Arrogance and Ignorance: What Donors Should Avoid in Their Giving
py’s great ironies is that very
little can be accomplished by individuals acting on their own,
even when those individuals are
extraordinarily wealthy.”
On the selection of foundation leaders: “We select the
people we think we know rather than the people we actually need. Becoming star-struck
with a celebrity who has an outstanding résumé is an all too
common trap. Another is hiring
a friend from one’s prior life,
who is a known quantity but is
not well suited to a totally different kind of activity.”
On overhead: “There is no
such thing as a free lunch. If
you want to establish the opera-
tional capacity to achieve great
results, you will have to pay
what it takes to hire top-notch
staff.”
Mr. Tierney and Mr. Fleish-
man are particularly eloquent—
and their message especially
important for new major do-
nors—when it comes to how to
work effectively with grantees.
Unlike others writing about
philanthropy who have caricatured staffs of charities as
Birkenstock-wearing idealists
lacking in management skills,
Mr. Tierney and Mr. Fleishman
urge philanthropists to treat
Continued from Page 41
those on the front lines with the
respect they deserve.
They pull no punches in their
cautions to donors, laying out
the twin perils of arrogance and
ignorance as well as the lethal
combination of the two.
They tell the story, which will
sound all too familiar to grant
recipients, of a foundation that
thought it knew better than its
grantees what strategy made
sense to achieve their shared
goals. The foundation said, in
essence, “If you want our mon-
ey, you had better do things our
way.”
“Before long, it became clear
that the foundation’s execu-
tives were not more knowledge-
able than their grantees,” they
write. “The foundation’s strat-
egy was both untested and con-
fused. Worst of all, by insisting
that grantees blindly conform
to its needs, rather than collab-
orating, the foundation actually
undermined its grantees’ per-
formance.”
But Mr. Tierney and Mr.
Fleishman, importantly, take
it one step further by making
the case that the result wasn’t
just harmful to grantees. It was
also “to the detriment of what
the donor had actually set out
to achieve.”
This connection between
foundation-grantee relation-
ships and the ability of founda-
tions to maximize their impact
is a crucial one.
Phil Buchanan is president
of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, which has offices in
Cambridge, Mass., and San
Francisco.
In Tough Times, Donors Want More Than
a Warm Glow for Their Philanthropic Dollars
no longer something that operates outside of the economy. As
a result, neither do nonprofits.
The “product” that nonprofits sell—social impact—now
has mainstream economic currency. Think about that: Mainstream economic actors, not
just do-gooders and philanthropists, want to buy what we have
to sell. This is surely a transformational moment. In lieu of
Continued from Page 41
THE CHRONICLE OF
PHILANTHROP Y
EDI TORIAL AND BUSINESS OFFICES
1255 Twenty-Third Street, N. W.
Washington, D.C. 20037, (202) 466-1200
World Wide Web: http://philanthropy.com
e-mail: editor@philanthropy.com
REPRINT DEPARTMENT
(800) 259-0470
SUBSCRIPTIONS AND CHANGE OF ADDRESS
Post Office Box 16359, North Hollywood,
CA 91615 61054-0743
(800) 728-2819
e-mail: subscriptions@philanthropy.com
PHILAN THROP Y CAREERS (202) 466-1230
e-mail: jobs@philanthropy.com
CORPORATE CLIEN T SALES OFFICES
New York (212) 758-5293
Washington (202) 466-1212
e-mail: display@philanthropy.com
Member, Audit Bureau of
Circulations. The Chronicle
reserves the right not to
accept an advertiser’s
order. Only publication
of an advertisement shall constitute
acceptance.
Publications Mail Agreement No:
40612608. Return undeliverable
Canadian issues to: Bleuchip
International, P.O. Box 25542, London,
ON N6C 6B2, Canada.
Digital edition provided
by Texterity
( http://www.texterity.com)
donors and subsidies, which are
inherently unsustainable, non-profits must identify those “
impact buyers” who value and directly consume their results.
Still, as much as the market
has embraced nonprofit work,
nonprofits have yet to embrace
the market. They continue to
sell to donors who “feel good”
about their work rather than
mainstream economic actors
who “value” their work. They
continue to raise money outside
the walls of the economy when
they could be selling their impact within.
