Being

the Change

12 Ways Foundations Are Transforming

Themselves to Transform Their Impact
April 2018

Abigail Stevenson and Valerie Bockstette with Andria Seneviratne, Miya Cain, and Tracy Foster
About FSG
FSG is a mission-driven consulting firm supporting leaders in creating large-scale,
lasting social change. Through strategy, evaluation, and research we help many
types of actors—individually and collectively—make progress against the world’s
toughest problems.

Our teams work across all sectors by partnering with leading foundations, businesses,
nonprofits, and governments in every region of the globe. We seek to reimagine social
change by identifying ways to maximize the impact of existing resources, amplify-
ing the work of others to help advance knowledge and practice, and inspiring change
agents around the world to achieve greater impact.

As part of our nonprofit mission, FSG also directly supports learning communities,
such as the Collective Impact Forum, the Shared Value Initiative, and the Impact
Hiring Initiative to provide the tools and relationships that change agents need to be
successful.

Learn more about FSG at www.fsg.org.

The research included in this report was made possible through funding from
the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Democracy Fund, Ewing Marion Kauffman
Foundation, Humanity United, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
and The Omidyar Group. We thank them for their support.

The findings, conclusions, and recommendations presented in this report are those of
FSG alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the study’s funders.

We would like to thank the many FSG colleagues who helped with the research,
writing, and reviewing of this report, in particular Mark Kramer and Joshua Simpson.
We would also like to thank the invaluable contributions of our communications
colleagues, especially Rachel Crofut, Mark Russell, Stephanie Cubell, Carrie
Benjamin, and Alex Horton.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-

NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License.
Contents
AT A GLANCE 2 MAKING THE CHANGE 66
Considerations for getting started

ABOUT 4
Why and how did we conduct this research? PEER PERSPECTIVES
Raikes Foundation 14
Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta 26
SHIFTING ASPIRATIONS 7 NPAG 40
New foundation ambitions require new internal practices Lankelly Chase 54

STAFFING PHILOSOPHY 16 APPENDICES

How foundations are redefining their capacity needs
Helpful Resources 72
List of Interviewees 73
STRUCTURE & DESIGN 28
How foundations are unlocking new sources of value

SKILL DEVELOPMENT 42
How foundations are reconceiving and nurturing talent

SUPPORTIVE CULTURE 56
How foundations are fostering openness and authenticity

“We realized if we were trying to make change externally

then every change we want to make in the external world
we have to make in ourselves.”
— Alice Evans, Director, Systems Change, Lankelly Chase

BEING THE CHANGE | 1

 At a Glance

As foundations adopt new approaches for creating social change, they must
also adapt their internal practices.

To achieve meaningful impact at scale, many foundations are aiming to influence the actions and investments
of the public and private sectors, as well as address the complex and deeply entrenched conditions that hold
social problems in place. To do so, foundations are not only offering grant funding, but are also expanding
how they apply their assets, knowledge, skills, networks, and people in new ways.

There is a wealth of information on how to adapt strategies to create impact at scale and to change systems;
however, less has been written about what internal practices are needed to make this happen. To find out,
we interviewed 114 practitioners representing 50 funders and 8 philanthropic services organizations that
have gone through or advised internal transformation. Our interviews yielded surprising commonalities.
Whether the foundations had grantmaking budgets of $5 million, $50 million, or $500 million, they agreed
that new practices are needed in the areas of staffing philosophy, structure and design, skill development,
and supportive culture (see chart on next page).

By experimenting with these practices, foundations hope to foster connectivity, vibrancy, and deep
engagement both internally (across all people and parts of their organization) and externally (with grantees,
community members, and other partners), ultimately opening up new avenues for impact.

2 | FSG
The 12 Ways Foundations Are Transforming Themselves to
Transform Their Impact

STAFFING
PHILOSOPHY
Redefining
1
Viewing staff as
impact multipliers,
2
Designing teams
based on functions,
3
Using size-based
benchmarking as a
not cost drivers not formulas compass, not ruler
capacity needs by

STRUCTURE
& DESIGN
Unlocking new
4
Coloring outside the
lines of classic
5
Transforming back-
office support into
6
Busting silos
between issues,
philanthropic giving front-line impact people, and teams
sources of value by

SKILL
DEVELOPMENT
Reconceiving and
7
Seeking out and
supporting five
8
Welcoming and
valuing diverse
9
Boosting breadth and
depth of professional
key mindsets and lived experience development
nurturing talent by

SUPPORTIVE
CULTURE
Fostering openness
10
Committing to
continuous learning
11
Attending to
power dynamics
12
Mirroring internally
what is sought
and adaptation with partners externally
and authenticity by

BEING THE CHANGE | 3

 ABOUT
Why and how did we conduct
this research?

“Foundations cannot just modify their way of acting

in the world (out there) to make change without also
significantly altering how they function internally
(in here) to allow them to implement.”
— Rob Ricigliano, Systems & Complexity Coach, The Omidyar Group

4 | FSG
This study was inspired by a foundation trustee asking: “As we adopt an
increasing number of approaches for creating change—how many and what
types of people do we need on our staff?”

Realizing that many foundation leaders—and trustees—are asking similar questions, we embarked on
research to uncover the following:

• How are approaches for creating change—and related staff roles—evolving?

• What are the implications of making staffing changes, including number and roles of staff, as well as
organizational and team structures, skillsets, and culture?

• How are foundations navigating these organizational changes?

We are grateful that six organizations funded us to explore these questions: the Conrad N. Hilton Founda-
tion, Democracy Fund, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Humanity United, the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation, and The Omidyar Group. The unifying recognition across these funders that catalyzed
their support of this study is a shared recognition that you can’t make change out there if you’re not also
reflecting the change in here.

A number of recent publications contribute to the field’s understanding of effective philanthropy (see Appen-
dix A for a list of helpful resources):

• The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) released new findings on effective program officers includ-
ing how they can strengthen grantee relationships and build deeper understanding of the individuals and
communities they seek to help.

• Of the top 10 Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) articles in 2017, four were explicitly about new
ways to create change with philanthropy.

• Grantmakers for Effective Organization’s (GEO) 2017 field survey shared trends on grantmaking,
relationships, diversity, equity, inclusion, and culture.

• In partnership with Management Assistance Group, GEO also published a Systems Grantmaking
Resource Guide that consolidates and describes a set of tools, frameworks, and processes that analyze
and make sense of systems.

• The Bridgespan Group codified five elements for success in pursuing audacious philanthropy (i.e., large-
scale, ambitious change).

• Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, along with dozens of partners, developed the “Theory of the Foun-
dation” framework to stimulate discussion about foundations as institutions, beyond their programmatic
or grantmaking activities.

BEING THE CHANGE | 5

 To complement this rich body of literature, we spoke with 114 philanthropy practitioners (see Appendix B for
their names) about how staffing is changing in foundations that use multiple approaches for creating change.
Our study was designed to:

• Take a holistic view of foundation staffing. Interviews inquired about the factors that determine
headcount, structure of program areas and teams, competencies sought in staff, and cultural enablers
that support their success.

• Include multiple perspectives. The foundations that participated represent different types and geogra-
phies. Moreover, 48 of our interviewees work in functional areas of foundations, bringing a perspective
that’s often underrepresented in literature on foundation strategy and practice.

• Create findings for foundations of all sizes. The foundations that participated in the research range
in annual giving from $1 million to over $1 billion and have staff sizes that range from 7 to more than
1,000.
48
Functional Roles
27 27
114 16 15 13 12
Interviewees in
a variety of roles 4
CEO, ED, Program HR, Learning, Admin, Comms Advisory
President People Eval, Ops,
Strategy Legal

27
58
Organizations 10 8
represented
7
3 3
Private Family Community Corporate Public Philanthropic
Foundation Foundation Foundation Foundation Foundation Services

Annual Giving Headquarters Location

50 > $250M 8
Foundations of
different sizes
$250M-
and locations $100M 9

$100M-
$50M 12

$50M-
$25M 8

$25M-
$15M 6

< $15M 7

6 | FSG
SHIFTING ASPIRATIONS
New foundation ambitions
require new internal practices

“The success of an intervention depends on the

interior condition of the intervenor.”
— Otto Scharmer, Author and Senior Lecturer, MIT
(as paraphrased from Bill O'Brien)

BEING THE CHANGE | 7

 In shifting what they seek to achieve, foundations must also change how they
work—inside and out.

Foundations have long played a key role in strengthening and scaling social-sector program and service
provision, ensuring that programs and services are high-quality, meet individual and community needs, and
are run by leadership teams with the resources and expertise to manage and scale their operations. However,
funding social sector programs and services alone is rarely sufficient to achieve lasting social change at scale,
and thus many foundations are considering additional avenues for impact.

When we talked to 50 foundations about what had influenced recent strategic planning efforts, five themes
arose:

“Our new strategy seeks ways to shift the distribution of power

A desire to affect the
and money within entire systems.”
underlying conditions that
— John Cawley, Vice President
are holding problems in place
J.W. McConnell Family Foundation

“We now have racial equity as part of our strategy and are looking
A commitment to making
at all that we do through that lens.”
diversity, equity, and
— Oscar Regalado, Human Resources Director
inclusion central to the work
Robert R. McCormick Foundation

“We went from seven or eight adjacent programmatic teams

A more concentrated focus on
working on overlapping issues to four overall topic areas.”
the intersection of issues faced
— Steve Downs, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer
by people and communities
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

“Our job is to use all of our resources—relationships,

An expanded use of assets
convening, data—to achieve our outcomes.”
beyond financial resources
— Anne Kubisch, President
to achieve impact goals
The Ford Family Foundation

“We see ourselves as a platform for other people and for

A willingness to lift up others
giving voice to people who might not otherwise be heard.”
and make space for stakeholders
— Alice Evans, Director, Systems Change
to work together to create change
Lankelly Chase

8 | FSG
Whether a foundation is adapting its strategy in response to one or all of
these themes, it requires a rethinking of the foundation’s goals for creating
social change, and the role that the foundation and its staff members play in
achieving those goals.

One way of meeting new impact goals is to influence public- and private-sector actions and investments to
create scaled solutions. This can entail foundations influencing policies, practices, and resource flows among
and across:

• public systems (such as health, education, or justice systems),

• the private sector (such as social enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses, large corporations), or

• funders (such as peer foundations, multi-lateral donors, capital markets).

At the same time, creating long-term and lasting impact in large systems and sectors—social change that will
outlast support from foundations—often requires going a step further. This can lead to foundations aiming to
affect underlying systemic barriers, including historical marginalization or suppression, distrust, harmful narra-
tives, racism, and other systems of oppression. This kind of systemic change can entail foundations:

• actively transforming relationships among systems, sectors, and stakeholders,

• altering power dynamics related to decision making and influence, or

• shifting mental models that influence how people think, talk, and act.

These expanded impact goals—creating scaled solutions in large public or private sectors and/or affecting
underlying systemic barriers—typically can’t be achieved solely through providing philanthropic financial sup-
port. They therefore require a different role for foundations and their staff members.

For example, in addition to providing funding in the form of grants, the foundation staff members we spoke
with are also more actively sharing knowledge with grantees, partners, and key actors to build their own
understanding of context and influence action on the issues the foundation cares about. In some cases,
foundations are also selectively implementing activities in-house that can complement the work of grantees
and partners.

How do these new goals and roles look in action? An example is the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health,
which describes its work as follows: “Mental health is not solely an individual responsibility, but is also a
product of community conditions. Working collaboratively, we can change the patterns of mental illness
across Texas, especially for marginalized populations.” This description encapsulates all five themes that have
influenced foundation strategic planning and results in a variety of impact goals and staff roles.

BEING THE CHANGE | 9

 Specifically, in just the last year, Hogg Foundation staff members:

• awarded $5 million to 19 new grantees, including nonprofits and medical schools,

• managed a total of 78 active grants,

• awarded $151,000 in scholarships and fellowships to 30 recipients,

• wrote the most comprehensive guide to mental health policy in Texas,

• attended all state legislative sessions to inform policymakers about the importance of mental health
and the impacts of prospective laws,

• convened and advised other foundations on their mental health investments,

• ran a fellowship program that trains young professionals interested in careers in mental health policy,

• worked with grantees and partners to increase the voice of mental health consumers by organizing a
statewide conference for consumers of mental health, and

• actively raised awareness of the prevalence and influence of trauma in the lives of mental health con-
sumers through social and traditional media, including opening a conversation in the state’s largest
newspaper on ways that individuals with mental health issues are talked about in the news media.

Importantly, foundations moving into these roles offer themselves as a platform where shared problem-
solving and strategy creation can occur.

To achieve true co-creation, it is critical that more direct staff involvement from a foundation does not mean
that foundation staff members are being directive. That is, foundation staff members should not seek to
control the process for grantees and communities, but should instead support them to foster conditions
for desired outcomes to occur. With their resources and relationships, foundation staff members can play a
unique role in fostering these conditions.

Rather than coming in with answers and focusing on efficient deployment of grants, the critical value of the
foundation of the future may be in the ability to step back and help the various stakeholders who work on an
issue to see their challenges in the overall context, lift up potential new opportunities, and then deploy vari-
ous kinds of capital (including, but not limited to, money) to help those stakeholders work toward change.

Thus, to create the change they are seeking, foundations are employing an
array of approaches.

For example, the Hogg Foundation’s website states: “We use a variety of approaches to create change,
including grantmaking, capacity building, knowledge sharing, mobilizing community members, and more.”

10 | FSG
FIGURE 1. NINE COMMON APPROACHES FOR CREATING CHANGE

Increase the quality and reach Affect public and private sector
of programs and services actions and investments

ng Influe
ildi n
Fund cing
Bu acity
p ers
Ca

In Poli
gra ng

fo cy
s
Pro orti
m

rm
p

ing
Sup
G e n e r a ti n e
K no wled

in g
e ts
Shap
M ark
g
g

tio g
if
in
Sh a

n
z
r r ti n ly
N

at g a ta ora
iv C b
e ll a
M o bili zi n g Co
C o m m u n iti e s

Address underlying conditions:

mental models, power dynamics, and relationships

While these approaches have varying names across the foundation sector, in Figure 1 we have codified nine
frequently mentioned approaches (blue wheel) and their relationship with foundations’ impact goals (outside
text).

Foundations typically implement a different set of approaches in each program area, depending on that
program area’s goals and context, and considering what approaches other funders and actors working on the
same issues are (or are not) using.

These approaches are mutually reinforcing and are often bundled, especially in a place-based context. For
example, The Kresge Foundation uses all nine approaches in its Kresge Early Years for Success (KEYS) initia-
tive in Detroit:

• Generating Knowledge by funding a study about access to quality early childhood programs by
neighborhood;

• Supporting Programs by funding comprehensive early childhood centers;

• Building Capacity by supporting the development of families, practitioners, and leaders;

BEING THE CHANGE | 11

 • Influencing Funders by participating in the Southeast Michigan Early Childhood Funders Collaborative;

• Informing Policy by developing tools to advocate for early childhood policies;

• Shaping Markets by providing loans to early childhood centers; and

• Catalyzing Collaboration by coordinating citywide systems that support early childhood organizations.

• Hope Starts Here, a partnership between The Kresge Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, is
Mobilizing Communities by involving 18,000 Detroiters in a citywide visioning and planning process
and Shifting Narrative by elevating the importance of early childhood.

As foundations implement these approaches, and as staff members play a

more engaged role, staffing models designed solely for making grants to
program and service providers may no longer be applicable.

• Expanding impact goals means an expansion in the number and nature of relationships that foundation
staff members have to structure and manage.

• Evolving staff roles means an increase in the volume and variety of day-to-day activities.

While the primary task of a foundation staff member, especially a program officer, might have historically
been viewed as providing funding to direct-service organizations, these approaches offer different roles staff
members can play depending on whether they are engaging in providing funding, knowledge sharing, or in-
house implementation. In Table 1, based on our interviews, we provide illustrative examples of activities staff
members may undertake in support of each approach.

As foundations implement new approaches in response to new impact aspirations, all the foundation repre-
sentatives we interviewed—whether they were part of a staff of 10 or 1,000—agreed that internal change
was needed to set up staff members for success and to ultimately have greater impact. As the saying goes:
“The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervenor.”1

In the following chapters, we provide more insights, lessons learned, examples, and perspectives from 50
foundations as they evolve their internal practices to achieve their external impact goals. We focus on four
key areas where internal changes are occurring: staffing philosophy, structure and design, skill development,
and supportive culture.

