs in the coming year

Transforming Philanthropic Transactions

Evaluates the approach and effectiveness of SVP's first five years working to inspire philanthropy and volunteerism and build organizational capacity among nonprofits. Describes SVP's model that fuses donor education and capacity building activities

Philanthropy and Digital Civil Society: Blueprint 2019

This report is an annual industry forecast about the ways private resources are used for public benefit in the digital age. Each year, the Blueprint provides an overview of the current landscape, points to big ideas that matter, and directs the attention to horizons where some important breakthroughs can be expected in the coming year

Philanthropy and Digital Civil Society: Blueprint 2022

Philanthropy and Digital Civil Society: Blueprint is an annual industry forecast about the ways we use private resources for public benefit in the digital age. Each year, the Blueprint provides an overview of the current landscape, points to big ideas that matter, and directs your attention to horizons where you can expect some important breakthroughs in the coming year

On the Brink of the New Promise: The Future of US Community Foundations

This report provides a synthesis of the changing environment for community philanthropy and its implications for community foundations