Jun 01, 2018

ScholarWorks@GVSU; The Foundation Review;

In 2015, the Cricket Island Foundation conducted a multimethod assessment of its grantmaking portfolio to examine its impact and inform future decision-making and strategy. The foundation, which supports youth-led social change using a cohort-based model, focuses on emerging and medium-sized organizations and provides capacity-building supports to help organizations achieve greater organizational sustainability. The assessment focused on two of the foundation's three cohorts and found positive trends in five key areas of desired impact: organizational capacity, youth leadership, nonprofit executive leadership, grantee collaboration and learning, and funder policy and practice. The assessment also identified areas for improvement to strengthen future impact, and prompted a review and update of the foundation's ongoing protocols for tracking its progress. This article will explore what was learned from a model of providing long-term capacity-building investments to grassroots organizations, and discuss the ways in which even small foundations can implement meaningful assessment protocols while minimizing data-collection burdens on grantee partners.

Mar 01, 2016

ScholarWorks@GVSU; The Foundation Review;

Increased accountability from foundations has created a culture in which nonprofits, with limited resources and a range of reporting protocols from multiple funders, struggle to meet data-reporting expectations. Responding to this, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation in partnership with the Chicago Tribune launched the Unified Outcomes Project, an 18-month evaluation capacity-building project. The project focused on increasing grantees' capacity to report outcome measures and utilize this evidence for program improvement, while streamlining the number of tools being used to collect data among cohort members. It utilized a model that emphasized communities of practice, evaluation coaching, and collaboration between the foundation and 29 grantees to affect evaluation outcomes across grantee contexts. This article highlights the project's background, activities, and outcomes, and its findings suggest that the majority of participating grantees benefited from their participation – in particular those that received evaluation coaching. This article also discusses obstacles encountered by the grantees and lessons learned.

Jun 30, 2015

ScholarWorks@GVSU; The Foundation Review;

With long-term commitments to concentrated geographic regions, community foundations are in a unique position to highlight problems and stimulate other nonprofit organizations and funders to develop local solutions. Seizing an opportunity to address a growing community concern over cutbacks in youth arts education, the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region undertook an initiative that utilized several innovation strategies in a way that would impact the community and its own work. This article describes how the foundation combined catalytic funding, partnership with grantees, creative use of evaluation, and design of advocacy tools to promote and strengthen youth arts programming. The partnership approach gave rise to very different working relationships with grantees, moving the foundation away from its traditional role to one that led to shared ownership among all the collaborative partners. The initiative included significant use of a variety of evaluation approaches, including needs assessment, evaluation capacity-building, and developmental evaluation. The experience with this innovative project positioned the foundation to pursue future community-impact initiatives even more effectively, and this article concludes with eight insights for others interested in using innovative methods to lead large initiatives designed for broad community impact.

Jun 25, 2014

Arts Midwest;

This report from Arts Midwest, investigates how small and mid-sized arts organizations learn, adapt, and grow. Examining the experiences of eight organizations participating in this leadership and strategy development program, this report identifies four capacities that have helped organizations in Minnesota and North Dakota thrive in the face of operational challenges, staffing and leadership changes, and shifts in funding. Key takeaways offer insights for similar organizations seeking to build their resiliency and for grantmakers supporting the arts and culture sector.

May 15, 2014

Levi Strauss Foundation;

The social justice sector is at a critical inflection point -- a moment where many of its fundamental assumptions and old ways of operating are being challenged. New tools and strategies are needed to strengthen the sector to advance its goals of achieving justice and opportunity for all.This report is a new case study by Heather McLeod Grant about the Levi Strauss Foundation's groundbreaking five-year effort to help a group of Bay Area social justice leaders scale their impact by investing in capacity building and supporting new ways of working. The case study shares many of the rich stores and lessons emerging from the Pioneers in Justice initiative, as these young leaders work to scale their impact and build social movements through the power of social media and networked action. What they are learning -- and how they learned it -- is something that everyone interested in the larger social sector will be curious to find out.

Apr 19, 2013

PhilanthropyNZ;

Under the rubric of More Than Giving, Dr Ruesga talks on the subject of organisational effectiveness or capacity building with reference to the findings and recommendations of a soon-to-be-published "capacity building landscape" project prepared for Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO), which discusses on-going challenges, new approaches, and new challenges for grantmakers who care about increasing the effectiveness of NGO work.Albert talks about his own experience in setting up and/or strengthening two capacity building programmes how to gauge NGO capacity and return on investment and how grantmakers can put a toe in the water without going all in.

Sep 01, 2011

Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR);

This report examines different approaches to funding plus used by UK charitable foundations. In addition, the survey tries to uncover the principal benefits, challenges and risks of these approaches in order to generate practically useful learning about funding plus.In this regard, the research found that the funding plus field comprises a broad range of definitions, purposes and activity. Within this we were able to identify five overarching preconditions for success in funding plus:- strong personal relationships- good knowledge of grantees and the sector in which they operate- grantees that are ready and willing for an engaged relationship with a funder- bespoke rather than standardised or prescriptive approaches- careful and responsible management of power relationships between funder and grantee

Jun 01, 2011

Innovation Network;

Innovation Network has a wealth of experience as an evaluation capacity builder. One way we often provide ECB services is to a group of grantees. Over the years we have provided funder-sponsored ECB services to a number of grantee cohorts. The following three case studies share our experiences with funder initiatives to strengthen grantee evaluation capacity and practice. Each case study includes a description of the overall grantmaking initiative, followed by a discussion of the ECB services requested by grantees and/or provided by Innovation Network. The paper concludes with a reflection on lessons learned and recommendations for funders considering ECB for their grantees