1 MIT systems thinker Otto Scharmer credits his mentor Bill O’Brien with this saying.

12 | FSG
TABLE 1. ILLUSTRATIVE FOUNDATION STAFF MEMBER ACTIVITIES FOR EACH APPROACH

STAFF MEMBER ROLES

PROVIDING KNOWLEDGE IN-HOUSE

APPROACH
FUNDING SHARING IMPLEMENTATION

Supporting Programs Funding direct service Serving as active Running programs

to help them deliver and providers grantee thought- (e.g., trainings, fellow-
grow high-quality services partner ships)

Building Capacity Funding grantee Sharing financial or Providing consulting

to increase effectiveness of key operating capacity operating advice to grantees
organizations

Generating Knowledge Funding research Contributing found- Conducting and

to change the practices of studies ation’s findings disseminating
others based on what works original research

Influencing Funders Co-funding projects Advising peers on Fundraising for and

to invest in the foundation’s with other funders issues and grantees hosting an issue-based
issues and grantees fund

Informing Policy Funding advocacy Testifying before Operating a 501(c)(4)

to change rules and regulations organizations policymakers and organization
in support of key issues influencers

Shaping Markets Funding the testing of Structuring investment Housing an impact

to create inclusive and new business models opportunities investing or venture
sustainable business models fund

Catalyzing Collaboration Funding work of Participating in a Launching or hosting

to unify cross-sector actors cross-sector coalitions cross-sector coalition a cross-sector coalition
toward goals and actions

Mobilizing Communities Funding community Advising and connect- Convening community

to advocate for and problem organizing ing local leaders coalitions
solve around key issues

Shifting Narrative Funding framing Influencing media and Producing campaigns

to alter how people view an studies or campaigns target audiences and multimedia
issue or a community

BEING THE CHANGE | 13

 Peer Perspective
Raikes Foundation

We spoke with Erin Kahn, who has been Executive

Director of the foundation since 2007 and oversees • Launched in 2002
operations and strategy.
• Invests in youth-serving institutions and
systems to make them more effective in
How would you describe the approach of
empowering all young people, especially
the Raikes Foundation? those who have been most marginalized
We are trying to work at the systems level. Rather
than investing in individual programs, we look at • Staff size (2017): 16
how a constellation of programs or institutions (such • Grants (2017): $18.9 million in grants and
as government) work together and what invest- direct charitable expenditures
ments need to be made in the systems themselves
• Core grantmaking programs include educa-
to make them more effective at serving young tion, afterschool and summer programs, and
people. Sometimes we invest to “stand up” a youth homelessness
nascent system and sometimes we push to trans-
form an existing system to improve its performance,
especially to produce more equitable outcomes for
youth who are least well served. In order to achieve What staff skillsets do you need to make to
systems change, key stakeholders need to develop support this approach?
a shared understanding of how a system operates We need people who are good at bringing people
today, and develop a common vision of how the together and good at thinking about how you
system can work better in the future. Through this, work with a group of stakeholders on shared vision
we can identify the leverage points where private setting and alignment. You need people who
philanthropy can play a catalytic role with its invest- understand systems change and systems thinking.
ments alongside other stakeholders such as the Our program officers recognize that time spent
public sector, community-based organizations, youth working alongside key partners is as important as
and families, etc. For example, our role might be to the grant dollars we invest. You also need to be
provide “innovation capital” and test new strate- great at relationship management because you
gies or programs. If they work well and fill a gap, are trying to influence and move people to greater
we then push to find ways for the system to adopt alignment with stakeholders who have no formal
those innovations, often with public financing. In accountability to you. If you are a person who thinks
other cases, we might make investments in data in a linear way and doesn’t like complexity, sys-
systems, incorporating youth voice, or research and tems change wouldn’t be a good fit. By definition,
evaluation to help improve overall understanding of systems are dynamic and no single stakeholder can
the system’s performance and where to target drive changes alone.
new investments.

14 | FSG
What working environment or culture funders so we are all rowing in the same direction.
supports your staff to be successful? This can be hard because philanthropy is prone to
All of our work starts from an initial strategy, but competing initiatives and “branded” efforts. But
the strategy is ever-evolving based on the dynamic when I reflect on the work we’re doing now, I think
nature of systems, changing political dynamics, funder alignment and coordination is one of the
changes in public sector funding, turnover of key distinguishing features of the systems we are work-
players, new insights from research and experi- ing in. By being nimble and being good partners to
ence, etc. You have to empower staff members to our grantees and other stakeholders, I’d like to think
be able to do ongoing reflection on what they’re we will see more effective systems change work on a
learning and what’s changed in their operating faster timeline.
environment. Our program staff meet with our
What advice do you have for peers
trustees fairly regularly and are routinely in dialogue
pursuing a similar way of working?
about how we are adapting our work. We’re an
A few things come to mind. First, if you are focus-
organization that assumes ongoing learning, and
ing on changing systems, you need to take the long
this is nurtured by our trustees through formal and
view. Trying to change big systems takes a long time
informal processes.
and patience! Second, all systems change efforts
Another important ingredient for success is an require an ensemble cast. Getting clear on the
orientation toward partnership and collaboration, unique contribution that your foundation can make
especially with grantees. Strong relationships take is important, but you need to assume that you are
time to build, and you need to demonstrate value only one part of a much bigger effort. And third,
to your grantees as thought partners. Our program advocating for equity in systems requires walking
officers are in routine communication with their the talk by working on equity internally too. As we
key grantee partners. We don’t wait for an annual began to diversify our staff, we needed to work
report or progress update to ask questions, listen to become a more inclusive culture and examine
to feedback, and adapt to challenges. For the unspoken norms or practices. We still have a long
most part, we know the status of our key grantee way to go. As we become a more diverse and inclu-
projects in real time because the lines of communi- sive organization, I think our overall effectiveness
cation are open. It’s hands on, not hands off. That will improve.
said, we also recognize there is a power differential.
We have to work hard at building trust so that
candor will follow.
Erin Kahn
What impact have you seen or are you Executive Director
hoping to see from this way of working?
I hope other stakeholders see us as a partner, not
just a funder, in the systems change work. In this
way, we can use our voice and influence to advo-
cate for changes in the systems we work in. We also
work hard to be a good partner with other private

BEING THE CHANGE | 15

 STAFFING PHILOSOPHY
How foundations are redefining
their capacity needs

Key Takeaways
ff Human capital can have a multiplier effect on financial capital when staff members have the
time and space to partner deeply with grantees, influence the decisions of other actors, and
make more efficient use of foundation resources.

ff Foundation teams should be built in varying shapes and sizes to equip them for the specific
and unique approaches they are using to create change.

ff Overall headcount levels should not be determined or capped solely based on grantmaking-
based benchmarking analyses, because this is not the right yardstick when using multiple
approaches for creating change.

16 | FSG
Staffing Philosophy

Introduction
In light of the more engaged roles that foundation staff members are playing, many of the foundation
leaders we spoke with are adopting new philosophies and frames of reference for determining the size and
shape of their staffing model. Foundations are more deliberately enabling teams to have the capacity and
time required to engage in new and varied approaches, and to partner more deeply with grantees, peers, and
other stakeholders.

The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, whose strategy we describe in the previous chapter, makes $5
million to $6 million in grants per year. From a pure grantmaking perspective, one might guess that a handful
of staff members deploy this level of financial capital. However, the foundation has 20 full-time equivalent
staff members. This is because the foundation uses several approaches to affect program and service provi-
sion, public and private sectors, and underlying systemic barriers, and engages staff members in providing
funding, knowledge sharing, and implementing in-house. Thus, in addition to typical executive, program,
communications, operations, and finance roles, the foundation’s team includes the roles of Consumer &
Family Liaisons, Public Affairs Representative, Digital Media Strategist, Cross Unit Liaison, and Archivist and
Records Manager, as well as a Policy Unit.

Democracy Fund, a bipartisan foundation working to ensure that the domestic political system is able to
withstand new challenges and deliver on its promise to the American people, made grants of $38 million
with a staff that grew to 43 full-time equivalents last year from 29 a year earlier. The staff includes a three-
person Strategy, Impact, and Learning Team that helps the foundation with training and tools for navigating
the complex systems it is trying to affect. In the foundation’s three current priority areas of Principled Leader-
ship & Effective Governance, Modern Elections & Money in Politics, and Vibrant Media & the Public Square,
the foundation has been able to hire teams with deep issue-area expertise and develop a reputation for
understanding systems change. For example, Democracy Fund has created and made available systems maps
on local news and participation, public trust and the legislative branch of federal government, and election
administration.

Because Democracy Fund can hire multiple experts on its priority issues, other funders regularly come to the
organization for advice or collaboration. According to the foundation’s President Joe Goldman: “By having
greater staff capacity, we can be a resource for our peers. We regularly have other funders coming to us
about our opinion of potential grantees.” As such, the foundation’s team is not only playing a role in shaping
their own grantmaking, but is also influencing millions of dollars that are being invested by others.

BEING THE CHANGE | 17

 The Lumina Foundation, dedicated to Goal 2025 (reaching 60% of Americans holding degrees, certificates,
or other high-quality postsecondary credentials by 2025), makes around $60 million in grants per year and
has 55 full-time equivalent staff members. In describing its role in supporting Goal 2025 the foundation
notes: “The scale of change needed to build a new postsecondary learning system will require action on the
part of numerous policymakers, educators, employers, and millions of individual Americans. Lumina can play
multiple roles to create change at this scale, but it is through our role as thought leaders that our influence
will need to be most felt across the wide array of stakeholders who need to understand the urgency of Goal
2025 and commit to action to reach it.” To support playing these roles, the foundation has created a four-
person Stakeholder Engagement Team that includes a Vice President of Strategic Engagement, a Strategy
Director focused on leading stakeholder engagement, coalition building, and convenings, and two in-house
conference- and meeting-planning team members. In addition, the foundation has built out its six-person
Strategic Communications Team to include know-how in thought leadership, media relations, digital con-
tent creation, and digital audience growth. These teams complement the work of other Lumina teams with
unique remits, for example, Learning Infrastructure, State and Federal Policy, and Impact Ventures.

The staffing philosophies of the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, Democracy Fund, and the Lumina
Foundation are emblematic of three practices that many of the foundations that participated in this study
have adopted:

1 Viewing staff as
impact multipliers,
not cost drivers
2 Designing teams
based on functions,
not formulas
3 Using size-based
benchmarking as a
compass, not ruler

18 | FSG
Staffing Philosophy: Practice 1

Viewing staff as impact multipliers,

not cost drivers
When funding programs and services, a foundation might naturally see a trade-off between investing
$100,000 per year into the full cost of an additional staff member or, for example, sponsoring an additional
20 children to attend a high-quality summer learning program. However, if a foundation wanted to shift how
the entire community and school district value and provide summer learning so that 200 or 2,000 additional
children could gain access, the calculus might be different. The foundation would seek to work with grantees
and peers to galvanize parents, principals, and superintendents to value summer learning, to influence school
boards and budgetary processes to fund summer learning, and to help embed evidence-based practice into
program delivery at scale. Adding another staff member who could work more closely with grantees and
peers on galvanizing, coordinating, and influencing these many stakeholders to shift the entire local summer
learning system could have a substantial long-term return on investment.

Along these lines, foundations that participated in this study view internal human capital not as added cost,
but rather as a source of impact. Wynn Rosser, the President & CEO of the T.L.L. Temple Foundation shared:
“If staff members sit in their offices, look at email, and wait for people to come to them, then they can be
overhead. But if staff members with the right expertise are out there working in the communities they serve,
then they can be part of the way we bring our philanthropic resources to the area.”

The Entrepreneurship team at the Kauffman Foundation, the largest funder in the entrepreneurship space
in the United States, multiplies impact by having staff members who can contribute directly on several
approaches. To better support entrepreneurs, the team has built in-house capacity to design and deliver
educational content, which has meant creating roles for entrepreneurial learning and digital content develop-
ment but has also meant a much greater and more cost-effective ability to adjust content based on usage
and feedback. To break down barriers that stand in the way of would-be entrepreneurs, the strategy also
includes grantmaking for research, ecosystem development, and policy—but also seeks to convene those
grantees and create new communities of practice. For example, the foundation’s Entrepreneur’s Policy
Network is a portfolio of five organizations that will pursue advocacy strategies independently, but also come
together during the grant period to share lessons and best practices. Finally, having additional capacity allows
the team to collaborate with other funders who look to the foundation for insights.

According to Phyllis Glink, the Executive Director of the Irving Harris Foundation: “We write a leverage
memo every year for our board that includes grants and our field leadership. Maybe we’re only giving away
$16M per year, but we also want to quantify the other ways we have had impact with our staff.”

Our interviewees revealed three ways that foundation staff members complement and multiply the
deployment of financial capital:

BEING THE CHANGE | 19

 1. Staff members can • Gain a better understanding of grantee context
develop stronger grants • Co-create with grantees and build mutual capacity
when they have the time and • Engage directly with community members to hear about the challenges
space to: they face and their ideas for solutions

2. Staff members can influ- • Tap into their networks to find allies or co-funders
ence funding beyond their • Influence the investment decisions of government agencies or companies
own grants when they can: • Leverage the foundation’s voice and convening power

3. Staff members can • Implement often needed core competencies in-house, which can lower
be more efficient with costs and increase agility
resources when they have • Identify and work through challenges hand in hand with grantees rather
the capacity to: than waiting for grantee reports
• Course correct along the way in response to shifting context and lessons
learned

A key lesson learned is that foundations whose staff members are taking on the kinds of roles described
above need to ensure they are widely sharing acquired knowledge and expertise, continuing to engage
third-party facilitators to level power dynamics between foundations and organizations that depend on their
funding, and coordinating closely with grantees. Ideally, foundation staff members improve their abilities to
partner with grantees when they have more time and context knowledge, as explained in Sidebar 1.

Sidebar 1. Partnering with Grantees

The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) has to modify priorities. Having more capacity on the
been at the forefront of surveying, analyzing, and foundation team to understand and engage in the
codifying what grantees seek from foundations and context of grantee work, and having more time to
program officers for more than 15 years. In a recent engage in co-creation, should support foundation
report, Relationships Matter: Program Officers, staff members’ ability to live into these five ways of
Grantees, and the Keys to Success, based on data work. However, this can only happen if increased
from nearly 20,000 grantees of 86 foundations, CEP and more direct engagement by foundation staff
highlighted five predictors of strong relationships members is not directive. The chapter in this report
between funders and grantees: 1) understanding on skill development highlights five mindsets that
of grantee organizations and the context in which are important for ensuring that foundation staff
they work, 2) transparency from foundation, 3) members work with grantees in true partnership.
helpfulness of selection process, 4) openness to
ideas about strategy, and 5) mitigation of pressure

20 | FSG
Staffing Philosophy: Practice 2

Designing teams based on functions,

not formulas
In traditional grantmaking, workload is loosely connected to the number and size of grants managed. Thus,
staffing models could find their origin in determining a dollar amount per program area and extrapolating
how many staff members are needed. A hypothetical foundation with annual giving of $30 million might cre-
ate five equally sized issue-focused program areas, each with three staff members. These 15 program team
members would be complemented by five colleagues representing leadership, finance, operations, grants
management, and communications. Voilà—this hypothetical foundation would have 20 staff members.

When using multiple approaches for creating change, a formulaic staffing model may be less effective as
program areas might implement different approaches that are more or less financially resource-intensive. For
example, one program area might manage cross-sector coalitions and thus benefit from more administrative
capacity to support the moving pieces of a coalition, rather than from a larger grantmaking budget. Another
program area might work on shifting narrative, and thus require substantial financial resources for an expen-
sive media campaign and a dedicated communications specialist embedded in its team. A third program area
might focus on place-based work and thus require increased staffing to manage many small grants and to
ensure sufficient time to be out in the community. An Executive Director from one place-based foundation
noted that he expects program staff to be “away from their desks 50 percent of the time.”

John Kobara, the Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of the California Community Founda-
tion, whose mission is to lead positive systemic change that strengthens Los Angeles communities, shared:
“Staff members across the foundation have totally different responsibilities. Thus we moved away from a
formulaic model where everyone has the same-sized grantee or grant portfolio. We now look at the
complexity of what they’re managing.” Their two program areas of Education & Immigration and Health
& Housing have different sizes and staffing structures given the different approaches they use and the
complexity of partnerships and coalitions that staff members have to manage. The Foundation also has an
eight-person grants management team (more than 10 percent of total staff) so that program teams have
more time and space to focus on grantee relationships and partnership rather than grants administration,
and the foundation created longer grantmaking cycles to create more time for deep work and reflection and
less focus on getting grantmaking paperwork ready multiple times per year.

Similarly, the Episcopal Health Foundation, which aims to build an equitable, accessible health system for
every Texan, has built a team that can “offer communities more than money” and is not divided into program
teams for different sub-issues of health. Rather, teams are based on the various approaches the foundation
is using for change. In addition to four program staff members, the foundation has a four-person research
team that produces original research (often partnering with experts) on important topics such as the impact
of the Affordable Care Act on uninsured Texans, strategies to optimize rural healthcare infrastructure, and

BEING THE CHANGE | 21

 the science of early childhood brain development. The research team created and maintains a web-based
data warehouse with mapping tools to help communities understand and use complex health data from
multiple sources. Moreover, the foundation has a five-person engagement team that focuses on undertaking
transformational outreach work in and with their communities by teaching community organizations how to
undertake effective community engagement and organizing and facilitating health-based community coali-
tions. Staff members also serve on boards, commissions, and committees, and write, publish, and teach on
public health, healthcare delivery, and health policy matters.

The lesson learned is that when designing teams, foundations should start by determining which of the nine
approaches for creating change they are using overall and in different program areas, and create tailored staff
roles and team configurations. This strategy-driven staffing model is more fitting than starting with the size or
number of grants and then applying a one-size-fits-all formula. An implication of this method for determining
staffing is that it likely leads to varying ratios of program area staff numbers per grantmaking dollars across a
foundation. This is a natural consequence of basing teams on strategy instead of formulas and should not be
viewed as problematic.

