Foundations

More than 70 percent of grant makers say not enough is being done to assess the performance of foundations, according to a survey conducted by the LFA Group for the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

The biggest barriers to measuring performance are the difficulty of establishing a causal relationship between a foundation’s support and creating change, and a lack of time to conduct an evaluation, respondents said. LFA Group polled more than 500 foundation executives and program officers in February.

CHICAGO, Ill. – May 24, 2010 – The Walmart Foundation today announced a $1.2 million dollar donation to the National Energy Education Development Project (NEED) to install solar panels on 20 schools in five cities across the country. The five cities taking part in the program are Chicago, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Seattle.

“The Walmart Solar School program will help educate the next generation on the opportunities and benefits of using more renewable energy,” said Margaret McKenna, president of the Walmart Foundation. “This program aligns perfectly with Walmart’s sustainability commitment to involve our communities and customers in our environmental and social efforts.”

Michelle Obama on Thursday announced that five foundations — the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the Skoll Foundation, the Open Society Institute and the Benificus Foundation — would provide a total of $45 million to match the money the government plans to grant to nonprofit groups through its Social Innovation Fund, which will help expand social programs that have proven successful. More than 20 other foundations and organizations will provide an additional $5 million so that the fund will have $100 million, half in federal money, to award beginning in July.

A $650,000 check in 2008 from the Community Health Foundation of Western and Central New York for a new program to assist the frail elderly in Cattaraugus County came with a caveat: Trustees of the foundation wanted the money back, with interest.

A single grant of that size was beyond the capacity of the foundation, so trustees decided instead to make it a loan.

The money allowed Community Care of Western New York to launch a program that will keep more than 200 rural elderly people safely in their homes. Without it, the project probably would have stalled.

Foundations appear to have responded quickly and intelligently to the economic crisis, directing more of their money for recession relief to the hardest-hit parts of the country, according to a study released today.

The study was conducted by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, and paid for by the Philanthropic Collaborative, a group of foundations, nonprofit organizations, and lawmakers.

The study analyzed a sample of grants collected by the Foundation Center that numbered 2,672 and totaled $472-million. The grants were made from 2008 to 2010.

April 30, 2010, Chronicle of Philanthropy — Twelve foundations announced today they plan to spend $506-million this year on grants designed to bolster a new $650-million federal grant program to expand innovative school-improvement projects.

"We see this as a real moment of opportunity for the country," said Michelle Cahill, a vice president at Carnegie Corporation of New York, which is coordinating the effort along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The grant makers said in a statement they have also created an online registry to make it easier for groups to apply for, and share information about, the new federal program, known as the Investing in Innovation, or "i3," program.

April 30, 2010, Wall Street Journal — It's no surprise that President Obama, with a lengthy background in the non-profit sector, has made strong efforts to reach out to the philanthropic community. What may come as a surprise is just how exhilarated the philanthropic community is by the attention.

This year's Council on Foundations conference, which concluded Tuesday in Denver, offered a revealing glimpse into the nexus of an administration eager to obtain the support of the non-profit world, and a community of increasingly politicized foundations who see bountiful opportunities for legislative achievements emanating from the current White House.

A tone of mutual congratulation pervaded the conference, first exemplified by remarks from Valerie Jarrett, a long-time adviser to President Obama and manager of the White House Office of Public Engagement, which oversees public-private liaison efforts."Why did I have such a great amount of confidence at the beginning of our administration?" she said to the assembled foundation worthies. "It's because of you."

April 19, 2010, Philanthropy News Digest — Challenged by a prolonged economic downturn, the nation's grantmaking foundations cut their giving by an estimated 8.4 percent in 2009, a new report from the Foundation Center finds. The decline is the steepest since the center began tracking the data in 1975.

Based on a survey of more than 1,200 large and midsize foundations, the 2010 edition of Foundation Growth and Giving Estimates (16 pages, PDF) found that grant dollars awarded fell from $46.8 billion in 2008 to $42.9 billion in 2009, and that the decline in giving totaled less than half the 17 percent loss in foundation assets recorded in 2008. The report also found that independent and family foundations, which represent nearly 90 percent of foundations, reduced their giving by 8.9 percent to $30.8 billion in 2009, corporate foundation giving decreased by 3.3 percent to $4.4 billion, and community foundation giving declined by 9.6 percent to $4.1 billion.