Many groups will struggle to
make the changes they need to
adjust to this new reality. In the
social capital market, nonprofits
can’t just tell stories or produce
emotion-tugging photos. They
have to appeal to companies, donors, and others who are placing huge economic bets on the
value nonprofits can create.
Moreover, these folks aren’t just
looking for “reach” or “raised
awareness”; they’re looking to
solve social problems.
So nonprofits need to
change—and to figure out how
to capture, market, and sell
“high value” outcomes—the outcomes most relevant to actually
solving those problems. Bottom
line: Now that there are direct
economic consequences of social
change, the margin for error
(and failure) is that much lower.
Performance needs to be that
much higher and results that
much better.
To solve social problems, non-profits must take more entrepreneurial, innovative, and systemic approaches to their work.
This means that groups can’t
just keep doing what they are
doing and hope that someone
will finance it.
If people are really “buying
impact,” not just giving money to programs, then nonprofits need to devise better strategies to produce those results.
That requires a whole new
toolkit: public-private partnerships, new technologies, new
incentives, and cutting-edge approaches to creating change.
It’s time for all of us to think
about new ways to forge social
outcomes into economic currency. It is time for the non-profit world to tap into the engine of the economy, not just the
fumes.
Jason Saul is the author of
The End of Fundraising, published this month by Jossey-Bass. He is chief executive of
Mission Measurement, a Chicago consulting company that
helps nonprofits, corporations,
and government agencies figure
out whether they are making a
difference to society. He is also
the founder of the nonprofit Center for What Works.
THE CHRONICLE OF
PHIL A N THROP Y
EDITOR Stacy Palmer
ART DIREC TOR Sue LaLumia
ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITORS Heather Joslyn,
Peter Panepento
FEATURES EDITOR Holly Hall
SENIOR EDI TOR Suzanne Perry
SENIOR WRI TER Nicole Wallace
ASSOCIATE SENIOR EDITOR Eugene McCormack
ASSISTANT WEB EDITOR Cody Switzer
SENIOR REPOR TER Caroline Preston
MANAGER OF SPECIAL PROJECTS Noelle Barton
S TAFF EDI TOR Maria Di Mento
S TAFF WRITERS Lisa Chiu, Raymund Flandez
DATABASE SPECIALIS T Sara Monsef
SPECIAL PROJEC TS RESEARCHER Marisa López-
Rivera
WEB PRODUCER Derek Lieu
WEBINAR CONTENT MANAGER Margie Fleming
Glennon
EDITORIAL ASSOCIATE Caroline Bermudez
EDI TORIAL RESEARCH ASSIS TAN T Peter Bolton
DIREC TOR OF COMMUNICA TIONS Michael Solomon
Published by The Chronicle of Higher
Education, Inc.
CHAIRMAN Corbin Gwaltney
PRESIDEN T AND EDI TOR IN CHIEF Philip W. Semas
EDI TOR, SPECIAL PROJEC TS Edward R. Weidlein
PUBLISHER Mireille Grangenois
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER William J. Peyser
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT
AND CIRCULATION Alvin Brockway
DIRECTOR OF AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT AND
CIRCULATION Alex Levin
SUBSCRIP TION MANAGER Ericka J. Fredericks
ASSIS TAN T SUBSCRIP TION MANAGER Shekil T.
Gross
AUDIENCE DEVELOPMEN T MANAGER Michael A.
Harke
AUDIENCE MARKE TING ANALYS T Walker Williams
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER,CORPORATE CLIENT GROUP
Harvey W. Hill Jr.