Another lesson learned is that there are staffing models that sit between “build” (adding to the internal staff-
ing budget indefinitely) and “buy” (outsourcing functions to third parties at arm’s length). These “borrow”
models, described in Sidebar 2, entail creative ways to resource additional capacity in shared, surge, and/or
short-term ways.

Sidebar 2. Three “Borrow” Models for Resourcing Additional Capacity

One borrow model, used by several foundations quickly knit together a complex set of strategies
including the Mastercard Foundation, the that would disrupt systems. A third borrow model
MacArthur Foundation, and the Hilton involves sharing resources across foundations so that
Foundation, involves engaging in multi-year they can collectively share capacity, resources, and
learning partnerships with organizations that infrastructure, especially for emerging functions or
complement the foundation’s internal evaluation research and development. For example, the J.W.
functions and provide objective impact assessment, McConnell Family Foundation shares internal and
rapid learning, and strategic thought partnership to third-party human resources across foundations in
foundations and their grantees. A second borrow Canada, creating fluid teams of people from diverse
model is related to Residents or Fellows who sectors and promoting short-term staff exchanges.
provide time-bound surge capacity. For example, By doing so in a collaborative fashion, several
the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation foundations can have access to exceptional skills,
created a specialized, temporary Fellow role for while providing more stable employment for people
people with deep knowledge and expertise in a and service providers.
given area of interest to the foundation that could

22 | FSG
Staffing Philosophy: Practice 3

Using size-based benchmarking as a

compass, not ruler
There is a legacy practice among some foundations of informing their staffing levels by comparing themselves
to peers with similarly sized assets or grantmaking budgets. Charts are developed that show how a founda-
tion stacks up against peers, with the hope of being below the median of the peer group or otherwise facing
tense discussions with trustees about why the foundation is an “outlier” and not “maximizing dollars out the
door” by minimizing staff expenses.

Figure 2 illustrates how the 50 foundations that participated in this research stack up on such a chart. The
data in teal and gray, for 1,277 foundations representing more than $20 billion in grantmaking and more
than 15,000 staff members, were provided by Council on Foundations (COF) in partnership with Foundation
Center. This figure reveals interesting insights both about the broader field (teal and gray ranges) and the 50
foundations that participated in this research (green dots).

The COF data for 1,277 foundations reveal a wide variation of staff sizes among foundations with
similar grantmaking budgets.

Not surprisingly, median staff sizes tend to grow as annual grantmaking grows. For example, the median
number of FTEs in foundations with annual grantmaking of $15 million–$25 million is 13; for foundations
with annual grantmaking of $50 million–$75 million, it is 33; and for foundations with grantmaking between
$150 million and $250 million, it is 60. However, there is also a wide range of staff sizes within each of these
groups. For example, there are foundations with staff sizes of 40 FTEs with annual grantmaking anywhere
between $15 million and $250 million. Within the band of foundations granting out $100 million–$150
million per year, the foundation at the 95th percentile has 100 staff members, while the foundation at the
5th percentile has 10 staff members. In other words, among a group of foundations that give away similar
amounts of money, one foundation may have 10 times the number of staff as another. This variation should
not be surprising since comparing foundation staff levels based on grantmaking alone does not take into
account the number and nature of their approaches for creating change, which can lead to very different
staffing models.

Foundations participating in this research tend to be staffed at levels above the typical foundation
in the same grantmaking band.

The majority of the foundations that participated in this research have staff sizes that are larger than the
medians of their peer groups based on annual grantmaking (i.e., most of the green dots are to the right of
the black lines and nearly half of them are above the 75th percentile). This is not surprising given that these
foundations are using multiple approaches for creating change, which can entail elevated staffing levels.

BEING THE CHANGE | 23

 FIGURE 2. FULL-TIME EQUIVALENT (FTE) STAFF MEMBERS BY ANNUAL GRANTMAKING BAND2

Annual Grantmaking
>$250M (N=13)

$150M-$250M (N=10)

$100M-$150M (N=21)

$75M-$100M (N=16)

$50M-$75M (N=26)

$25M-$50M (N=62)

$15M-$25M (N=62)

$10M-$15M (N=99)

$5M-$10M (N=187)

$0-$5M (N=781)

0 50 100 150 200 250 >250

Staff Members (FTE)

Median
Data for 1,277 grantmakers Data for the 50 funders that
from the Council on Foundations were interviewed for this study
5th 25th 75th 95th

2
percentiles

However, instead of worrying about being an outlier in this type of analysis, foundations that use multiple
approaches accept that their staffing models are different and could be larger than their traditionally defined
peer set. They look to the headcount ranges of peers for directional guidance, but they don’t base their own
decisions on how many staff members other foundations with similar grantmaking levels have.

According to the Jacobs Foundation’s Managing Director Sandro Giuliani: “The more ownership for a spe-
cific part of the value chain you take as an institution, the more strategic program staff you have. We have
tripled our staff in four years.” Similarly, Jeff Mohr of The Omidyar Group shared: “We shied away from a
formulaic model as one or two people could make an outsized impact based on their relationships. Our staff
model is based on what role we and others play in the ecosystem.”

2 Based on the most recent responses from grantmakers reporting at least one paid staff member that participated in at
least one of the last three years of the COF “Grantmaker Salary and Benefits Survey.” Staff numbers include 100% of
all paid full-time staff members (defined as working 31 hours or more per week) plus 50% of all paid part-time staff
members.

24 | FSG
While there is no algorithm for calculating staff size or comparing typical grantmaking foundations with those
using multiple approaches for creating change, data for the foundations participating in this research can
serve as a compass. Figure 3 shows FTEs per $1 million in grantmaking for foundations that participated in
our research (teal bars) as well as the same average of the same ratio for all foundations in the broader COF
dataset (gray line).

While the typical foundation that grants out $5 million–$25 million per year might have 1 FTE per $1 million
of grantmaking, foundations that use multiple approaches for creating change might have 2 FTE or more per
$1 million of grantmaking. Similarly, for foundations that grant out $25 million–$100 million per year, the
typical ratio is 0.7 FTE per $1 million of grantmaking, but for foundations that use multiple approaches, it
might be as high as 1.0 or 1.5. Even among the foundations that grant out more than $100 million per year,
it would not be a surprise to find foundations with 0.5 to 1.0 FTE per $1 million in grantmaking, above the
typical average of 0.4.

The message of this analysis—and this report—is not that foundations that use multiple approaches for creat-
ing change should necessarily have larger staffs; rather, the message is that benchmarking headcount levels
against peer foundations based solely on grantmaking may not make sense as it likely entails comparing
apples and oranges if the benchmarked peers are using fewer or different approaches for creating change.

Several foundations noted that they had been working for many years to shift headcount level and staffing
cost conversations with board members away from grantmaking budget comparisons and more toward a
discussion of what it really takes to create change. At the same time, many foundation leaders noted that it
was not always easy to convince board members to adopt a new frame of reference, and that especially new
board members could trigger a boomerang back to notions of grantmaking per staff member as a measure
of foundation efficiency or effectiveness.

FIGURE 3. FULL-TIME EQUIVALENT (FTE) STAFF MEMBERS PER $1 MILLION IN GRANTMAKING

3.7

3.4
3.3

2.8

2.1 2.1
2.0

1.6 1.6
1.5 1.5

1.1
1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
.9 .9 .9
.8 .8 .8 .8
.7 .7
.6 .6 .6 .6 .6 .6
.5 .5
.4 .4 .4 .4 .4
.3 .3 .3 .3 .3
.2 .2
.1

$5M-$25M Annual Grantmaking $25M-$100M Annual Grantmaking $100M+ Annual Grantmaking

COF Average = 1.0 COF Average = 0.7 COF Average = 0.4

BEING THE CHANGE | 25

 Peer Perspective
Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta

We spoke with President Alicia Philipp and Anna

Pinder, Director, Community Intelligence, about the • Founded in 1951
foundation’s evolution.
• Serves a 23-county region by providing
quality services to donors and innovative
How would you describe the foundation’s
leadership on community issues
strategy?
Our overall vision is to be the most trusted resource • Staff size (2017): ~50
for growing philanthropy to improve communities • Grants (2017): $97 million from unrestricted
throughout the Atlanta region. In that role as a and donor-advised funds
trusted resource, we must be the source of knowl-
• A key aspect of the foundation’s strategy is
edge and the connector for the community. We
to strengthen the region’s capacity to address
have a real opportunity to amplify what we know to critical community needs.
help other funders and donors in the region make
better resource decisions.

What changes have you made to your staff- • An integrated marketing PR team to amplify the
ing model to support the strategy? message;
To enable us to achieve this vision, we developed
• An information technology group that provides
new roles, acquired new experts, and simultaneously
comprehensive IT systems and services and
invested in current staff, enriching their skill sets. context for data as well as standards, support
Based on deep quantitative and qualitative research, and trends; and
we decided to invest in ourselves to grow the
• An expanded philanthropy team who serves our
awareness of our expertise. Then, we can share this
donors, and who, in partnership with Commu-
knowledge across the region and seek new ways to
nity Intelligence, puts knowledge into donors’
build programming that grapples with the region’s
hands for education and action.
most pressing issues. Ultimately, we strive to influ-
ence our donors and other funders to give toward By adding internal capacity, we now have the
those causes. To that end, the newly created Com- knowledge management ability to capture and
munity Intelligence Team connects with sources, deploy the right information to strengthen our
and digs deep into the research and information region.
to understand the gaps across our communities.
What impact have you seen or are you
Through this process, the foundation can under-
hoping to see from this staffing model?
stand best what the region needs in order to thrive.
We crossed the $1 billion mark in asset size this year,
The thorough business model we created had while simultaneously granting just shy of $100 mil-
additional elements to the community intelligence lion to nonprofits and influencing millions through
work including: our work with philanthropic partners in civic, for-
profit, and family foundation channels.

26 | FSG
One example of how we are putting our knowl- Third, invest in internal staff development. Given
edge to work came to fulfillment through Spark our strategy of being the trusted resource, source of
Opportunity!, a donor circle we founded to expose knowledge, and connector, we do strategic talent
participants to Atlanta’s unconscionable disparity development and have adopted a strong focus on
in income and access among residents. Donors employee engagement. For example, our monthly
focused on Thomasville Heights, our state’s worst 90-minute all-staff meeting is led by a rotating staff
elementary school district, and invested in parent member, instilling trust from the inside-out. This
advocacy, legal support to stop unlawful evic- also builds distributed leadership capacity as well as
tions, providing access to cultural institutions and facilitation skills. Staff development ultimately pays
service learning. The neighborhood is improving in spades as bench-strength grows.
from the inside out, sparking true opportunity for
the residents and a better future for their chil-
dren. Additionally, local and national partners have
expressed interest in learning more and potentially
getting involved. That’s community intelligence at
its best! Alicia Philipp
President
What advice do you have for peers who
want to change their staffing models?
First, don’t be afraid to talk to your board about
coloring outside the lines of your peer-based or
asset-based headcount ratios. A foundation should
staff to meet its mission, rather than adhering to an
artificial number. Our board has been our advocate
and our ambassadors, engaging with us to ensure
our vision comes to fruition.

Second, creating the change we want in our com-

munities starts with our entire staff having a shared
understanding of what it will take. For us, this meant Anna Pinder
creating a set of competencies we use daily—they Director, Community
are literally laminated and on everyone’s desk. The Intelligence
competencies, which we view as our DNA, include
concepts such as collaboration, instilling trust, relat-
ing openly and comfortably with diverse groups of
leaders, managing complexity and creating break-
through strategies.

BEING THE CHANGE | 27

 STRUCTURE & DESIGN
How foundations are unlocking
new sources of value

Key Takeaways
ff New structures can enable foundations to unlock opportunities for impact by supporting for-
profit investments, policy advocacy, and greater scale.

ff Expanding into a wide variety of approaches means that non-program staff skills and expertise
can be put to use in new ways when all staff play a much more direct and engaged role in
driving foundation impact.

ff As staff take on a wider and more diverse set of activities, breaking down silos between and
across programs becomes increasingly important.

28 | FSG
Structure & Design

Introduction
Hand in hand with new ways of thinking about their staffing philosophies, the foundations that participated
in this study are also reshaping their overall organizational structure and design to enable staff members to
work together in new, more effective, and better-connected ways.

The MacArthur Foundation has undergone a purposeful staffing realignment over the past few years to
integrate all professional capacities into a single program team, with a goal of a creating a more unified
foundation and eliminating dysfunctional divisions between program and functional teams and field experts
and administrative professionals. According to the President, Julia Stasch, “We wanted to transform the foun-
dation from a hosting platform of disparate program areas to an effective, integrated enterprise that both
drives and supports impact.” For example, the foundation reduced the number of program areas and created
a team structure that brings individuals with field expertise together with evaluation, communications, impact
investments, and legal expertise, along with the administrative professionals needed for effective planning
and execution. Certain functions, like evaluation, communications, and grants management are centrally
organized to ensure consistent processes and rigor, but their staff members operate as integral members of
program teams.

To facilitate even more connections among staff members, program officers serve as internal advisors or
“critical friends” to other program teams. The impact investments team plays a dual role. It is both a verti-
cal in that it has its own dedicated strategy and allocation of resources, as well as a horizontal in that staff
members are both integrated into program teams and serve as a foundation-wide resource on financial
matters. According to Julia: “Our goal is a porous structure where staff members are advised, supported, and
challenged by others, where knowledge is shared, assumptions are reconsidered, and decision-making and
problem-solving are improved by the diversity of experience and perspective.” Throughout the realignment
process, a cross-functional organizational change team met—and still meets—regularly to monitor progress,
troubleshoot, and set new goals, acknowledging that the change underway is a journey that does not end.

At the Blandin Foundation—which is focused on supporting rural Minnesota communities as they design
and claim ambitious, vibrant futures—there has been a concerted effort to move from eight work plans for
different parts of the foundation to one unifying work plan organized around their four strategies. According
to their Vice President Wade Fauth: “That was revolutionary, because what you want with good strategy is
that all parts of the organization can see how they can advance the strategy. Some parts of the organization
are going to disproportionately impact some strategies, but it was at that point that folks were able to see
‘Oh it’s not just my program; we are all advancing the strategy.’”

Moreover, foundation leadership views their many non-program staff members as highly strategic think-
ers who work hand-in-hand with program teams to create impact. For example, the communications team
spends part of its time supporting the program teams and part of its time on its own communications agenda

BEING THE CHANGE | 29

 centered on general rural issues. According to Wade: “You can get communications professionals who are
really good at supporting programs and take their direction from the program strategy, whereas for strategic
communications, you need someone who can see the whole organization and who really takes the time to
consider what people out in our communities are thinking about.”

The Hewlett Foundation has also continued to refine how it sets up its various teams to best support its
goals and create connectivity among all staff members. Foundation leadership has found that having commu-
nications, grants management, and legal team members assigned to each program area allows for smoother
partnership between program and non-program functions. While these non-program staff members still
report to heads of their respective functional teams, they develop deep expertise and relationships with their
program teams, and attend all of their assigned program team meetings and retreats. For other strategic
functions—like strategy, evaluation, learning, and organizational effectiveness—the foundation has taken a
different approach. It has created a team called the Effective Philanthropy Group with different technical skills
that can serve program teams as on-demand consultants, depending on what kind of expertise is needed.
The integration of non-program team members also affects recruiting practices as prospective new program
team members interview with program team members and the non-program staff with whom they will most
closely interact.

Foundation leadership also puts great emphasis on maintaining cohesion across all foundation staff members
through a variety of practices. For example, the full staff participated in the development of a set of guiding
principles for the foundation’s work. During six “in-town weeks” over the course of the year, staff members
don’t travel, so they can work together under the same roof at the foundation’s office. Three of those in-
town weeks are devoted to all-staff learning retreats. Lastly, the foundation provides lunch every day—not
to be consumed at one’s desk—and thereby encourages staff to use meal times to get to know colleagues
better.

The structure and design choices of the MacArthur Foundation, the Blandin Foundation, and the
Hewlett Foundation are emblematic of three practices that many of the foundations that participated in
this study have adopted:

4 Coloring outside the

lines of classic
philanthropic giving
5 Transforming back-
office support into
front-line impact
6 Busting silos
between issues,
people, and teams

30 | FSG
Structure & Design: Practice 4

Coloring outside the lines of classic

philanthropic giving
The classic foundation structure is ideally suited to enable foundation staff members to provide funding from
their own grantmaking budgets to entities that can accept a grant. However, as foundations seek impact in
other ways—for example by engaging with for-profit entities, influencing decisions of policymakers and vot-
ers, or addressing systemic issues collaboratively and at scale—exciting new models of foundation structures
are emerging that expand what foundations and their staff members can do.

Structures that Enable For-Profit Investments

Several foundations that participated in this study have created structures that allow them to invest in
for-profit entities and/or invest forms of capital beyond grants. For example, the pioneering impact invest-
ment team at the MacArthur Foundation has deployed $500 million since 1986 in the form of loans,
bonds, stock, equity, deposits, and guarantees that directly meet the capital needs of special-purpose funds,
for-profit businesses, and nonprofit organizations tackling environmental and social challenges around the
world. In 2015, the Board of Trustees of The Kresge Foundation approved a $350 million pool of social
investment funding that will be deployed by 2020 via loans, deposits, equity, and guarantees to support
organizations and efforts that advance the goals of the foundation’s programs. The Lumina Foundation
created Lumina Impact Ventures with the goal of identifying promising solutions that improve attainment for
traditionally underrepresented populations and turn those solutions into scalable and investable opportunities
to accelerate progress toward Lumina's 2025 goal.

