The Foundation: A Great American Secret; How Private Wealth is Changing the World by Joel L. Fleishman
Author:Joel L. Fleishman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781586485382
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2007-01-08T14:00:00+00:00
10
STEPS TO ACHIEVE HIGH IMPACT: A COMMONSENSE APPROACH TO STRATEGY
Strategy is no guarantee of impact. But without it you are almost guaranteed to have no impact.
Paul Brest, president,
the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.29
Having discussed the kinds of problems that dog many foundations today and suggested some of their root causes, in this chapter I examine the most fundamental practices that characterize effective foundation initiatives. My analysis is based on a study of one hundred successful initiatives, from which I’ve derived a series of operating rules that effective projects appear to share. Consider this chapter an overview of “best practices,” or, as Surdna Executive Director Ed Skloot calls them “pretty good behavior,” or reasonably achievable practices that every foundation ought to consider.
Of course, life is always messier than theory. Not all high-impact foundation initiatives were developed in accordance with the orderly pattern I’ll suggest in the next few pages. Many of the best-run foundations that employ rigorous analytic processes infuse them with ideas that emerge from the instincts, experience, and proven wisdom of their best staff members and consultants. They also know how to tap insights not just from a few gifted individuals but from all those with whom they work, including grantees, benefiting from the group knowledge somewhat like that described by author James Surowiecki in his book The Wisdom of Crowds.30 Aggregating the views of a group of knowledgeable persons about the viability of an idea for tackling a problem is likely to generate a richer sense of the balance between the virtues and flaws of such an idea—in other words a wise decision—than one would be likely to obtain from any single individual member of the group, no matter how creatively or instinctively gifted.
Even foundations that have long prided themselves on their strategically focused programs leave wide scope in decision for the non-systematic. Ellen Condliffe Lagemann describes the Carnegie Corporation under one of its greatest presidents as
dominated by a single individual, Frederick Paul Keppel, a genial and energetic man of unswerving integrity and character, of wide personal acquaintances and eclectic interests. Grantmaking during his long presidency was, at least technically, organized into programs, although it was actually directed more by hunch, coincidence, opportunity, friendship and a wish to help than by clear, specific, consistently applied “scientific” goals or principles.31
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