By Sara Beggs, ASF
In a world in which philanthropy battles some of society’s greatest ills, we’re tempted to adopt a scarcity mindset—not enough money, not enough time, not enough staff. And the corollary: there are certainly not enough resources for learning and evaluation!
It’s time to throw off the shackles of this mindset and instead think of what you can do.
Do your best to learn, and be satisfied even if your approach is small and piecemeal. John Bare of the Arthur M. Blank Foundation and formerly a Knight Foundation evaluation staffer once told me: “No one does textbook evaluation. Just do what you can with the resources you have.” Funders with few or no staff rarely have the resources to take on exhaustive evaluation efforts, but that doesn’t mean learning has to go by the wayside.
Consider the impact of asking one small but thoughtful question as you award your grants. To facilitate learning over the course of its grants, The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation asks grantees, What do you need to know to plan for the future, improve the program, and allocate resources more effectively?
Foundation co-founder Jenny Shilling Stein shares how this question helps grantees create a learning agenda. For example, FoodCorps, a nationwide team of leaders that connects kids to real food and helps them grow up healthy, used the question to focus its learning on issues critical to its success, such as: What makes a field partner good at this work? How solid is our delegated field management? What are the minimum criteria for success at a school?
Deliberately engage in the many ways to promote learning—many that you’ve likely explored. A broad range of strategies can be used to foster learning among funders and their grantees:
- Acquiring deep knowledge about a field and community
- Appropriately engaging all stakeholders in meaningful dialogue
- Asking important questions and stating difficult facts that others may hesitate to mention
- Understanding the dynamics involved and mediating discussions among key players
- Identifying important patterns from field data that individuals may miss
John Bare and I will present more on this topic at the 2014 Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) National Conference, March 10-12.
Set your mind to love learning—even when it’s hard. Funders that love to learn are able to:
- Listen to feedback about changes that could improve their work
- Share their learning and their mistakes so the learning is extended beyond themselves
- Facilitate honest dialogue in which grantees can share what’s not working so that improvements can be made
- And much more
How are you throwing off the shackles of a scarcity mindset and learning as a result?
Related resources
ASF’s resources on impact and evaluation
Continual Learning Through Intention and Evaluation
Testing Our Intentions Against Our Outcomes: And Then, What’s Next?
Simplifying Complex Learning Techniques for Small-Staff Grantmakers, a session at GEO’s 2014 National Confernence | March 10-12, Los Angeles
Senior Program Manager Sara Beggs currently focuses her time and energy on ASF’s Getting to Impact Initiative, an effort to equip ASF members with the information and inspiration to achieve greater impact over time. Her greatest philanthropic joy is participation in Blooming Kids for Kindness, a group of ten families that encourage their children to care about their communities and recognize that each can make a difference through local and international volunteer and fundraising activities.
Good morning Sara and thank you for this article.
I recently made a site visit to the Mesquite Neighborhood Learning Center in Las Cruces, NM. 85% of the costs for the learning center are funded through New Mexico State University. The remaining 15% comes through grants, donations, etc.
The learning center provides ESL, literacy, GED, computer skills, financial literacy, vocational training (when they have the money) and they collaorate with other local services. Services are provided for about 600 people per year. Most of the clients are single mothers and or women leaving abusive home lives.
I was impressed by the director’s use of quantitative and qualitative data as she presented the organization. She talked about the obvious – numbers earning GED’s, numbers going on to community college or university systems, graduates returning to volunteer as tutors, graduates getting a job and how the organization saves dollars through collaboration.
Than she talked about the qualitative: the tears in the eyes of graduates, the desire of graduates to give back to the community, the donation that comes “out of the blue” in the “nick of time”, and how collaborating with other organizations provides inspiration.
It made me wonder if I could describe ELF in the same way. I always use grant distribution data that includes grants by geographic location and foundation priority. However, I have not used, in a meaningful way, the data from grant reports. So after I rebuild my computer which had a “coronary” a couple days ago, I will start looking more closely at grant reports as I try to discover impact with an employee resource of one. That would be me.
Thank you again for the article Sara,
Elizabeth Grinnell
Enchanted Life Foundation – ELF
Las Cruces, NM
Thanks for your inspirational story about the learning center’s results, Elizabeth. However, I thank you most for your humility to admit what is a struggle for many, if not most, grantmakers–really using the data from grant reports to learn. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised how much you glean by taking that one step to deliberately learn.