In addition to these in-house funds within private foundations, an entirely different route is to choose a legal
form for the organization that enables for-profit investments. A prominent example of this is the Omidyar
Network, a member of The Omidyar Group, which operates both as an LLC and a 501(c)(3) foundation
with the rationale that philanthropy is more than a type of funding—it is about improving the lives of others,
independent of the mechanism. Thus, Omidyar Network staff members work across the social and business
sectors. Since inception, the team has made about $600 million in for-profit investments and $673 million
in grants.

Structures That Enable More Policy Influence

Many foundations that participated in this study aim to effect policy change. Thus, many support advocacy
organizations or task staff members directly with educating policymakers and their influencers about issues
the foundation cares about. Some foundations, for whom policy change is central to meeting their impact
ambitions, have taken steps to ensure staff members and funds can go further than what the 501(c)(3)
lobbying rules allow. For example, Democracy Fund has a sister 501(c)(4), Democracy Fund Voice, which

BEING THE CHANGE | 31

 conducts and supports advocacy that encourages civic engagement, improves the quality of election adminis-
tration, and promotes effective governance and transparency in Washington, DC, and state capitals. Similarly,
the Schott Foundation for Public Education also created a 501(c)(4) so that staff members can invest time
and funding directly in campaigns, for example for school board seats, or in endorsing certain candidates.
Both foundations have a firewall between the (c)(4) and the (c)(3) staff, including separate boards, email
addresses, and time cards.

Structures That Enable Collaborative Investments at Scale

A third model entails pooling different types of funding so that change can be created collaboratively at
greater scale and across sectors.

One example of this is Co-Impact, a partnership of results-oriented donors who want to give and learn
together, and are pooling resources, networks, and expertise to drive lasting change at scale. Co-Impact will
grant $500 million with the goals of advancing education, improving people’s health, and providing economic
opportunity so that all people, no matter where they live, have a more hopeful future. Co-Impact is tak-
ing a systems change approach—supporting initiatives that are improving individual lives by fundamentally
addressing the broken systems that underlie social issues. Such initiatives engage many of the central actors
associated with a social issue—often local communities, nonprofits, governments, businesses, donors, and
others—to work together, resulting in lasting impact at a scale beyond what any one actor could achieve
alone. According to Co-Impact, this type of collaborative funding structure allows financial capital to be
complemented with support for strategic planning, program management, technology, policy and advocacy,
government relations, monitoring and evaluation, and leveraging additional funding. In its areas of focus,
Co-Impact is looking to support a targeted number of systems change initiatives in low- and middle-income
countries that are already impacting at least tens of thousands of lives, have the potential to create enduring
impact for millions, and have externally validated evidence of their impact.

Earlier this year, Humanity United launched Working Capital, an early-stage venture fund to invest in
ethical supply chain innovations. Partners and supporters of Working Capital include Walmart Foundation,
C&A Foundation, Stardust Equity, Open Society Foundations, The Ray and Dagmar Dolby Family Fund, and
the Walt Disney Company. According to Humanity United: “The unique structure of aligning with leading
companies as funders helps leverage innovative solutions for sustainable impact in a way that is good for
all—consumers, business, and society.” The fund will also leverage support from the UK’s Department for
International Development in complementary grant funding for pre-investment and seed-stage interventions.

A key finding is that foundations should not be afraid to think beyond what might be traditionally viewed as
their legal and operating structure. Moreover, foundations can start with small experiments, for example by
joining with other funders to create joint funding vehicles that color outside the lines of what foundations
can do in-house.

32 | FSG
Structure & Design: Practice 5

Transforming back-office support

into front-line impact
Foundations are recognizing that for too long there has been a divide between programmatic and functional
roles, with non-program staff members often seen or treated as second-class citizens and offered limited
opportunities for growth or progression.

Over half the foundations engaged in the study mentioned the evolving role of functional teams as key to
increasing their ability to deliver on their strategies and provide better support to grantees. According to Olga
Tarasov, the Director of Knowledge Development at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, “This is an interest-
ing and encouraging evolution. Based on our conversations with a number of foundations, there is greater
recognition that administrative and support departments, such as HR, IT, and communications, which were
often siloed in the past, are integral to foundations’ programmatic work. They are critical to fulfilling mission
and achieving impact. This is a major shift from how foundations approached strategic planning and align-
ment of internal resources ten, even seven, years ago.”

Broadly, the change that was described is a shift from functional roles as providing support to other founda-
tion staff members to instead better enabling the impact those same functions can have on the foundation’s
overall strategy (including giving functional teams a dedicated grant budget) and its grantees. This shift is
showing up across all types of functions in foundations as shown in Table 2.

Evaluation, Learning, Research, and Knowledge Management

Many foundations mentioned a recent rethinking of all functions related to organizational learning, and
several recruiters mentioned learning positions as being an area where they see the most new foundation
positions being added. These functions are tasked with curating the foundation’s knowledge, advancing
organizational and field learning, and enabling the foundation and its grantees to adapt strategies in real
time. The Ontario Trillium Foundation has built capacity in its monitoring, learning, and evaluation func-
tion so it can better manage knowledge and mine insights for the field. The foundation has added one
knowledge specialist with content expertise for each of its six areas of impact, a knowledge management
expert, and a knowledge translation specialist; and has built data science and business intelligence expertise
into its measurement and evaluation team. At the King Baudouin Foundation, a dedicated knowledge
manager helps ensure that teams take stock of what they’re learning and get knowledge out of people’s
heads and into the hands of others. Each program team also has a knowledge manager who liaises with the
overall knowledge manager.

BEING THE CHANGE | 33

 TABLE 2. POTENTIAL ROLES OF NON-PROGRAM FUNCTIONS

SUPPORTER ENHANCER AMPLIFIER

(PROVIDE BASIC + (INCREASE + (TURBO-CHARGE GRANTEE
FUNCTION SUPPORT) PROGRAM CAPABILITY) AND FIELD IMPACT)

Evaluation, Support grant(ee) Enhance foundation’s ability Build grantee capacity

Learning, monitoring; coordinate to learn within and across around learning; curate,
Research, evaluations; host an program areas and adapt codify, and share contribu-
Knowledge online document storage strategies accordingly; mine tions to what works on
Management platform internal knowledge particular issues for the field

Communications Write and publish stories Prospectively help program Train grantees on commu-
and information about teams embed and design nication tools; develop and
the foundation’s grant- communications strategy; execute strategies for adding
ees; develop annual train program officers on the foundation’s voice to
reports and web content communication tools relevant issue-based cam-
paigns

Human Manage benefits, Identify and build relevant Support leadership devel-
Resources, personnel policies, and skills among foundation staff opment for grantees and
People, Talent recruiting members; ensure that staff communities
with lived experience can
thrive at the foundation

Grants Process grants and Act as a critical friend to Build more inclusive grants
Management associated paperwork programs to ensure common processes that support
philanthropic approach; spot linguistic and cultural
patterns on effective grant differences to overcome tra-
structuring practices ditional barriers for groups
who receive less funding

Finance Manage foundation or Make program- and mission- Help assess and/or build
departmental budgets related investments financial capacity of grantees

Legal Review contracts and Assist program teams with Coordinate grantees and
protect against legal pursuing non-traditional or partners using legal strate-
vulnerabilities complex grants gies to advance policy

34 | FSG
Communications
Many foundations shared stories of transforming communications to play a more strategic role, which means
that communications teams are crafting and executing programmatic strategy or undertaking activities in
coordination with grantees aimed at influencing policy, disseminating knowledge, changing public opinion,
engaging media, or adding the foundation’s voice to issue-based campaigns.

Communications teams are also critical in helping reframe how other partners (e.g., grantees, partners, stake-
holders) view the foundation’s role and relationship with others as they transition to using more approaches,
or to having staff take a more direct role. For example, the communications department at Humanity United
plays a role in helping grantmaking staff design and execute strategies to change mindsets about modern-day
slavery and forced labor. The communications team manages a grant to The Guardian newspaper to support
four to five journalists to find stories on forced labor and how it touches supply chains. They have found this
has transformed staff member perceptions of the communications team. According to Managing Director Ed
Marcum: “If you work with communications to amplify the work, it can be a game changer.”

Human Resources
Another role that is being re-thought is human resources. In some cases this has led to a renaming of this
function from human resources to the people, culture, and/or talent function. Rather than being charged
solely with recruiting, administrating benefits, and setting personnel policies, these teams are taking a more
proactive role in developing talent and nurturing firm culture. Some human resources teams are even consid-
ering ways their people management can help identify or build leadership capacity in grantees. For example,
at Democracy Fund, the program teams leverage insights from the chief people officer in the grant-making
process. The chief people officer at times applies her expertise in understanding leadership potential and
management challenges, which she has cultivated over years as an organizational development professional,
to help the program teams guide grantees in navigating management challenges and supporting their leader-
ship growth.

Operations
Core operational functions of foundations are shifting from a focus on risk-mitigation and compliance to
applying their skills to enhance grantee effectiveness or shape strategies. For example, at the Edna McCon-
nell Clark Foundation, the finance team uses its skills to support the program team for assessing grantees’
financial health and for capacity building, such as addressing grantee cash flow issues. At the UBS Optimus
Foundation, the operations team works on innovative finance structuring, so they are brought in as early
as possible when a grant is being conceived. At Humanity United, the legal team played a key role in the
establishment of an impact investment fund that launched earlier this year. On occasion, the team also assists
other program officers to think about how legal strategies and policy change can best play a role in their
program strategies.

BEING THE CHANGE | 35

 Importantly, the idea is not to transform the role of all functions, but rather those that can enhance or
amplify a foundation’s approaches. For example, for foundations engaged in Generating Knowledge, it may
make sense to build out evaluation, knowledge management, information technology, and communications.
For foundations engaged in Shaping Markets, it may make sense to build out finance and legal or to create a
dedicated impact investing team. For foundations engaged in Mobilizing Communities, it may make sense to
build out human resources to help with leadership development or to create dedicated roles for community
engagement or diversity, equity, and inclusion.

For those for whom these types of approaches are strategically important, a given non-program team might
be as much as 10 percent to 15 percent of staff. For example, at Humanity United the communications
team makes up 6 of 55 staff, and at Ontario Trillium Foundation the measurement, evaluation, and
knowledge mobilization teams house 15 of 140 people. For smaller foundations, it might mean recruiting
staff members with dual capabilities (for example, a program officer who also has a policy or communications
background) to ensure each important approach can be implemented.

A key lesson learned is that supporting conditions need to exist to help non-program staff members take on
new roles. In particular, leaders must embrace the value of non-program teams to advance program goals,
and encourage inclusive practices and potentially structural changes (see Sidebar 3) to how these functions
are organized and situated within the foundation. At Democracy Fund, all teams in the foundation (not just
program teams) develop relationships with grantees. The Kauffman Foundation created theories of change
for each non-program team, using the same template as for programs, to help demonstrate every team’s role
in contributing to the foundation’s impact on the communities it serves.

Sidebar 3. To Centralize or Embed?

One topic that emerged in interviews with large foundations that have multi-person functional teams is whether staff members
should be embedded into program teams or should have a centralized function. Interviewees offered pros for both models:

CENTRALIZED FUNCTION EMBEDDED INTO PROGRAM TEAM

99Ability for enterprise-wide bird's eye view and pattern recognition 99Greater fluency in program area strategy and issues
99Greater consistency in serving program teams 99Involvement in all aspects of strategy design and delivery
99Ability to create career ladders for staff within functional units 99Stronger relationships
99Ability to be independent and objective, act as a critical friend 99More connectivity to impact
99More flexibility in meeting customized team needs

In practice, foundations are experimenting with models that offer the best of both worlds. Three examples include: 1) Imple-
menting an embedded model for some functions and a centralized model for others, as described earlier in this chapter at the
Hewlett Foundation; 2) Assigning staff members to a program team but maintaining a centralized department to ensure
consistency, as described earlier in this chapter at the MacArthur Foundation; 3) Building teams that have some staff members
embedded with a program team and some staff members supporting the entire foundation, which is the case for the Strategy,
Impact, and Learning team at Democracy Fund.

36 | FSG
Structure & Design: Practice 6

Busting silos between issues, people,

and teams
In addition to shifting how program and functional staff members work together, foundations are also
enhancing coordination and collaboration between program areas. Over half of the interviewed founda-
tions cited fostering greater connectivity as an area of focus and had at least one practice in place to support
this. There were a number of reasons that foundation leaders are prioritizing busting silos as a top priority in
enhancing the foundation’s effectiveness:

1. Interconnection of issues: Foundation leaders recognize that many of the issues the foundation and its
grantees are addressing are interconnected, and different aspects of the foundations’ work may impact
the exact same populations. Systems work rests on seeing the big picture and addressing multiple factors
at once, which can’t happen if each program team is operating in a vacuum.
2. Effective practices: Foundation leaders recognize that siloed work has two negative consequences: First,
teams may reinvent the wheel on how to deliver on approaches, wasting precious time and resources.
Second, if there are innovations and breakthroughs, the foundation can miss an opportunity when these
are not spread to colleagues, grantees, partners, and peers.
3. Trust building: Foundation leaders recognize the value of ensuring that people across the foundation—
regardless of level, role, and team—have the opportunity to know one another as people and better
understand the connections in their work. This helps create mutual trust, which is important for any
effective collaboration, and even more so when working together in new structures and in messy, fluid
systems.
4. External coherence: Foundation leaders recognize that staff members need to be able to effectively
represent all aspects of the foundation’s work while they are collaborating with grantees, partners, and
peers. The more foundations are active externally, the more important it becomes to have a coherent and
consistent message and brand, which can’t be achieved if staff members only know one part.

Michelle Gagnon, President of the Palix Foundation, shared a sentiment that surfaced in countless other
interviews: “How people work together creates the culture. It used to be that program officers worked in
silos. They had discrete programs that they delivered on, and there was not a lot of teamwork. My role is to
embed more teamwork because a lot of the work is interdependent. We’re developing more collaborative
and enriching approaches to work that require teamwork and communication amongst team members.”

As shown in Table 3, there are a variety of ways that foundations are experimenting with building greater
capacity for joint learning and action across teams. Broadly, they include creating new roles, teams, or
functions that support cross-team coordination, embedding cross-team work into role descriptions and per-
formance reviews, and modifying grantmaking processes to leverage expertise across the foundation.

BEING THE CHANGE | 37

 TABLE 3. SAMPLE SILO-BUSTING EXPERIMENTS

Dedicated To enhance coherence and connectivity across teams, the Walton Family Foundation
cross-team role recently created a Deputy Director of Strategy & Learning role, and the McCormick
Foundation created a Director of Organizational Effectiveness role.

Specialized The MacArthur Foundation has created a place-based-work community of practice

communities of among its Chicago and Nigeria teams. The Omidyar Group has created a cross-
practice organization Systems & Complexity community of practice.

Program Officer Through a flex-assignment, POs at the Ford Foundation can spend up to 30 percent
(PO) cross- of their time working with another program team. POs at the Robert Wood Johnson
pollination Foundation are generally assigned a primary and a secondary team, and some POs at the
MacArthur Foundation are assigned as “internal advisors” to other programs.

Common The Hilton Foundation has created a common approach to its philanthropy so that all
philanthropic programs—despite the diversity of issues being addressed—recognize that they are each
approach working on Solutions, Systems, and Knowledge.

All-staff learning The Episcopal Health Foundation tasks its learning and evaluation team and the
retreats Hewlett Foundation tasks its Effective Philanthropy Group staff members with hosting full
staff learning retreats throughout the year on topics that are relevant across the foundation.

All-staff The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation both
in-person time designate a few days a year when all staff members are in-person together at
headquarters for shared engagement and capacity building.

Performance At The Saint Paul & Minnesota Community Foundations, each staff member must
review write down their plan for the year on how they will help someone else achieve their goals.
incentives Staff members are assessed on that commitment.

Foundation- The Mastercard Foundation and the Episcopal Health Foundation each engaged their
wide strategic full staff in their recent strategic planning process to support greater shared
planning understanding of one another’s work and the foundations’ visions for the future.

Cross-foundation The grants approval process at the Children's Investment Fund Foundation
grantmaking incorporates many departments to look for opportunities for integration. In 2016, 20 per-
cent of The Kresge Foundation’s grant funding was awarded to cross-team grants.

38 | FSG
For example, the San Antonio Area Foundation has been engaging the whole organization in developing
product lines for donors. The senior leadership team seeks to “create opportunities for staff to think beyond
their respective work and roles—and begin to see the relevance of their work and its interconnectedness to
other departments.” For community foundations in particular, silo-busting between development and pro-
gram staff members has become crucial.

