By Rob DiLeonardi, VNA Foundation
How do we know if our grants are making a difference? It’s a question that has probably haunted funders ever since the first grant was made.
Yet, it is a question with many answers, and no single answer that is best for everyone. To find out which of the many answers might best apply to your work, please consider joining me at Exponent Philanthropy’s 2016 National Conference next month, where I will be a presenter at a session entitled “Assessing Your Foundation’s Impact.”
“The question of how to assess impact it is exactly the type of topic that, 20+ years ago, I dreamed of being able to discuss with colleagues from other smaller foundations like my own.”
The topic of impact is near and dear to me, for two reasons. First, the foundation which I’ve had the privilege of helping lead for many years now, the VNA Foundation in Chicago, puts a high priority on ensuring that our grants make an impact—and we measure that impact in a variety of interesting ways.
Second, the question of how to assess impact it is exactly the type of topic that, 20+ years ago, I dreamed of being able to discuss with colleagues from other smaller foundations like my own. In fact, it was one of the questions I had in the back of my mind when several of us met one frigid weekend in January 1996 in a hotel near O’Hare airport, the view out the window a cross between a scene from Dr. Zhivago and a documentary on the Ice Age. I guess the imposed confinement in the (relatively) warm hotel was beneficial, as by the end of that weekend we’d hatched the plans for turning our networking group of small funders into what would eventually become Exponent Philanthropy.
From the get-go, there were a few firm rules at Exponent Philanthropy (née Association of Small Foundations), including:
- Every member is to be treated with courtesy and responded to as promptly as possible.
- There is no such thing as a dumb question. The association was and is a safe space to ask about anything you need to know about grantmaking, even if it’s something you think you maybe ought to know already.
- Even the most ambitious grantmaking always involves practical steps (like what to include in an award letter or what to cover on a site visit), so nuts-and-bolts topics are important to discuss; we didn’t want to discuss the forest without mentioning the trees.
“There is no such thing as a dumb question. The association was and is a safe space to ask about anything you need to know about grantmaking, even if it’s something you think you maybe ought to know already.”
I am proud to say that those same tenets, along with a half-dozen more that we agreed on that day, tacitly or explicitly, are still part of Exponent Philanthropy’s mindset. And I am even more proud to say that I know the association’s people and resources have mightily enhanced my foundation’s work, and that of my colleagues.
That some of Exponent Philanthropy’s sound original thinking is still in place today is not to imply, however, that nothing about the organization has changed over the past two decades. In fact, I’m happy to say that quite the opposite is true.
For example, our first National Conference was held in 1996 and, like this year’s event, in Chicago. I remember two things most clearly about that conference 20 years ago: First, I was board chair at the time, and my name badge was festooned with ribbons of various hues announcing that title as well as “Speaker,” “Host Committee,” “Tour Leader,” and undoubtedly a couple others. In retrospect, I probably looked more like the leader of a banana republic than a conference resource. Second, some aspects of the conference did not go as smoothly as we’d hoped; the proud-to-be-a-working-board, roll-up-our-sleeves mindset that served us well in so many aspects of Exponent Philanthropy’s genesis did not translate as well to conference planning and management.
The do-it-yourself conference planning has, I am delighted to share with you, long been abandoned. The 2016 National Conference is a well-planned event that benefitted from the input of many, and promises to be both informative and inspiring. So, please consider joining me September 26–28 at the beautiful Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile to talk about impact and many other topics, and to experience firsthand all that has changed about our association over the past 20 years—and all that has not.
Rob DiLeonardi, Exponent Philanthropy co-founder and former board chair, is executive director of the VNA Foundation in Chicago, where he manages its grantmaking program and daily operations. Rob has a longstanding interest in foundation transparency and outcome sharing; VNA’s website and annual reports have eight times received a Council on Foundations’ Wilmer Shields Rich Award for Excellence in Communications.
