Given the dynamics of healthcare legislative shifts in the United States, a mid-western healthcare foundation was launching a new strategic plan. With so many projects already in process, combined with the need to launch initiatives to enable the new strategy for their communities, the foundation wanted to answer some questions such as,  which projects should we invest in first? and

which staff have capacity to work on current and new projects?

The team at GrantBook offered the approach to consider all foundation projects like a portfolio of stocks. Most people with investment portfolios, manage their investments to maximize profit (or hire someone to manage it for them). Thus, a foundation can do the same with its projects by implementing Portfolio Management, a process by which financial and human resources are optimized to maximize value for positive impact to the foundation (internally and/or externally).

So, the portfolio of projects was looked at holistically and analyzed in terms of meeting the 5 goals of Portfolio Management which are:

  • Impact — allocate resources to maximize the impact of the portfolio (impact to community and long-term strategy)
  • Balance — achieve a desired balance of projects across impact areas or goals
  • Strategy — link project effort to strategy, top down and bottom up
  • Number — balance availability of staff and the volume of work to be completed
  • Sufficiency — pick the right number and combination of projects to meet goals

Read the full article about strategic portfolio management by GrantBook at Medium.