A transformative way to create connectivity among foundation staff members and teams is to abandon the
idea of functional teams and program areas altogether. Rather than thinking of staff members in discrete and
fixed ways, they view them as a pool of experts to be pulled together for a particular purpose and time. For
example, Educate Texas has shifted to a model of internal consulting teams such that staff members work
on two to six projects at any time with different groups depending on the mix of skills and expertise required.
Other foundations are experimenting with similar models—using a planning process each year to think about
what skills they need for a particular area and then pulling that team together. The Community Foundation
for Greater Buffalo has dismissed the concept of program teams altogether. According to its President &
CEO Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, “We don’t believe in program areas. All staff members have an annual
portfolio of work based on the current needs and dynamics in our community. It’s a messier way to work, but
it absolutely transforms your impact.”

At the same time, foundations also shared that uptake had been slow for staff members to work collabora-
tively. Thus a key lesson learned is that it is critical that leadership describe and reward staff members who
reach across and break down silos. Several foundations are currently rewriting competencies for staff and are
explicitly adding competencies for leaders that include fostering and enabling collaboration. According to the
Mastercard Foundation’s Senior Manager of Learning and Organizational Development, the foundation
aims for senior leaders to “take an enterprise view in how they’re managing talent and allocating resources.”

Another lesson learned is to prototype and try one or a few practices at a time, as too many channels for
collaboration and meetings can be overwhelming. Lastly, all of the silo-busting activities require some invest-
ment of time or resources and can’t be another expectation added to staff members’ dockets without making
other adjustments.

BEING THE CHANGE | 39

 Peer Perspective
NPAG (formerly Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group)

We spoke with President & CEO Katherine Jacobs

and Allison Kupfer Poteet, Vice President & Manag- • Founded in 2002
ing Partner, about what they are seeing in terms of
• Facilitates talent strategy and executive
shifts in foundation staffing practices and structures. search across philanthropy, nonprofits,
and direct service providers, with a
What roles have foundations been looking commitment to equity and inclusion
for and how has that changed?
The philanthropic community is in an exciting time • Works with all types of funders, from
high-net-worth individuals starting new
and we’re seeing clients at all levels of philanthropy
foundations to very large national and
shift their thinking in several areas of hiring and tal- international foundations, and provides sup-
ent strategy in order to become more effective and port for both program and operations roles
to ensure that equity, engagement, and learning are
key values carried through all levels of their work.
tions are trying to understand the tools they can use
Five areas are standouts:
beyond grantmaking to make a difference in the
First, many of our clients are rethinking the role issues they care about. Foundation leaders recognize
of community engagement in their work. We that one policy change can sometimes have more
observe a growing understanding and self-aware- sustainable impact than a long-term programmatic
ness of the power dynamics between foundations, intervention. For instance, granting $1 million to
grantees, and the communities they exist to serve. a diabetes treatment program has the potential to
Before, the relationship was more patriarchal—we’ll positively impact some, but using the same level
give you money if you do this. Now, more and more of resources to educate communities, build cross-
grantmakers are recognizing that while they may sector coalitions, and offer clear and nonpartisan
hold the power of resources, communities alone data to legislators toward the passing of a soda
hold the power to actually effect change. The old tax that deters consumption of sugar-sweetened
model of “parachuting in” with all the answers beverages could help address societal behaviors and
not only isn’t effective, but more importantly does root causes underlying diabetes for generations.
not recognize the critical assets that do exist in Policy and advocacy professionals are increasingly
communities. Recognizing that sustainable and co-strategists with foundation leadership, program
transformational change is more likely to happen teams, and grantee partners.
through the co-creation of programmatic priorities
Third, as the community engagement, policy,
and an ongoing trust-filled partnership with com-
and program work becomes more integrated,
munity, some foundations are hiring community
foundations—particularly larger foundations—are
engagement staff and others are infusing the
increasingly seeing a need for an internal role that
expectation for more authentic engagement into
is additional and distinct from the functioning of
their team qualifications.
a traditional COO and more along the lines of a
Second, there has been an increase in and a shift in chief strategist. This person is internally focused
the nature of policy and advocacy roles as founda- and helps connect the dots between program and

40 | FSG
non-program functions so that foundations can who can use strategic messaging, convening, media,
leverage all of their relevant assets. The strategist and other tools to change hearts and minds and
also helps program areas connect with each other influence the conversation about various issues.
and partners with operational leadership about
How are organizational structures and
needed systems improvements so that the work is
relationships between departments chang-
more efficient and integrated.
ing to support these new roles and ensure
Fourth, we have seen a large shift in the number interconnectivity across the foundation?
and nature of searches related to evaluation Overall, we are seeing a flattening of traditional
and learning because foundations want to build hierarchies as foundations work to increase con-
cultures of continuous improvement, share knowl- nection to community and cross-programmatic and
edge across teams and with grantee partners, cross-functional collaboration. Some foundations
and apply learning to both their own strategies are elevating the voice of the program officers in
and challenges faced in communities and in the strategic decision-making and designing operational
broader field. While building a culture of inquiry support around their needs, and others are decen-
is something foundations generally agree they tralizing staffing structures to orient teams around
should aspire to, it can be hard to layer that work specific geographic and/or time-bound challenges
on top of all the other things that a program officer rather than content-related silos. We are seeing the
does. Foundations have engaged in grant-related rise of foundation executives who understand not
research and monitoring activities for many years, only the content of the work of the foundation,
but the new focus on integrated strategic learn- but who also bring adaptive leadership, change
ing and cutting-edge evaluation techniques that management expertise, and significant operational
are designed for much more difficult-to-measure design thinking to their role.
impacts (such as movement building, collective
impact, or advocacy) means an increasing demand
for new skills and talent.

Finally, consistent with the shifts in thinking about Katherine Jacobs

community engagement and policy and advocacy, President & CEO
our grantmaking partners are rethinking the role
of communications. Foundations are increasingly
acting as knowledge brokers, message amplifiers,
conveners, and educators. Past communication mod-
els are commonly unidirectional, highlighting grantee
and programmatic successes. New models are multi-
faceted and engage grantees, community leaders,
policy makers, media, and even peer foundations in
two-way and three-way conversations about priority
areas and learning. This shift is requiring a new kind Allison Kupfer Poteet
of skillset in senior communications leaders who can Vice President &
help bridge communications with policy work and Managing Partner

BEING THE CHANGE | 41

 SKILL DEVELOPMENT
How foundations are
reconceiving and
nurturing talent
Key Takeaways
ff Fostering mindsets that enable relational and adaptive work is an important aspect of talent
development and requires corresponding changes in recruiting, grantmaking, and decision-
making processes.

ff Staff with lived experience can help transform the foundation’s impact, but hiring more diverse
staff members is only the first step. Building an inclusive environment that allows individuals to
bring their full selves to work is essential for all staff members.

ff Using new approaches means that developing new skills among all staff members is increas-
ingly important; foundations must carve out time and resources for dedicated and tailored
professional development.

42 | FSG
Skill Development

Introduction
In light of the more engaged role that foundation staff members are playing, the foundations that partici-
pated in this research are rethinking what prior experiences and skills they seek in their staff, how they hope
staff will approach their work, and how they can more intentionally support staff members in ongoing skill
development.

For instance, Samantha Gilbert, Vice President of Talent and Human Resources of the Ford Foundation,
and her colleagues are rethinking what skillsets are important in their staff in light of the foundation’s aim to
advance equity in a more aligned and cohesive way. While acknowledging that it is still important, issue area
expertise is just one of various competencies they look for in their staff: “The easier part is finding people with
field expertise. We want to see that people can ask new questions, or hear a new question and get curious
about new perspectives, approaches, and directions.” Samantha and her team have begun to look for a track
record of curiosity, learning, adaptability, and collaboration when making hiring decisions and are valuing
these traits as critically as issue experience. The foundation has also recently put greater emphasis on talent
development, and all staff members participate in a one-year onboarding process in a custom-built curriculum
to help them cultivate not just grantmaking practices and issue expertise, but also the mindsets they bring to
their roles and their interactions with grantees and community members.

Tammy Heinz and Stephany Bryan were hired to work at the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health not
simply for their understanding of mental health policy or their ability to skillfully craft grants. They were hired
because they bring deep knowledge of what individuals and families with mental health challenges face—
knowledge they gained through their personal and family experiences with mental illness. With the titles of
Program Officer and Consumer & Family Liaison, Tammy and Stephany help ensure that the foundation has
strong relationships and trust with the communities it serves, develop initiatives that include consumers and
family members, and make sure that the voices of consumers of mental health are included in all decisions.
While the foundation underwent a cultural transition to become an inclusive environment for individuals
with lived experience, foundation leadership say that including staff with lived experience has transformed
the impact of the foundation by greatly strengthening their consumer perspectives in their grantmaking
and partnerships. In one of the most stigmatized issues in health, the foundation has made a sea change by
prioritizing lived experience as a skillset to have on their teams. As Lynda Frost, former Director of Planning &
Programs, said, “This staffing change drove changes in our programming. We sharpened our focus on what
we wanted to do. Over time the foundation should be run by self-identified consumers.”

According to the staff members that work in their foundations, Pam and Pierre Omidyar are natural systems
thinkers and recognize how interdependency impacts the complex issues they aim to address. As such, these
forward-thinking leaders of The Omidyar Group (TOG) have realized they need staff members who not only
have issue expertise, but who can understand and change the relationships between various entities address-
ing these issues. In recognizing this, staff members of the foundations are supported by the Omidyars and

BEING THE CHANGE | 43

 have access to an unusual resource to help them do their jobs differently. The TOG Systems & Complexity
team members act as internal consultants to foundation staff members from program and from functional
teams, such as the Strategy, Impact, and Learning teams, by helping teams do systems mapping and uncover
the implicit assumptions they have about their work and by playing a research and development function
across TOG.

The Systems & Complexity team provides staff training, support for implementing various tools, a virtual
platform of resources and examples, and a community of practice. This team is uniquely positioned to help
staff keep an eye on the long-term systems changes they would like to create, rather than getting lost in the
day-to-day. As one staff member said of working with the Systems & Complexity team, “I felt like I knew
exactly what was going on in the issues I work on. The Systems & Complexity team pushed my thinking and
helped me see how it’s all reinforcing loops. All of a sudden I started seeing things and understanding all
these connections.”

The skill development orientation of the Ford Foundation, the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, and
The Omidyar Group reflects three practices that many of the foundations that participated in this study
have adopted:

7 Seeking out and

supporting five key
mindsets
8 Welcoming
and valuing diverse
and lived experience
9 Boosting breadth and
depth of professional
development

44 | FSG
Skill Development: Practice 7

Seeking out and supporting five key

mindsets
Many foundations have historically wondered whether they should hire generalists or issue-expert specialists.
Our interviewees shared compelling rationales for either perspective but also acknowledged that both can
be beneficial. Issue-area expertise comes with familiarity in a field, existing relationships, and credibility with
grantees and partners. At the same time, deep expertise could prevent people from being open to new ideas,
considering alternative perspectives, thinking about issues holistically, or engaging other partners in develop-
ing strategies. A generalist skillset can mean less attachment to a particular model or issue and a broadly
applicable skillset, but could mean more time is required to grasp the complexity of an issue and build
relationships.

Many foundation staff members we interviewed shared that these days they worry less about the merits of
issue-based or generalist expertise, but rather look for specific mindsets in candidates. Five mindsets surfaced
as especially valued by foundations that are asking staff to adopt new approaches for creating change.

1. Curiosity and Learning “I look for people who are better at asking great
questions than giving great answers.”
Staff members are navigating complex, dynamic
— Jeff Kutash, Executive Director
waters. No matter the foundation’s vision and
Peter Kiewit Foundation
goals, issues interconnect, actors influence one
another, and new players emerge. Being able “It’s really more of having an intelligent person who’s
to swim in these waters means being open to willing to learn…this is much more important than
learning more, asking why and why not, and domain expertise.”
gathering many perspectives. — David Barash, Chief Medical Officer
GE Foundation

2. Humility “If you are coming in with power or arrogance, you can’t
Foundations occupy a lopsided position of power do anything effectively.”
in the social sector. To face this power dynamic — Lisa Hall, Vice President for Programs
head on and be a more equal partner, staff Houston Endowment
members have to recognize power imbalances, be
“Humility is important; not assuming we know best just
comfortable with being uncomfortable, and above
because we have the money.”
all be humble in their interactions with grantees,
— Kathleen Cornett, VP for Grants & Programs
community members, and other partners.
The Oregon Community Foundation

BEING THE CHANGE | 45

 3. Strategic Orientation “In the systems context, it’s more about how you shape
Identifying points of leverage in a system is an ecosystem—the connections and relationships
challenging as an investment in point A may not between organizations.”
always lead to predictable change at point B. — Randy Newcomb, President and CEO
Staff members need to be able to zoom out and Humanity United
see the broader picture of the multi-dimensional
“We look for people who can easily navigate different
context they are working in, and also zoom in
worlds and identify levers for change.”
to a particular area and think tactically at the
— Phyllis Glink, Executive Director
operational level.
Irving Harris Foundation

4. Collaborative Approach “You have to be deliberate about creating a culture with

Addressing all parts of a complex issue requires time and space for collaboration.”
working in collaboration with colleagues, — Michael Meadows,
grantees, communities, peers and other Managing Director, People and Culture
stakeholders. Staff members have to be willing MacArthur Foundation
and able to work with others, which includes
“We’ve invested in our skillsets to help staff create the
being invested in building relationships, offering
conditions for other people to make the change.”
and gathering timely and honest feedback, and
— Alice Evans, Director, Systems Change
working with people who think differently.
Lankelly Chase

5. Adaptability “Comfort with ambiguity is important in systems change. It’s

Trying to affect the broader context, in which constantly evolving; you can’t make a plan and just hammer
multiple actors and factors shift perpetually and on it for years because your plans will need to change.”
uncontrollably, means that strategies and tactics — Erin Kahn, Executive Director
have to adapt often. To do this staff members Raikes Foundation
have to be skilled at sensing what’s happening in
“You need to be nimble, adaptive, and context-sensitive.
their fields, willing to ask tough questions about
You need to be comfortable with ambiguity and give and
their assumptions, and open to changing course
receive timely feedback.”
as needed.
— Rob Ricigliano, Systems & Complexity Coach
The Omidyar Group

46 | FSG
While these mindsets all make sense on paper, a key lesson learned is that enabling staff members to actu-
ally implement these mindsets may require changes to recruiting, grantmaking forms and processes, and
decision-making.

Evolving Recruiting
There can be a disconnect between desiring these types of mindsets on the one hand and screening for
certain academic credentials or prior work experience on the other. Recruiting practices must catch up with
the desire to find staff members who are well suited to be highly engaged with grantees, peers, and other
partners, and comfortable using new approaches for creating change. As a result, several foundations are
adopting new practices, such as blinded résumés that look for qualities other than traditional academic
credentials.

For example, John Kobara from the California Community Foundation shared that they use a “passion
diagnostic” to help vet applicants and find those who “are deeply involved in our community, who know
who they are and why they want to work here, and who know how to deal with their authentic, vulnerable
self.” For the foundation, these qualities far outweigh academic credentials or technical competencies. More-
over, they have a strong desire to find staff with “lived experience” of the challenges the foundation seeks
to address. Similarly, Open Society Foundations is trying an online skills assessment that is values-based to
use when hiring managers. The tool is based on a set of values and related behaviors that the foundation has
identified as beneficial for its staff who manage people.

Updating Forms and Processes

There can be a disconnect between encouraging staff members to embody these types of mindsets and
at the same time using forms and processes that are rigid or in direct opposition to how these mindsets
should affect the work. Foundations and program teams should consider developing theories of change
that explicitly name the assumptions being made; are grounded in systems thinking; relate the foundation’s
work to the actions of other key actors working on similar issues; and include outcome measures of systemic
change. In line with this, key grantee forms should include grant applications that are highly transparent
about how decision-making will work; grantee interactions that are grounded in mutual respect; grant agree-
ments that allow for—and encourage—course correction; and grantee reports that explicitly ask for lessons
learned. Finally, foundations should implement performance reviews that track and reward the five mind-
sets in action on a regular basis, rather than once per year, so that feedback can be acted on earlier.

BEING THE CHANGE | 47

 Adjusting Decision-Making
Finally, there can be a disconnect between these five mindsets and where and how decisions are made.
Systems are constantly shifting, and waiting a quarter or year for the next board meeting to adjust course can
mean missed windows of opportunity. Foundations should consider processes that allow for late-breaking
grant ideas as well as earmarking funds that staff members can invest without needing board approval.

For example, based on the urgency of their work, the Schott Foundation for Public Education empowers
staff members to make most grantmaking decisions. Similarly, Humanity United has also evolved where
decision-making lies. According to their President and CEO Randy Newcomb, “The tension I was seeing was
that the people who are closest to the systems we hope to engage and have a greater knowledge of it also
happened to be the people with limited decision-making authority. I felt like we needed to turn that on its
head and institute decentralized decision-making across the team to have decisions be made by people who
are closer to the work.”

48 | FSG
Skill Development: Practice 8

Welcoming and valuing diverse and

lived experience
Having a diverse and inclusive staff helps foundations better understand the problems they are working on
and strengthens their relationships with beneficiaries and other community stakeholders. Staff who have
lived experience not only understand what individuals face in similar circumstances, but also understand the
systems’ barriers, chaotic service delivery systems, power dynamics, discriminations, and the array of stake-
holders who are involved.

