Giving Compass' Take:

• The Walton Family Foundation hopes to make prominent investments in media across education, environment, and the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta. As the foundation conducted an internal examination, they produced a new resource for philanthropy called the Impact Toolkit and Primer. 

• How often do foundations conduct internal evaluations of their work? Should this process be done by an outside party or the philanthropists themselves? What are the benefits? 

• Read about how to adopt lessons in coherent philanthropy. 

Although we at the Walton Family Foundation (WFF) wouldn’t characterize ourselves as media funders, in early 2017 we came to realize that we were making significant investments in media across all three of our program areas—K-12 education, the environment, and the Foundation’s home region of Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas-Mississippi delta.

But as we invested more in media organizations, we wanted to deepen our evaluation approach. After all, as an organization, we value continuous improvement and learning. This internal examination led to the creation of a resource we’re now pleased to share with our philanthropic peers: our new Impact Toolkit and Primer.

The first step in this project was to see if anyone else had figured out the media impact question. After connecting with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, Media Impact Funders, and other networks, we came to appreciate that this is a question our peers in philanthropy are currently struggling with.

What we discovered:

  • This is upfront work. Careful thinking and planning with grantees at the outset helps both parties outline what is meaningful.
  • Standardize terms. We created a glossary to communicate clearly what WFF is looking for and ensure we’re collecting useful data.
  • Develop indicators. We created a bank of common indicators, with definitions, and sample targets (“how much”) to help orient grantmaking staff and to give them a common jumping-off point.
  • Think more broadly about the capacity of recipient organizations. Different organizations have different capacity, different software, different analytics platforms, and different organizational culture around impact.
  • Provide the resources needed to succeed. Amplify what’s there. If we want to reach more people on social networks, we need to include a budget for paid promotions.

Read the full article about Walton Family Foundation by Kristin Tracz at Media Impact Funders