What's your perfect foundation?

As my foundation begins it strategic planning for the future, a question was posed in a staff meeting today that got me to thinking. What are the characteristics of a great foundation in the early 21st Century?

Since I eventually want to run a foundation I have asked a similar question to myself.  My past questions, though, have been more around the scenario of new leadership at an established foundation.  But what if tomorrow I won one of those outrageous multi-million dollar lotteries that you hear about occasionally on the news and could start a foundation from scratch?  What would it look like?

I think mine would study closely the "Tao of Trista": allow Program (and maybe even grants) staff to be outside of the office more than inside.  I too believe that program staff needs to know the ins and outs of the community being served, the challenges and potential solutions, the key players and the effective organizations.  They can't know that from staying inside at their desks, reviewing proposals.  We would fund operational support in addition to specific programs.  We would be front and center in the digital age, taking advantage of all that technology has to offer.  We would be transparent, possibly even allowing the public to attend board or program review committee meetings.  And we would continually learn from both the failures and the successes.

What are the characteristics of your 21st century foundation?

Save yourself 6 hours and endless bouncebacks

Obama's digital strategist (I love his title) has recently said in an interview that nonprofit e-newsletters are a waste of time. I know you are probably thinking, "they can't be a waste of time, I just spent six hours writing our e-newsletter and it is a great way to connect with our donors." As a personal donor and as an foundation representative, I can honestly say that most e-newsletter immediately get deleted. I don't have time to read the 7-10 that are in my in-box everytime I open it and I don't feel like they make me feel closer to the organization because I read their 3 short articles about their mission. He did have a suggestion to replace the e-newsletter, which is refreshing because I am sick of reading articles about what is wrong with the sector with no suggestions to improve it. He said that the campaign's strategy was to write regular, short emails to possible contributors asking them to do one specific thing (make a gift, help call undecided voters, etc.). The email was also very clear about what would happen if they did that one thing and what would happen next. I understand that this is all very common sense stuff but its easy to leave your common sense at home when it comes to fundraising because everyone else is sending e-newsletters so it must work. I know there is probably an urban legend about a well written e-newsletter that got a nonprofit a million dollar gift from someone who got a forwarded copy from a friend. You know deep down inside that this isn't true, so step away from the constant contact website and think about how you can authentically connect with your supporters.

The full article is here.

Who have you seen that is doing effective e-communication?

Declines: The Necessary Evil

Normally, after one grant cycle concludes, acceptance letters as well as declination letters get mailed. When my grantees receive acceptance letters they’re so excited and grateful, their thank-you calls make my day. The recipients of the declination letters……not so much. I find myself fumbling and being put on the defensive as to why we didn’t fund this or that program. In my tenure as a program officer, I have been on the receiving end of a few not-so-pleasant phone calls. To prevent them from getting under my skin, I started categorizing them:

• Immediate declines. This is very succinct: The proposed program just did not fit within our guidelines. Do not pass “GO” and do not collect $200.
• “Maybe but…….” With these we weigh the qualitative component of the proposal and ask a few pertinent questions: Is this organization the strongest and the best to undertake this program? If other organizations are doing similar work, why reinvent the wheel? This came up with a recent decline and the organization phoned me. They proposed a capacity grant for an advocacy and policy staff position. A noble enough endeavor to be sure. But I had to point out that two much larger and better equipped organizations in the city were doing the same work with a stronger policy team. This organization seemed surprised when I mentioned this bit of information. But she was very understanding of our position and thanked me for taking the time to explain the declination. This was actually one of the nicer calls I received.
• Don’t shoot the messenger. These are declines from our board of directors. At this point I have done all I can to get a program funded but, for whatever reason, our board decided otherwise. It is truly out of my hands.
• Blind-sided declines. These declines are the toughest. These proposals have you the most invested emotionally because you have built a relationship with the potential grantee. After all due diligence is performed and it passes the staff vetting process, something crops up that you could not have anticipated. This was the type of call I received about a week ago. This organization had proposed a phenomenal science education program for disadvantaged youth. It was the kind of program that had me more excited than any other I had participated in before. They were partnering with another local non-profit which was to provide them with the teaching staff needed to carry out said program. Unfortunately, disturbing news came to light about this partner organization’s financial stability. My Executive Director said it was my call. So, due to the questionable circumstances and the current economic climate, I decided it was not prudent to move forward with this grant. Fortunately, the grantee understood my foundation’s position. I think it upset me more than it did her.