As previously mentioned, adding two staff members with lived experience in mental health has transformed
the work of the Hogg Foundation. The Weingart Foundation has diversified its staff so that 80 percent of
staff members are people of color. This was an intentional process that included the development of hiring
pools that were made up of diverse candidates who represented the community of Southern California.
Another key ingredient in this process was the requirement that all staff have direct nonprofit organization
experience. The foundation also strategically transitioned their board of directors to be more representative of
the local community. According to Fred Ali, the foundation’s President & CEO, “The appointment of people of
color to the board reinforced the DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] work occurring at the staff level.”

David Biemesderfer, President & CEO of United Philanthropy Forum agrees that board diversity is key in
the social sector, especially in philanthropy. According to David, “Even if your organization happens to serve
a constituency that is not racially and ethnically diverse, there is another piece to the effectiveness argument.
Numerous studies have shown that having diverse groups that include a range of perspectives enhances
creative thinking, innovation, and problem solving, resulting in better decisions. People with different back-
grounds and life experiences enrich board discussions and decision-making processes, leading to better
outcomes than those where board members share a more monolithic viewpoint or world view.”

For The Ford Family Foundation, lived experience means not just personal experience with the issues the
foundation is working on, but also physically living in the rural communities in Oregon and Northern Califor-
nia they are serving. The foundation has hired four Field Coordinators who live in four different communities.
These coordinators build on their existing local relationships and knowledge to help build community capacity
to create change. They develop deep relationships and custom outreach strategies with grantees and commu-
nity members, and share their insights with each other as a learning cohort and with other members of the
team. Part of their job is to be a bridge between the community they live in and the foundation’s program
officers working in different issue areas. For example, when the foundation hired a community leader in the
fall of 2017 who had recently served as the executive director for CAPACES Leadership Institute (an organi-
zation providing leadership development and capacity building for Latinos and Latino organizations) to fill
the fourth Field Coordinator position, the Director of the Ford Institute for Community Building noted that:

BEING THE CHANGE | 49

 “Her experience will enhance our outreach efforts in Latino communities. She will help rural communities
strengthen connections, build capacity, and support community-led actions.”

Diversifying staff experience is a good first step, but a key finding is that foundations also need to change
their cultures to ensure that these different experiences, mental models, and opinions are valued and acted
upon. One program officer with lived experience shared: “To do my job well, I need to be in touch with the
vulnerable side of myself and be willing to share. I’m not always there. That’s not always a safe situation.”

Erin Reedy, Vice President, Executive Search at the search firm Koya Leadership Partners agrees: “We are
focused on building diverse talent pools for our foundation searches, but many of our foundation clients are
also realizing that long-term success requires more than the hire itself, it also requires paying attention to
how people are supported once they are in the role.”

Similarly, Vincent Robinson, the Founder and Managing Partner of The 360 Group, which seeks to diversify
leadership in foundations, noted that: “There has been some progress on diversity, but less so on inclusion.”

According to Loyse Bonjour, the Director of Global Human Resources at Open Society Foundations, it is
important for staff with different kinds of backgrounds to “feel well in their teams, and bring what they need
of themselves to work.” This can entail changing policies and practices. For example, Edgar Villanueva, the
Vice President of Programs and Advocacy at the Schott Foundation for Public Education, shared that in
order to accommodate a new staff member who was a single mother and lived two hours from the office,
they had to be flexible about when and where work took place: “She could not have been able to take the
job if we said she had to be at a desk five days a week.”

Another important lesson is that bringing in a person or even a few people with lived experience cannot
mean that the foundation does not seek out other channels for directly engaging with those affected by
the issues the foundation is working on. Assuming that one or two people represent an entire issue is both
dangerous and puts undue burden on those individuals.

Moreover, the responsibility for equitable grantmaking cannot fall just on the shoulders of staff members with
diverse or lived experience. According to Rickke Mananzala, Vice President of Strategy & Programs at Borea-
lis Philanthropy, which is a philanthropic intermediary focused on helping grantmakers expand their reach
and impact, “Greater diversity can inform more equitable grantmaking to support communities of color. But
to truly transform grantmaking priorities, this cannot just be the job of a few staff members—it has to be
everyone’s responsibility, signaling an authentic institutional commitment to racial equity that endures.”

50 | FSG
Skill Development: Practice 9

Boosting breadth and depth of

professional development
The words “talent development” came up very frequently in our conversation with foundation staff mem-
bers. For smaller foundations, it came up in the context of expanding the role of human resources to be more
explicitly focused on building out employee skills. For larger foundations, it came up in the context of adding
new staff members to focus solely on talent development. For example, the Hilton Foundation recently
grew its Talent and Culture Team to ensure there is sufficient capacity to “nurture purposeful and passionate
engagement, innovation, learning, and community.”

This focus on talent development is not surprising as the skills that foundation staff members need have
expanded dramatically in lockstep with expanded approaches and staff roles. Figure 4 shows the skills that
foundation leaders shared with us as being important in all staff members playing any role in the foundation
(in black) as well as more than 20 new skills (in green) that were mentioned as relevant as staff members are
tasked with new ways of working.

Systems thinking was mentioned frequently as an important new skill across all approaches. Three resources
for building systems thinking skills include:

• Systems Grantmaking Resource Guide (GEO and Management Assistance Group)

• Systems Leadership Skills Builder (Global Knowledge Initiative / USAID)

• Systems Thinking Toolkit (FSG)

Importantly, as foundations experiment with both broader and deeper professional development opportuni-
ties for their staff members to help build some of the skills listed above, it is important to consider several
guiding principles:

• For foundations with multiple team members in a program area or department, distribute specialized
skill-building across team members rather than aiming for each team member to be fluent in all skills.

• Allow staff members to play to their strengths when determining skills to develop.

• Carve out time for staff members to engage in professional development.

• Enable grantees to participate in new skills trainings alongside foundation staff.

• Ensure that for newly trained skills, there is a chance to apply them within days so that staff members
can immediately practice.

• Encourage leadership to openly value and reward the acquisition of new skills.

BEING THE CHANGE | 51

 FIGURE 4. SKILLSETS BASED ON APPROACHES

Financial modeling
Consulting Fundraising
Coaching ng Influe Case writing
ildi n
Fund cing
Bu acity
p ers
Ca
Nonprofit Policy analysis
administration

In Poli
gra ng

fo cy
s
Pro orti
m

rm
p

ing
Human-centered Persuasion
Sup

design
Writing,
project management,
communication Deal structuring
G e neratin e
K no wled

in g
ets
Data

Shap
M ark
visualization
Business
Systems
g

administration
g

thinking
Storytelling Systems visualization
tio g
if
in
n
Sh a

z
rr ti n ly
N

Media analysis at g a t a ora Facilitation

iv C b
e ll a
M o b ili z i n g Co
Active listening Coalition building
C o m m u nitie s
Mindfulness Mediation
Equity analysis Cultural competency
Community engagement

For skills that are critical to the work of the entire foundation, a key lesson learned is that it is good practice
to invite all staff, not just program staff. For example, for the Grand Rapids Community Foundation a key
priority was increasing cultural competency in the issues the foundation is trying to address. The foundation
engaged its entire staff in an immersive experience regarding immigration.

Transitioning a foundation’s team to include and nurture staff members with new mindsets, lived and direct
experiences, and prior knowledge of, or an appetite to become versed in, new skillsets is typically not
achieved overnight. Foundations shared that they have been gradually evolving the composition of staff over
time.

One impeding factor has been that in many foundations, staff members are reluctant to change careers and
leave philanthropy for other jobs or sectors. The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s June 2017 Bench-
marking Program Officer Roles and Responsibilities report found that only 14 percent of surveyed program

52 | FSG
officers had definite plans not to stay in philanthropy for the remainder of their careers, while 48 percent did
plan to stay and 38 percent were not sure.

On the one hand, foundation leaders are pleased that their foundations don’t experience a lot of turnover
given the relational nature of the work. On the other hand, as foundations want to make room for new
perspectives from staff with different kinds of backgrounds, or seek to open up internal advancement
opportunities for exceptional staff members, foundation leaders wish for a more conducive and comfortable
environment for discussing the topic of exiting the foundation. Sidebar 4 provides four ways that foundations
can help staff members engage in long-term career planning.

Sidebar 4. Engaging Staff Members in Long-Term Career Planning

Staff members offered four concrete ways that foundations could better support them in talking about and
planning for their long-term careers:

Foundation staff members are not always sure how to translate their expertise and
experience to be understandable and compelling to other sectors. Foundations could help
Translation
by offering resources and examples of how to frame and phrase the many roles and skills
of foundation staff for their résumés.

Foundation staff members would like to hear from alumni who have left the foundation
and moved on to driving impact in other organizations and sectors. Foundations could help
Inspiration
by bringing alumni back for brown bag lunches to share their experiences and serve as role
models.

Foundation staff members would like to better understand potential career paths within
their departments, across the foundation, and outside of the foundation. Foundations
Imagination
could help by creating a career pathways document that includes roles outside of
philanthropy.

Foundation staff members wish for safer spaces for discussing longer-term career ambitions
with someone who is trusted and knowledgeable, and potentially not a direct supervisor.
Consultation
Foundations could help by offering external coaches or internal mentors who keep career
conversations confidential.

BEING THE CHANGE | 53

 Peer Perspective
Lankelly Chase

We spoke with Alice Evans, one of the Directors,

about the changes they’ve made to themselves as a • Launched in 1960s
foundation.
• Aims to change the systems that perpetuate
severe disadvantages
How has Lankelly Chase changed internally
over the last few years? • Staff size (2017): 13
Since our chief executive started a few years ago,
• Grants (2017): $6.5 million
we have been carefully thinking through how the
independent resources the foundation has can be • Focus on people who face multiple disadvan-
used to best effect and most strategically. How can tages simultaneously, such as mental illness,
homelessness, violence and abuse, drug
this independence enable us to bear risk that other
misuse, and extreme poverty
parts of the system might not be able to, such as
public services? To get us to the place where we can
be able to do this, we have had to fundamentally and held grantee relationships. Program staff, like
rethink the way that we show up to partnerships, myself, are involved in internal work such as HR
and the role that we play as a foundation in sup- (defining our performance framework, writing
porting change. Too often systems are talked about pay progression policies), IT (identifying a new IT
as abstract entities by foundations, without recog- provider) and grant processes. Additionally, all staff
nizing that we are part of the system that we’re members are involved in the decision-making process
trying to change, and so also need to change. for grants. We believe that everyone has something
to contribute.
Internally, there are a few staffing practices we
have focused on to do this: (1) investing in our staff Moreover, we think about recruiting differently. We
skillsets to become better actors in the community, are more interested in lived experience, and mind-
(2) redefining roles within the foundation so that sets than degrees because we know that we can
all staff can play a role in change, and (3) delegat- teach people skills, but we can’t teach diversity of
ing grantmaking authority from the trustees to the experience. We’ve recently recruited a more diverse
staff who are on the ground. We are guided by the board including people with lived experience. We’ve
principle that everyone is right, but only partially. a way to go and continue to think about how we
Emotions are present in the work, and we’re dealing can diversify ourselves. We need people who can
with complexity, so we need to respond accordingly. approach the work without stigma and support
grantees with similar experiences.
One of the first things we did was train staff as
coaches, to give them tools to rethink how to How has this new lens changed how you
engage in relationships and manage the power engage with external stakeholders?
dynamic that exists in money conversations. The We have increasingly realized that we can support
distinction between program and non-program staff change by demonstrating ourselves that change is
is becomingly increasingly blurred. For instance, the possible. We hope that if we use our independent
finance director has managed social investments resources wisely then we can start to create the

54 | FSG
conditions for other people to make the change. we can support systems that perpetuate severe
We’ve also realized that if we need to build our and multiple disadvantage to change. The changes
skillsets then others probably also need to—for we have made have helped us build a more open,
example, we have funded a number of trainings honest, and inclusive culture and have helped staff
for our grantees and ourselves simultaneously and bring their authentic selves to work. The coach-
changed how we invite interactions with others. ing has also helped us tremendously. Now when
As an example, a couple of years ago we had a we enter conversations, we are more aware of our
big event with 150 people with one-third com- power as a grantmaker and name it. I believe that if
missioners, one-third those with lived experience, you deny the power you have, you decrease other
and one-third nonprofits. We invited those with people’s ability to acknowledge their power. We
lived experience to design the event with us down recognize that while we have financial and conven-
to required attire. If they wanted, we paid for the ing resources, others have content resources. If we
option to bring support workers. Most importantly, don’t acknowledge our power, we hold the system
we don’t know if we’ve got it right, and we want back from growing. We’ve also noticed that other
to make it possible for others to admit that they foundations are interested in our approach, and
want to evolve their work. To make this possible, increasingly keen to understand how they can trans-
we’ve redefined our work as "action inquiries"—if late our learning into their own approaches.
we’re trying to answer a question rather than prove
What advice do you have for peers
something works, it’s easier to change.
pursuing a similar approach?
Why did you make these changes to how This is a difficult path to embark on and requires
you operate? a great deal of patience, humility, and flexibility.
Because they hold the financial resources, foun- We are still figuring it out. Perhaps the best way to
dations can unwittingly find themselves as the approach this is to act with humanity and create
center of a wheel with all interactions leading to the conditions for open and trusting relationships
them, whereas we increasingly want to act as if we along the way. This will open the door to effective
are one part of a hexagon. We want to support dialogue with both staff and grantees. The process
networks to flourish between other people and of change is never ending. We haven’t got this right,
sectors—we don’t need to be part of every conver- and probably never will—we’re still in the process of
sation. If we want this to happen, then we’ve had evolving our thinking.
to consciously and intentionally reflect on how we
show up in partnerships. We realized if we were
trying to make change externally then every change
we want to make in the external world we have to
make in ourselves.

What impact have you seen or are you

hoping to see from this?
Our goal was to create the conditions for staff to Alice Evans
be the best versions of themselves at work so that Director

BEING THE CHANGE | 55

 SUPPORTIVE CULTURE
How foundations are fostering
openness and authenticity

Key Takeaways
ff Creating an environment where individuals and teams can learn, raise the need to adapt and
change course, and be encouraged to innovate and take risks is crucial when using a multitude
of approaches for creating change.

ff Being mindful of and addressing internal and external power dynamics is even more important
as foundation staff members take on a variety of new roles beyond grantmaking and spend
more time away from their desks and out in the community and with grantees.

ff Foundations that hope for—or demand—changes in the outside world and among their
grantees set themselves up for more authentic partnership when they model these practices
themselves.

56 | FSG
Supportive Culture

Introduction
As a foundation’s staff grows to include individuals with more varied skills and ways of working together, cul-
ture takes on new importance. For example, building a culture that allows for experimentation and learning is
critical, as is managing power dynamics inside and outside of a foundation’s walls, so that staff members can
build authentic partnerships with each other, grantees, and communities. Moreover, if foundations are more
engaged in the issues themselves, it is paramount that they don’t just talk the talk, but that they also walk
the walk—their social change goals must be reflected in their internal policies and practices.

Recent research by The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) has shown that the culture of foundations
also has an impact on grantee experiences. In an analysis of simultaneously gathered staff and grantee per-
ceptions at 29 foundations, CEP’s Ellie Buteau and her colleagues found a relationship between staff climate
and culture and grantee experience.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has begun to shift its own internal culture as the foundation
embraces an overarching external strategy of creating a culture of health. Specifically, the foundation is
looking for ways to make space for staff to experiment and innovate. According to Brian Quinn, Associate
Vice President, Research-Evaluation-Learning, embracing this new way of working means “spending less time
trying to perfect an idea before we launch. Let’s get something up and running and evaluate how it’s going
and shift gears accordingly.” This journey in taking a more adaptive or emergent perspective on strategy has
meant shifting from a culture that prizes consensus and avoids mistakes to a learning culture that prioritizes
nimbleness and adaptation.

In line with its mission of using innovative approaches and collaborative action to build a more inclusive,
resilient, and sustainable Canada, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation has created a culture that pri-
oritizes partnership and is attentive to and works to mitigate the traditional power imbalances with grantees
and community members. This includes changing its grants database system so that grantees themselves can
learn from each other’s experience. According to the foundation’s Vice President, John Cawley, “We want
grantees to have access to their own files within the foundation and to have opportunities to learn from each
other, including evaluation of their work.” The foundation is considering creating new office space to serve
the community and preserve a cultural heritage location, has hired indigenous staff with lived experience, and
explains its due diligence process to grantees as they believe that, done well, due diligence will improve the
way it operates and interacts with potential grantees, building transparent and fruitful relationships with a
wide range of community organizations. This is all part of a broader effort to rebalance the relationships and
power dynamics with grantees and to ensure that the foundation is practicing what it promotes. According
to Cawley: “How we work is as important as what we work on.”

The Ford Foundation has instituted a number of policies to ensure that the changes they seek in the world
are reflected in their internal practices and policies. For instance, the foundation does internal audits to

BEING THE CHANGE | 57

 ensure that they aren’t perpetuating gender-based wage discrimination internally at the same time they are
calling for gender equality in the labor market externally. Similarly, given that the foundation’s mission is
oriented around equity, they also ensure that the salary floor for the foundation’s employees supports a living
wage. Lastly, given that the foundation advocates for increased employment opportunities for the formerly
incarcerated, it looked at its own policies and made a commitment to hiring staff members who have prior
involvement with the justice system. As Samantha Gilbert, Vice President of Talent and Human Resources,
said, “There are aspects of management that are most important when you work on social justice issues, like
how to lead in an equitable way.”

