Giving Compass' Take:

• Charlotte Brugman writes in response to ACF's Stronger Foundations initiative report -- Impact and Learning: The Pillars of Stronger Foundation Practice -- and explores how funders can improve by listening and uplifting voices that are not their own. 

• How can individual donors learn from the same practices? How is your philanthropy gathering meaningful feedback?  

• Read more about how foundations listen to those they serve. 

This blog was written in response Impact and Learning: The Pillars of Stronger Foundation Practice, a report from ACF's Stronger Foundations initiative which identifies and helps foundations pursue excellent practice. This contribution comes from Charlotte Brugman, Manager of Assessment and Advisory Services at the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

ACF's report Impact and Learning: The Pillars of Stronger Foundation Practice defines learning as a “proactive and lifelong process of reflection and open listening” that “takes time and is an iterative process.” As the report argues, this means a stronger foundation should “regularly review its mission to ensure it is still fit for purpose” by listening and “making efforts to understand the realities of the people, issues and causes with which the foundation seeks to engage.”

From my vantage point leading the Center for Effective Philanthropy‘s work in Europe, I couldn’t agree more.

In order to stay relevant, focus on what matters, and do no harm, funders need to proactively and regularly seek candid feedback from the people they’re engaging most closely with on the work: their grantees, beneficiaries, partners, and other key stakeholders. Listening and learning needs to be a constant practice, preferably benchmarking feedback results against that of other funders and structurally tracking performance over time. This helps foundations to stay agile and adaptable, to keep program officers aware of actual needs, and to make sure that strategies achieve intended impact.

But listening and learning — let alone managing organizational change — is never easy, and having a growth mindset can be painful.  It’s far easier to stick with what we know, listen to people we know, or who look and behave like us, and protect and preserve the safe bubble of the organizational culture that we’ve built and know best.

This is why philanthropy’s biggest asset — its complete freedom to be able to decide how and when to spend its resources — is also its biggest Achilles heel.

Read the full article about stronger foundations by Charlotte Brugman at the Association of Charitable Foundations.