With so many nonprofits chasing so few dollars, it’s impossible to fund every worthy proposal that lands in my lap. With the economy circling the drain, a staggering number of organizations desperately need foundation dollars to fund the vital services that often fall by the wayside in down economies. I am proud of the fact my foundation has decided to maintain our level of giving as much as possible.

I still believe my days of saying “no” have just begun.

Paulette Pierre is a Program Officer intern at The Field Foundation of Illinois. She has a graduate certificate in Non-Profit Management and Philanthropy from Loyola University and is currently pursuing her MA in Interdisciplinary Studies at DePaul University.

I is for Innovation

I've been recently reintroduced to the wonders of Sesame Street through my four year old son who saw it for the seemingly FIRST time last week. I refuse to believe that it really is the first time because I believe that getting to know this little utopia of a street, where diversity is celebrated and being smart if fun, is the birthright of every child and for some reason my child stared at Big Bird in confusion when we were flipping through channels. "Wow, that's a funny looking bird", he said. When I asked him what the bird's name was he said, "how would I know?" Yikes! It has now become my personal mission to throne the Sesame Street muppets as the preferred characters in my house. I'm sick of that smug little SpongeBob anyway, with his fancy square pants and pineapple house.  This all being said, I started to wonder where the idea of Sesame Street came from? Did some bigwig exec at PBS have a meeting where he said, "I need a show with an infinite amount of marketing opportunities and a lock on the preschool demographic?"  I highly doubt it. Today I was reading an article about the roots of Sesame Street and found that the show was the result of a conversation between a Carnegie Foundation exec and a producer. From the article:

"The idea they came up with was kind of radical: If you can sell kids sugared cereal and toys using Madison Avenue techniques, why couldn't you use the same techniques for teaching counting, the alphabet and basic social skills? And it works."

Indeed, as Davis notes in "Street Gang" (Viking), the genesis of Sesame Street was when the 3-year-old daughter of a Carnegie foundation executive was fascinated by television, waking up to watch the broadcast day begin and memorizing commercial jingles. He talked about his daughter with a friend, producer Joan Ganz Cooney. In the liberal ferment of the mid-'60s, both wondered whether educational TV could go beyond the staid classroom shows of the era.

Foundations are perfectly positioned to encourage this kind of innovation. Foundation staff meet with experts from a wide variety of fields and can bring  ideas from one sector to another. This foundation exec had the interest in improving children's education and the connections with a producer to ensure that this innovation happened.

How are you expanding your network to make sure that you have the right experts in your network to make the next Sesame Street Happen?

Authentic Foundation Communication

For the past few months the staff at Headwaters has been thinking a lot about how social media tools fit into our charge of being a transparent grantmaker. Tools like blogs, facebook, Twitter can start an effective two way dialog where the foundation and our various constituencies (grantees, donors, community organizers, and interested individuals) can exchange information and together build effective movements for social change or social media tools can be an amazing time suck that alienates your audience and undermines your brand.Yikes, nothing like a little pressure to help clarify your communications strategy. We've been taking the slow and steady approach to social media (not usually my style but it works in this case). Instead of throwing out a bunch of content and hoping something sticks, we are organically growing our Facebook friends and inviting them to our events, twittering program updates, and actively searching for content that will be useful for our audience. What nonprofits are at the cutting edge of social media and what do you like about their content or strategy?