As these examples from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation,
and the Ford Foundation demonstrate, foundations are looking to create cultures that support the new
roles staff members are playing and that enable foundation staff members to be viewed as authentic partners
to grantees and communities in three ways:

10 Committing to
continuous learning
and adaptation
11 Attending to
power dynamics
with partners
12 Mirroring
internally what is
sought externally

58 | FSG
Supportive Culture: Practice 10

Committing to continuous learning

and adaptation
Traditionally, when foundations provide grants to program and service providers, the work tends to be
somewhat straightforward. Strategy is based on a clearly defined logic model, whereby step A leads to step B
in a linear and reliable way. Evaluation is often based on assessing progress relative to what was mapped out
in advance. Risk is minimized thorough due diligence on the financial and operational health of the grantee
organization and upfront expectations about outputs and outcomes.

When foundations implement more and varied approaches for creating change, a different reality applies.
Strategy should be viewed as emergent rather than static, evaluation and continuous learning become even
more essential, and mitigating all risk may be impossible. Staff members need to be intentional and explicit
about their goals, while also embracing uncertainty.

As staff members are tasked with adapting strategy, a learning mindset is essential not only in individuals,
but also in teams and across the whole foundation. Continuous learning is the practice of treating setbacks
as opportunities for learning, rather than as opportunities to judge performance. It is grounded in believing
that the foundation and its staff members don’t have all the answers, but rather are in a continuous cycle of
learning and adapting hand-in-hand with grantees, and in being comfortable with the fact that there are not
always guaranteed and pre-determinable results. This only works if there is an underlying culture of continu-
ous learning and if staff members have deeper skills in understanding and evaluating the impact of their
work. This means that strategy and evaluation need to evolve and become more integrated, and having a
learning culture is a key enabler of that transformation.

There are a number of practices that may help encourage staff members to take a continuous learning
orientation to their work. For example, staff at Democracy Fund initiated a voluntary “humble pie” gather-
ing that has become a quarterly pie-eating tradition to talk about how they’ve been humbled since the last
meeting or to give credit to others’ acts of humility. It not only supports living into the value of humility, it
also reinforces a spirit of continuous learning within the foundation. The Kauffman Foundation has cre-
ated a cross-functional group of 20 “Learning Champions” to build the capacity of the organization to draw
actionable lessons from evidence and experience. Each champion is creating a learning plan for their depart-
ment consisting of a small number of key questions to answer in 2018 that will accelerate their ability to have
impact. Moreover, the champions are collectively working on ways to build a broader culture of learning in
the foundation as well.

The MacArthur Foundation employs a “design-build” process to encourage learning and adaptability.
Design-build is an explicit attempt to continuously scan the landscape, understand and challenge assump-
tions, assess effectiveness, measure the foundation’s contributions, and learn from efforts and take advantage

BEING THE CHANGE | 59

 of emerging opportunities. In short, the foundation employs a design-build approach to allow for myriad
pathways to change to be tried, tested, and to fail.

According to Chantell Johnson, Managing Director, Evaluation, “We rely on a set of principles to guide our
approach, including recognition that social problems and conditions are not static. We know we cannot
expect to create a strategic plan, make grants, and wait for anticipated results at the conclusion of the strat-
egy. Rather, our work evolves along with the context and environment in which we operate, with continuous
iteration over time. Importantly, we rely on learning and evaluation to inform our choices and to help us
adapt our work in response to the evolving context and to what we have learned from our efforts along the
way.”

A recent example of design-build in action is the foundation’s work on Nuclear Challenges. To address the
evolving context and changing needs of grantees in the nuclear policy arena, the Nuclear Challenge Team
has added an element to its strategy aimed at protecting and strengthening the nuclear regime. This new
element allows for the provision of surge capacity to assist grantees in reacting and responding to frequent
developments and challenges on nuclear issues, such as North Korea and the Iran nuclear deal. The team
has circulated a request for small expedited grants proposals3 to meet immediate needs. Also, the team has
begun providing general operating grants and grants for flexible support on a strand of work to instill added
flexibility into its grantmaking. Early response to these shifts in grantmaking suggests that these changes have
been helpful both in terms of supporting grantees but also in facilitating new thinking about pathways to
change and levers of influence in the nuclear policy arena.

Finally, foundation staff members may hesitate to experiment with new approaches without permission
and support to take risks. Leadership must do what they can to say “yes” to staff member ideas and instill
messages that individuals will be supported when things do not go as hoped. According to a Chief Strategy
Officer: “I am just as interested in when things don’t succeed as when they do, as it is helpful to unlock any
confirmation bias we may have.” Others noted that foundations often ask grantees to share examples of
failure and could be well-served by taking on that practice themselves.

One step to doing this is creating channels for sourcing innovative ideas and creating the conditions for
applicants to suggest risky bets. For example, the VILLUM Foundation has a funding stream called the
“VILLUM Experiment” which was created for exceptional research projects that challenge the norm and have
the potential to fundamentally change the way important topics are approached. To ensure that researchers
dare to submit their most ambitious ideas without being pilloried by their academic peers reviewing their
proposal, applicants are anonymous to their reviewers.

3 MacArthur program staff can make expedited grants (for a minimum amount of $1,000 and not to exceed $50,000) to
qualified organizations for four types of activities: (1) attendance at a meeting; (2) convening a meeting; (3) knowledge
building and professional development; and (4) small research projects.

60 | FSG
The Hewlett Foundation has been experimenting with ways to encourage adaptation and risk-taking for
many years. The foundation recognizes that there is not one magical mechanism for creating a culture of risk
tolerance and reflection. Rather, many processes are embedded. For example, the foundation invites grant-
ees to talk about the risks they’ve faced and how they’ve mitigated them. One week per year is dedicated
to failure, and staff members explore work that didn’t meet their expectations or didn’t go as planned and
in order to understand and share lessons learned among staff and with the board. For instance, one year
during this week, staff members wrote down and sealed their predictions for where their work might be
messy during the next 12 months, and then revisited those predictions to analyze what happened, how well
they anticipated risks, and the implications. Finally, as part of the annual review process, each program team
shares how strategies have progressed, including what went well, what didn’t, and what the team plans to
do differently in the future.

Foundations that don’t cultivate a continuous learning approach may inadvertently incentivize staff to play
it safe and to prioritize approaches that are predictable and controllable, rather than effective. A key lesson
learned is that staff members need a different cultural environment in order to engage more directly in the
issues. They need to know that as they try on new ways of working, they will be supported for what they
learn, not for getting everything right on their first attempt. This orientation toward learning has many other
benefits to promoting impact across the foundation.

Another lesson learned is that cultivating a learning orientation starts with how setbacks and strategy shifts
are broached with the board. Eric Kelly, President of the Quantum Foundation, noted that the five mindsets
of curiosity and learning, humility, strategic orientation, collaborative approach, and adaptability that are
increasingly valued in staff members also have to be true of board members.

BEING THE CHANGE | 61

 Supportive Culture: Practice 11

Attending to power dynamics with

partners
Relationships and power dynamics are the currency of many foundations’ work—change only happens at the
speed of trust, and foundation staff members depend on grantees, community members, and other exter-
nal stakeholders to help them understand the context in which they work. As staff members engage more
directly and use a wider set of approaches, the importance of relationships is elevated, and foundation staff
roles may intersect more with the roles of external stakeholders.

In its 2017 survey, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations found that a higher proportion of grantmak-
ers are seeking feedback from their grantees, rising from 36 percent in 2008 to 56 percent in 2017. However,
the survey also revealed that foundations are, for the most part, not sharing power with their grantees.
For example, fewer than half the respondents sought advice from a grantee advisory committee, and only
one-fifth are delegating decision-making for some grants to recipient communities or grantees. By engaging
grantees on a more level playing field, foundations would be able to learn more about grantees and commu-
nity partners. The grantees and community partners are closest to work on the ground and have invaluable
insight about how resources should be directed to create change. Additionally, engaging grantees on a more
level playing field can help foster open conversations in which the foundation might seek advice and input on
foundation culture and staffing.

Research conducted by The Center for Effective Philanthropy in 2016 found that foundation leaders
believe learning from the experiences of those they are ultimately trying to help holds a great deal of promise
for increasing foundation impact in the coming decades, but that both funders and grantees do not always
see this learning happening. A recent report, Staying Connected: How Five Foundations Understand Those
They Seek to Help, provides lessons from foundations that are ranked highly by grantees on questions related
to their understanding of intended beneficiaries’ needs.

Along these lines, many foundations, especially those working deeply in particular places, are experimenting
with ways of forging better lines of communication between grantees, the community, and the foundation
by asking foundation staff members to “go out there” and more openly welcoming the community to “come
in here.” According to NPAG: “In all cases, the goal is to ensure the foundation is able to listen, connect, and
show up more authentically as partners in the work with and not simply for communities.”

For example, the Episcopal Health Foundation has a five-person team of community and congregation
engagement specialists who help gather community insights and also train community leaders on community
engagement. Moreover, the foundation actively curates and shares data on the state of health in accessible
ways. According to its Chief Administrative Officer Susybelle Gosslee: “When we generate research, we make

62 | FSG
it factual and accessible. People are grateful to have the research inform the work and have great conversa-
tions about what’s really going on in their community.”

Similarly, the Bush Foundation, which invests in great ideas and the people who power them in Minnesota,
North Dakota, South Dakota, and the 23 native nations that share the region, encourages staff to be out in
the community to enhance communities’ problem-solving processes. Staff members conduct office hours all
over the region, discussing how they come together in their community to solve problems. Their Community
Innovation Program is intended to “be in your corner—to inspire and support you in creating innovative
solutions to challenges in your community.” Community Innovation grants support communities to use prob-
lem-solving processes that lead to more effective, equitable, and sustainable solutions, which the foundation
describes as “civic R&D, allowing communities to develop and test new solutions to community challenges.”
According to the foundation’s President, Jennifer Ford Reedy: “We hold office hours all over the region and
say: ‘Talk to us’ or ‘How can we help?’ Part of our goal is to improve the quality of problem-solving that
happens in the region on community issues—seeking out ways we can interact with people about how they
come together in their community to solve problems, beyond just the transaction of the grant.”

Wynn Rosser, President & CEO of the T.L.L. Temple Foundation, whose mission is to work alongside families
and communities to build a thriving Deep East Texas and to alleviate poverty, creating access and opportu-
nities for all, believes that “Communities and families are experts in their place; it’s not us coming in with
answers, it’s us coming in with resources and a way of looking at things.” This includes meeting community
members where they are by prioritizing bilingual hires that also happen to be willing to live in rural Texas.
Moreover, it means a willingness to disaggregate data to truly understand what is going on in the community
and to face disparities head on.

A key finding is that a physical manifestation of power dynamics between foundations and their communities
is in the physical spaces and locations foundations occupy. Several foundations mentioned that they are mak-
ing changes to their physical space or their procedures to be less closed and intimidating to their grantees,
partners, and community members. Jeff Kutash, Executive Director of the Peter Kiewit Foundation, which
works toward engaged citizens and thriving communities in Nebraska, shared, “We do as many meetings as
possible out in the community instead of in our office. We also reconfigured our office space and changed
the way we greet partners into our space to be more welcoming and to minimize power imbalances.”

BEING THE CHANGE | 63

 Supportive Culture: Practice 12

Mirroring internally what is sought

externally
Many foundations shared that as they implement new approaches, they are mindful not to perpetuate
internal practices that contradict their external goals. Not mirroring in internal policies what’s being sought
externally can hinder staff members’ ability to take on more direct roles on the issues they care about, as they
may be perceived as inauthentic and have difficulties in developing and maintaining external relationships.

An authentic link between impact ambitions and internal practices can show up in many ways. For instance, a
foundation that works to advance early childhood development should be thoughtful about its maternity and
paternity leave policies; a foundation that promotes a healthy environment should examine its own carbon
footprint; and a foundation that works to combat income inequality might ensure that its staff and grant-
ees all make a living wage and that there is no racial or gender pay gap. Below are just a few of the many
examples that we heard about.

Foundations that advocate for certain policies should ensure they are already modelling these themselves. For
example, the Episcopal Health Foundation advocates for the expansion of health coverage for low-income
and vulnerable populations in Texas. Thus, it is important to the foundation’s leadership that they provide
generous health benefits to their staff, including coverage for same sex partners.

Foundations that seek to create greater access to resources in their communities should start with their own
sourcing. For example, the Prudential Foundation seeks to disrupt barriers that are preventing equitable
access to economic opportunity. In line with that, the company has set a goal of directing at least seven
percent of its total procurement spending to vendors that are local to its headquarter community of Newark
and / or owned by minorities, women, veterans, people with disabilities, or individuals who are lesbian, gay,
bisexual, or transgender (LGBT).

Foundations that seek to influence private market forces should first look at their own investments. For
example, in 2016 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it was planning to divest all of its
holdings in fossil fuel stocks because of the inconsistency of the environmental impact of fossil fuels with its
mission to ensure that everybody has the chance to live a healthy, productive life.

Foundations that seek knowledge from others should openly share knowledge themselves, including about
what is not working. For example, building on its work to date, last year, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advi-
sors launched the Theory of the Foundation Learning Collaborative. This peer learning community seeks to
provide foundation leaders and funders with a platform for openly sharing lessons and insights, as well as
developing shared concepts and frameworks to spur more effective philanthropy. The Hewlett Foundation’s
Fund for Shared Insights is a funder collaborative working to improve philanthropy by promoting listening

64 | FSG
and feedback. The goal is for foundations and nonprofits to be meaningfully connected to each other and
the people and communities they seek to help—and more responsive to their input.

Foundations that ask grantees to collaborate need to commit to doing so themselves with their peers. For
example, the Walton Family Foundation and the Ford Foundation recently partnered to launch the
Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative, a joint $6 million, three-year effort to support creative solutions
to diversify curatorial and management staff at art museums across the United States.

Being mindful of and making adjustments to internal practices helps foundations more authentically engage
and be more empathetic to what their grantees are going through.

Importantly, as foundations invest in their internal capacity to create change in new ways, they should be
funding commensurate capacity in their grantees who could also benefit from enhancements to staffing,
structure, skillsets, and supporting culture. When members of Philanthropy New York (PNY) have the
opportunity to participate in high-impact professional development for themselves, PNY hopes that those
valuable experiences persuade grantmakers to fund capacity building at their grantee organizations. In addi-
tion, PNY regularly does programming that directly focuses on funder investments in grantee capacity.

A key lesson learned is that an important way to authentically mirror practices is to invest in grantee internal
operating capacity as much as a foundation invests in its own.

BEING THE CHANGE | 65

 MAKING THE CHANGE
Considerations for getting
started

“Change can be painful and messy, but when organizations

start with an inclusive process, articulate the connection
to mission and values, and have leaders throughout the
organization who are cultural carriers to reinforce that
message, we see better rates of success in the long term.”
— NPAG

66 | FSG
The practices described in this report represent fundamental changes in how
foundations and their staff members operate—which can make for a bumpy
transformation journey.

The foundations we spoke with highlighted three key challenges they confronted as they began to live into
these practices:

Is this really worth it?

Taking on new approaches for creating change will require staff and leadership to alter how they work every
day. There may be early enthusiasm as the foundation sees that working in new ways can uncover unique
insights and possibilities. But there will also be moments when people are pulled back to the former ways of
doing things—the next grant cycle or board meeting, internal reporting deadlines, temporary setbacks, or an
assumption that didn’t pan out—which could all raise the question “Wouldn’t it be easier if we went back to
how we did things before?”

Are we there yet?

As foundations increase their impact ambitions, they must also shift their expectations for the nature and
timeframe of results. While attempting to change policies, narratives, or power dynamics, foundations will be
faced with less clarity of success (or failure) as well as less direct attribution. In addition, outcomes will unfold
over multiple years, not in a one-year grant cycle. All of these changes can mean more uncertainty about
impact and less precise markers of success. Feelings of skepticism may be particularly pronounced when
internal expenditures are questioned by board members seeking immediate or quantifiable impact.

Can we not talk about that?

As foundation staff members shift to roles that are more engaged internally and externally, differences in
mental models, beliefs, and preferences may come into conflict. Foundation staff members and leadership
may need to have difficult conversations with one another about assumptions that were previously postponed
or ignored. Some may not feel comfortable with taking on new approaches or mindsets and may even leave
the foundation. The foundation may need to change relationships with some grantees. And grantees may
wonder whether the expansion of foundation roles will encroach upon their own work.

BEING THE CHANGE | 67

 Foundations worked through these challenges in a number of different ways.

Have a dedicated team to motivate and communicate. Some foundations created a cross-functional,
multi-level organizational change team that (1) served as explainers and motivators, and (2) shared in regular
internal communications what was changing at the foundation and why, with stories that illustrated the
benefits of the new ways of working.

Value all voices. Foundations included staff member representatives from all parts of the foundation in
important decision-making meetings or processes.