SENIOR SALES MANAGER Erica A. Bergin
INSIDE SALES MANAGER Glen Webb
DIREC TOR OF PRODUC TION Gwen Gaiser
ASSIS TAN T PRODUC TION MANAGER Sonya C. Scott
PRODUC TION ASSOCIATE Kevin Barber
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, UNIVERSITY AND NON-PROFIT
CLIEN T GROUP Samuel P. Bonfante
DIRECTOR OF SALES OPERATIONS AND PRODUCTION
Jennifer Fisher
DIRECTOR, INSIDE SALES Jennifer Lane Williams
INSIDE SALES EXECU TIVES Elizabeth Bingham,
Richard Lewis, Bayly Unger
COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY RELATIONS MANAGERS
Angela Helfrich, Donald Washington
SENIOR ADVERTISING SPECIALIS T Melissa Coup
ADVER TISING SPECIALIS TS Christophe Boussard,
Mary Bryan Haltermann, Carrie Jenkins
ADVER TISING ASSOCIATES Bradley Cannon,
Matthew Cohen
DIREC TOR OF ACCOUN TING Samuel Eziemefe
ACCOUN TS RECEIVABLE MANAGER Mitchell
Londres
PAYROLL MANAGER Anne St. Vil
ACCOUN TING ASSOCIATES Alice Chang, Bonnie
Gaskins, Irvin Moore
ACCOUN TING ASSIS TAN T Angela Gillian
INTERN Jarrod Brown
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER Don Sargent
DIRECTOR, PRODUCT ENGINEERING Greg Channel
DIRECTOR, BUSINESS SOLUTIONS Aastha Verma
DIREC TOR OF NE W MEDIA Matthew Bassow
DIREC TOR, USER EXPERIENCE Robert Watson
QUALI T Y ASSURANCE LEAD Murali Thota
PROJEC T MANAGER Erica Gordon Sorohan
SENIOR SOF T WARE ENGINEERS Kristopher Doyen,
Matt Good
WEB DEVELOPERS Adrian Padilla, Brian Walker
SOFT WARE DEVELOPER Kimler Corey
WEB SI TE MANAGER Karla Haworth
COORDINATOR Carmen Mendoza
MANAGING DIREC TOR OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Cynthia J. Kennedy
DIRECTOR, ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS Steve Smith
HELP-DESK MANAGER Robert Boggs
NE T WORK MANAGER Kenneth Moir
PRODUCTION MANAGER Ralph Gioseffi
SYS TEMS ANALYST Gene Stamper
DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR Franz Barrientos
SENIOR TECHNOLOGY SPECIALIST John Ready
SENIOR COMPU TER SUPPORT SPECIALIST Rich
Woodrum
SPECIALISTS Herminio Alcanites (Network),
Jacques A. Benovil (Computer Support), Brenda
Stewart (Computer Support), Bob McGrath
(Production and Color), Jojo Mendoza (Editorial
Systems)
CHIEF MARKE TING OFFICER Amy Presley
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND PRODUCT
DEVELOPMEN T, DISPLAY ADVER TISING Holly C.
Horner
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND PRODUCT
DEVELOPMEN T, RECRUITMEN T ADVERTISING Titilayo
Ellis
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS/
MARKETING Lisa Feldner
CONFERENCE AND EVENT MANAGER Rachel Fine
CONFERENCE AND EVENT COORDINATOR Kristen
Vouwie
PROJEC T MARKE TING MANAGERS, DISPLAY Lauren
Clemence, Mike Dancel
MARKETING MANAGERS Alvaro Rojas, Lesley
Speed
MARKETING PROJECT COORDINATOR Sarah Renner
SENIOR PRINT & WEB DESIGNER Cecilia Cortes-
Earle
SENIOR GRAPHIC & WEB INTERAC TIVE DESIGNER Yulia
Graham
GRAPHIC DESIGNER Bernard Bello
WEB MARKETING COORDINATOR Catherine Tran
MARKETING AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT INTERN
Dametreus Vincent
DIREC TOR, BUSINESS APPLICATIONS Betsy Barefoot
TECHNOLOG Y ASSOCIATE Linda Ihenetu
WEB TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATE Olamide Adeoti
TECHNOLOG Y ASSISTANT Antonio Scott
CHIEF, HUMAN RESOURCES & ADMINIS TRA TION Lisa
Birchard
OFFICE MANAGER Jeanette Posey
HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER Lauren Sweeney
HUMAN RESOURCES COORDINATOR Ashley Harrell
ASSISTANT OFFICE MANAGER Richard Felder
FACILI TIES SPECIALIS T Rene Baldonado
ASSISTANT Joyce Phinisee
