The 6 Practices of Donors Who Change the World
Posted on May 12, 2011 by Leslie Crutchfield
Leslie Crutchfield presents her latest study of high-impact family foundations and donors that have successfully catalyzed change… Read More
Data, impact, and assessment
Keeping Grantmakers and Grant Seekers from Drowning in Paperwork
Posted on April 14, 2011 by Jessica Bearman, Kathy Reich
Inefficient grant application and reporting procedures make extra work for both grantmakers and grantseekers. A number of new tools and practices to ease the paperwork burden are now available thanks to Project Streamline, a collaboration of several organizations and managed by the Grants Managers Network… Read More
Measuring What Counts: Meaningful Evaluation for Family Foundations
Posted on April 4, 2011 by Anne Mackinnon
Family foundations are in business to make a difference. As one family foundation leader put it, creating a family foundation is a “powerful statement about wanting to achieve impact.” Yet family foundations often get painted unfairly as not having impact, perhaps because they aren’t always very good at understanding or describing the impact they have, even to themselves… Read More
The Art of Intuitive Grantmaking in Family Giving
Posted on March 10, 2011 by Chet Tchozewski
This teleconference explains how family philanthropists can quickly harness their semi-conscious knowledge and experience built over a lifetime to bring informed intelligence to their grant decisions… Read More
Travel and entertainment policy and reimbursement form (Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation)
Posted on January 4, 2011 by Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation
Shows travel and entertainment policies and and reimbursement procedures including expense guidelines, expense report preparation, and reimbursement… Read More
A Guide to Actionable Measurement
Posted on January 30, 2010
This guide provides a basis for a common understanding of results measurement at the Gates Foundation. The guide uses the term ‘measurement’ to refer to indicator monitoring, evaluation, as well as long-term impact tracking, and is intended to inform choices about measurement within funder strategies… Read More
Logic Models: Not Just for Big Foundations Anymore
Posted on January 4, 2010 by Erica V. Ekwurzel
Logic modeling is popular with large foundations, but has not been embraced by many of the smaller ones. One reason is that foundations with few or no staff fear that producing one is complicated and time consuming. It doesn’t have to be. And it can be a crucial tool for small asset foundations looking to make sustained impact, as explained… Read More
Logic Models: How They Can Increase Your Impact
Posted on April 2, 2009 by Janet Harman, Kristin Brewer
Logic modeling has been embraced by some large foundations, but has not been as popular with smaller ones because the process may seem overly complicated. The KDK-Harman Foundation, a $20 million family foundation in Austin, Texas, believes use of logic models—a systematic, visual way to present a plan with its underlying assumptions and theoretical framework—is even more crucial for small foundations seeking to make sustained impact… Read More
Grants to individuals: Investing in people and their communities
Posted on October 29, 2008 by Paul VanDeCarr
Aiming to have a broad effect on organizations or communities, some grant makers choose to fund individuals. It's true that grants to individuals make special demands on foundations, both legally and administratively, but sometimes they are the only way to achieve an important objective… Read More
Generations of Giving: Chapter 8 – Developing the Organizational Structure
Posted on September 27, 2006 by Deanne Stone, Howard Muson, Katherine Grady, Kelin E. Gersick, Ph.D., Michele Desjardins
Chapter 8 of Generations of Giving: Leadership and Continuity in Family Foundations, a landmark 2006 study by a team of researchers led by Kelin Gersick and co-published by the National Center for Family Philanthropy. This chapter features the authors conclusions regarding the importance of organizational structure for achieving the mission of a foundation. Review the complete collection of chapters from… Read More