Model learning at leadership level. Foundations modelled continuous learning by earmarking time at staff
and board meetings for candidly discussing assumptions that did not pan out and planned course corrections.

Test potentially “risky” practices in learning experiments. Foundations can:

• Test out a new role with a contractor at first;

• Embed just one non-program team member into a program team;

• Implement one or two silo-busting practices;

• Try out different recruiting questions to understand candidate mindsets;

• Train staff members on one new systems thinking tool each quarter; or

• Pilot holding a few office hours in their community.

Co-create ideas and buy-in for new practices. For example, foundations could:

• Facilitate a brainstorming session with staff members about how to create more connectivity across the
foundation;

• Host focus groups with grantees to develop suggestions for changing internal practices; or

• Conduct a systems mapping exercise with trustees to help them see the need for new approaches for
creating change.

NPAG summed up its recommendations for organizational change regarding foundation staffing practices as
follows:

“Communication and engagement with staff and stakeholders about new roles and how they fit into the
foundation’s broader strategy is really important. While program officers and administrative support teams
might not need to know about some changes in order to do their day-to-day work, they are not only impor-
tant voices in internal feedback loops but are also the frontline in communication with the community.

68 | FSG
Transparency about the organization’s activities can also increase morale and build muscle in the culture of
trust that encourages all to continue to stretch, learn, improve, and succeed. Change can be painful and
messy, but when organizations start with an inclusive process, articulate the connection to mission and
values, and have leaders throughout the organization who are cultural carriers to reinforce that message, we
see better rates of success in the long term.”

An inclusive internal transformation process starts with dialogue, not directives.

The questions below can reveal insights to determine which practices shared in this report might be suit-
able to adopt and adapt to a foundation’s unique context. There are opportunities to discuss the application
of the practices in various settings—from conversations with grantees, to all staff meetings, to board and
leadership workshops. These questions offer a starting point, although the ideal venue for these discussions
will depend on the context and culture of each foundation.

Reflection questions for conversations, focus groups, and surveys from grantees:

• To what extent do our staff’s interactions with grantees and community members reflect and foster the
five mindsets listed in this report? How might the foundation further cultivate these mindsets among
staff and grantees in our work together?

• What specific skills should we seek to cultivate in foundation staff to better support our approaches to
change? Are there opportunities for joint or shared capacity building for these skillsets?

• To what extent are we sufficiently engaging communities and beneficiaries directly? If it could be
helpful for our work, how can we do so more often, and more effectively and authentically? How can we
partner with grantees to help us in this process?

• To what extent are we modeling practices that we’re asking of grantees and partners? Are there specific
practices we could change in the short term or long term?

Reflection questions for all staff members:

• To what extent do we feel that we are part of “one foundation?” Why or why not? What else could the
foundation do to ensure that the foundation’s work is more than the sum of its parts? Could any of the
silo-busting ideas fit our foundation’s context?

• To what extent are we creating custom-built teams based on the approaches they’re using, rather
than based on a formulaic model that strives for symmetry for team size and composition? Do our teams

BEING THE CHANGE | 69

 reflect the capacity and types of expertise we need to carry out our work?

• To what extent are we setting up all teams to provide front-line impact? Are there non-program
functions that are particularly important for delivering on our approaches that aren’t being valued or
integrated yet? Do these functions have sufficient capacity to contribute to the foundation’s approaches?

• To what extent are we setting up staff members with sufficient time for the approaches they are imple-
menting? What more can be done to support staff as they take on new roles? Are there tasks that can be
discontinued or shifted?

• To what extent are we enabling and encouraging continuous learning (by adapting our strategies
over time, by openly acknowledging assumptions or hypotheses that did not pan out, and by not penal-
izing risk-taking)? Are there specific practices and policies getting in the way of creating a culture of
continuous learning? What would it take to change those practices and policies?

Reflection questions for people development teams:

• To what extent do our processes support us in hiring and enabling the five mindsets listed in this
report? Do we have any specific processes or decision-making norms that are getting in the way of allow-
ing staff members to fully live out these mindsets? How can these be changed?

• To what extent are we enabling people with diverse and lived experience to join and thrive in the
foundation? How might recruiting and internal policies and practices need to change to support staff
members with new types of backgrounds and experiences?

• To what extent are we providing professional development opportunities for the variety of skills our
staff members need? Are there specific skillsets that are needed across the foundation that are not being
sufficiently nurtured?

• To what extent are we enabling staff members to engage in conversations about their whole career arc?
What more can be done to encourage this?

Reflection questions for foundation leaders and trustees:

• To what extent do trustees have a shared understanding of the foundation’s prioritized

approaches? For example, if trustees were handed the diagram of the nine approaches, could all trustees
identify which approaches are most critical for the foundation overall, and in specific program areas?

• To what extent is the foundation capturing—and even quantifying—all the ways that staff members are
investing their time and multiplying impact, for example, by influencing peer funders or public fund-
ing streams, or by getting more attention for the foundation’s issues and grantees from target audiences?

• To what extent are headcount decisions grounded in the capacity (number of staff) and capabilities

70 | FSG
 (specific functional roles) required for delivering on each approach? If there is a ceiling on the number of
staff at the foundation, what is that ceiling based on? Would trustees be comfortable shedding fears of
being an “outlier” when calculating staffing levels just based on grantmaking levels?

• To what extent are trustees willing to consider structures that enable new ways of investing—includ-
ing for-profit investments, lobbying, co-funding with peers at scale—if these could bolster the foundation’s
ability to have impact?

While internal transformation can be challenging, foundations are seeing it as

essential for equipping and enabling staff members to co-create more effec-
tive relationships and results with grantees, communities, peers, and partners.

BEING THE CHANGE | 71

 Appendix A
Helpful Resources
ARABELLA ADVISORS ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS
Three Forces Pushing Philanthropy Beyond Grant Theory of the Foundation
Making
STANFORD SOCIAL INNOVATION REVIEW (SSIR)
GRANTMAKERS FOR EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATIONS Forgetting Failure
(GEO)
Solving the World’s Biggest Problems: Better
2017 Field Survey: Major Trends in US Grantmakers’
Philanthropy Through Systems Change
Attitudes and Practices
The Dawn of System Leadership
Shaping Culture Through Key Moments
Three Keys to Unlocking Systems-Level Change

GEO AND MANAGEMENT ASSISTANCE GROUP

THE CENTER FOR EFFECTIVE PHILANTHROPY
Systems Grantmaking Resource Guide
Benchmarking Program Officer Roles and
Responsibilities
GRANTMAKERS IN HEALTH
Discussing the Role of Foundation Staff
The Voice on the Ground: The Program Officer of the
21st Century Employee Empowerment: The Key to Foundation
Staff Satisfaction
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW (HBR) Foundation Staff Matter
Audacious Philanthropy Relationships Matter: Program Officers, Grantees,
Why Social Ventures Need Systems Thinking in and the Keys to Success
Systems Change Staying Connected: How Five Foundations
Understand Those They Seek to Help
INSIDE PHILANTHROPY
Inside the Mind of Your Program Officer THE CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY
It’s Not Foundation Money but Culture and Talent
NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR RESPONSIVE That Can Change the World
PHILANTHROPY
How to Change Behavior in Philanthropy THE FOUNDATION REVIEW
A Foundation’s Theory of Philanthropy: What It Is,
NPAG What It Provides, How to Do It
Recruiting Strategies to Make Diversity More
Meaningful in Your Organization

72 | FSG
Appendix B
List of Interviewees
BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION Donata Secondo, Manager of Learning & Strategy
Chris Ernst, Director, People & Organization Potential Joe Goldman, President

BLANDIN FOUNDATION Lauren Strayer, Managing Director of

Communications & Network
Janet Borth, Director of Administrative Services
Lise Woods Fink, Senior Recruiter
Wade Fauth, Vice President
Liz Ruedy, Director of Evaluation
BOREALIS PHILANTHROPY Margaret Yao, Chief People Officer
Rickke Mananzala, Vice President of Strategy & Srik Gopal, Vice President of Strategy & Program
Programs
Tom Glaisyer, Program Director, Public Square
BUSH FOUNDATION Tony Bowen, Managing Director of Operations
Jennifer Ford Reedy, President
EDUCATE TEXAS
CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION John Fitzpatrick, Executive Director
John Kobara, Executive Vice President & Chief
EPISCOPAL HEALTH FOUNDATION
Operating Officer
Susybelle Gosslee, Chief Administrative Officer
CHILDREN’S INVESTMENT FUND FOUNDATION
EWING MARION KAUFFMAN FOUNDATION
Steven Chapman, Director, Evidence, Measurement &
Evaluation Aaron North, Vice President of Education
Brian Henke, Director of Operations
COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR GREATER
ATLANTA Gloria Jackson-Leathers, Director of Kansas City Civic
Engagement
Alicia Philipp, President
John Tyler, General Counsel in Legal
Anna Pinder, Director, Community Intelligence
Kathleen Boyle Dalen, Chief Talent, Integration, &
COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR GREATER Culture Officer
BUFFALO Kristin Bechard, Chief Financial Officer
Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, President & CEO Larry Jacob, Vice President of Public Affairs &
Communications
CONRAD N. HILTON FOUNDATION
Matthew Carr, Director of Evaluation
Edmund J. Cain, Vice President, Grant Programs
Victor W. Hwang, Vice President of Entrepreneurship
Emily Skehan, Program Officer, Special Programs
Wendy Guillies, President & CEO
Tamara Lewis, Vice President, Talent & Culture
Taryn Lee, Human Resources Director FORD FOUNDATION
Samantha Gilbert, Vice President, Talent and Human
DEMOCRACY FUND Resources
Adam Ambrogi, Program Director, Elections
Betsy Wright Hawkings, Program Director,
Governance

BEING THE CHANGE | 73

 GE FOUNDATION Michael Meadows, Managing Director, People &
David Barash, Executive Director, Global Health Culture
Portfolio & Chief Medical Officer Stephanie Platz, Managing Director, Programs
Jennifer Edwards, Director, US Developing Health Valerie Chang, Managing Director, Programs

GRAND RAPIDS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION J.W. MCCONNELL FAMILY FOUNDATION

Diana R. Sieger, President John Cawley, Vice President

HOGG FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HEALTH KING BAUDOUIN FOUNDATION

Lynda Frost, Former Director, Planning & Programs Luc Tayart de Borms, Managing Director
Stephany Bryan, Program Officer and Consumer &
KOYA LEADERSHIP PARTNERS
Family Liaison
Erin Reedy, Vice President, Executive Search
Tammy Heinz, Program Officer and Consumer &
Family Liaison LANKELLY CHASE
HOUSTON ENDOWMENT Alice Evans, Director, Systems Change
Lisa A. Hall, Vice President for Programs LUMINA FOUNDATION
Sherry Fultz, Director of Human Resources & Courtney Brown, Vice President of Strategic Impact
Administration
MASTERCARD FOUNDATION
HUMANITY UNITED
Leena Malik, Senior Manager, Learning &
Ed Marcum, Managing Director Organizational Development
Lawrence Mendenhall, Chief Operating Officer and Lindsay Wallace, Director, Learning & Strategy
General Counsel
Lisa Carpenter, Head of Strategy, Learning, & Impact NPAG
Randy Newcomb, President and CEO Allison Kupfer Poteet, Vice President & Managing
Partner
Robyn Arville, Chief of People
Katherine E. Jacobs, President & CEO
Tim Isgitt, Managing Director
ONTARIO TRILLIUM FOUNDATION
IRVING HARRIS FOUNDATION
Blair Dimock, Vice President, Partnerships and
Phyllis Glink, Executive Director
Knowledge
JACOBS FOUNDATION Jennifer Roynon, Director, Partnerships and
Sandro Giuliani, Managing Director, Delegate of the Knowledge Mobilization
Board
OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS
JOHN D. AND CATHERINE T. MACARTHUR Loyse Bonjour, Director of Global Human Resources
FOUNDATION
PALIX FOUNDATION
Andrew Solomon, Managing Director,
Communications Michelle Gagnon, President
Cecilia A. Conrad, Managing Director PETER KIEWIT FOUNDATION
Chantell Johnson, Managing Director, Evaluation Jeff Kutash, Executive Director
Debra Schwartz, Managing Director, Impact
Investments PHILANTHROPY NEW YORK
Julia M. Stasch, President Kathryn O’Neal-Dunham, Chief Operating Officer
Elizabeth Kane, Managing Director, Core Services Kristen M. Ruff, Vice President, Member Services

74 | FSG
PRUDENTIAL FOUNDATION THE KRESGE FOUNDATION
Shane Harris, Vice President Ariel H. Simon, Vice President, Chief Program and
Strategy Officer
QUANTUM FOUNDATION
Eric M. Kelly, President THE OMIDYAR GROUP
Becky Richeson, Systems & Complexity Project
RAIKES FOUNDATION Manager
Erin Kahn, Executive Director Jeff Mohr, Advisor, Strategy & Governance
ROBERT R. MCCORMICK FOUNDATION Mike Mohr, Advisor and Board Member, Omidyar
Network
Oscar Regalado, Human Resources Director
Rob Ricigliano, Systems & Complexity Coach
ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION
THE OREGON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION
Brian Quinn, Associate Vice President, Research-
Evaluation-Learning Kathleen Cornett, Vice President for Grants &
Programs
Steve Downs, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer
Sonia Worcel, Vice President of Strategy and
ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS Research
Olga Tarasov, Director of Knowledge Development THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION
SAN ANTONIO AREA FOUNDATION Jessica Freireich, Managing Director, Organizational
Performance
Arenda Burns, Vice President of Human Resources
and Organizational Development THE SAINT PAUL & MINNESOTA COMMUNITY
Michelle Lugalia-Hollon, Director of Program FOUNDATIONS
Initiatives Ann Mulholland, Vice President of Community
Rebecca Brune, President and Chief Operating Impact
Officer Eric J. Jolly, President & CEO
SCHOTT FOUNDATION FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION UBS OPTIMUS FOUNDATION
Edgar Villanueva, Vice President of Programs and Phyllis Costanza, CEO
Advocacy
UNITED PHILANTHROPY FORUM
T.L.L. TEMPLE FOUNDATION
David Biemesderfer, President & CEO
Wynn Rosser, President & CEO
VILLUM FOUNDATION
THE 360 GROUP
Lars Hansen, Director
Vincent Robinson, Founder & Managing Partner
WALTON FAMILY FOUNDATION
THE BRIDGESPAN GROUP
Kyle Peterson, Executive Director
Alison Powell, Senior Director, Philanthropy
WEINGART FOUNDATION
THE EDNA MCCONNELL CLARK FOUNDATION
Fred J. Ali, President & CEO
Kathy Makowski, Director of Human Resources
Ralph Stefano, Vice President, Chief Operating WILLIAM AND FLORA HEWLETT FOUNDATION
Officer Fay Twersky, Director, Effective Philanthropy Group
THE FORD FAMILY FOUNDATION Jean McCall, Director of Human Resources
Anne C. Kubisch, President Larry Kramer, President

BEING THE CHANGE | 75

 Authors
Abigail Stevenson
Associate Director
[email protected]

Abi focuses on strategic approaches to addressing complex population

health challenges and has over ten years of experience in the healthcare
and consulting fields. She has worked with a number of leading health
foundations and hospitals systems, including the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, Methodist Healthcare Ministries, The California Health Care
Foundation, Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, and Kaiser Permanente.
She has also helped build collective impact efforts to address childhood
obesity, diabetes, and childhood asthma. Abi holds a joint MBA and MPH
from UC Berkeley and a BA from Dartmouth College.

Valerie Bockstette
Managing Director
[email protected]

Valerie has over 15 years of experience in advising leading organiza-

tions around the world on strategy, evaluation, and organizational
capacity. She has worked with private, family, community, and
corporate foundations in North America and Europe including the
Mastercard Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, the Oak Founda-
tion, Houston Endowment, and the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
Valerie has particular experience with issues that lie at the intersec-
tion of multiple systems, such as early care and education, adult and
juvenile justice, and access to finance. Valerie holds an MBA from
Harvard Business School and a BA from Brown University.

76 | FSG
 Andria Seneviratne
Senior Consultant
[email protected]

Andria has turned her passion for organizational and people development into
action through her work on strategic planning and cross-organization learning
collaboratives. She has worked with clients across sectors, including USAID,
Let’s Move! Active Schools, and Living Cities. Andria holds an MS and a BA
from the University of Notre Dame.

Miya Cain
Consultant
[email protected]

Miya has worked across sectors with clients such as the Hogg Foundation
for Mental Health, Novo Nordisk, Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit,
and the San Francisco Department of Public Health on strategy develop-
ment and in building multi-sector collaborations. She has a particular
focus on health equity and social determinants of health. Miya holds an
MPP from Harvard Kennedy School and a BA from Yale University.

Tracy Foster
Associate Director
[email protected]

For more than ten years, Tracy has developed strategy and evaluation
frameworks for foundations across the United States, including the Ewing
Marion Kauffman Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation. She has also worked with community founda-
tions and corporations. Tracy holds a BS from Northwestern University.

BEING THE CHANGE | 77

BOSTON • GENEVA • MUMBAI • SAN FRANCISCO • SEATTLE • WASHINGTON, DC