Foundation strategy encompasses the philosophical and practical considerations of a family’s philanthropy. What values does the family share, and how do they translate those values into their giving? How do the staff and board make the choices needed to develop a strategy that achieves impact and reflects the family’s vision?
Start by reviewing NCFP’s Family Giving Lifecycle Primer, Impact Strategies & Tools, and see below for additional guidance.
Strategy Planning
“Pretty Good Tools” for Collaboration, Strategy, and Partnership
Tool
If you’re a philanthropy practitioner — staff member or trustee — these tools should be useful. The Giving Practice works with foundations and philanthropy organizations of all types and sizes, and they hear common questions and dilemmas. The Giving Practice's consultants are developed Pretty Good Tools to help you with…
Strategic, Responsive, or Both?
Article
Responsive grantmaking is being open to receiving proposals and ideas from any nonprofit, and allowing the nonprofits to drive the agenda. Requests are initiated by the nonprofit, rather than by a funder seeking them out. This doesn’t mean that a foundation doesn’t have core areas of focus, but that within…
Strategic Philanthropy: Maximizing Family Engagement and Social Impact
Passages Issue Briefs
For the sake of family cohesion and engagement, many family foundations base their grantmaking on the varied personal interests of their trustees. The unfortunate result is a scattershot grantmaking portfolio, with limited social impact. Conversely, a family foundation risks excluding family members if they are not interested in a shared…
Beyond Grantmaking
Article
“Foundations do not need a lot of money to be effective,” Ylvisaker declared. “If, indeed, they were to exploit only a fraction of the strategies available to them, their individual and collective impact on American life would be vastly and beneficially expanded.” Charles W. Collier, senior philanthropic adviser at Harvard…
Special grantmaking: A purposeful, flexible resource for foundations
Article
Many foundations that are guided by a long-term commitment to move the needle in a finite set of issue areas also hold “special grantmaking” funds. These program dollars can be flexibly deployed for nascent opportunities, innovative ideas, emergencies, local causes, and/or areas of high interest to their leaders. Little has…
Strategy and Evaluation: The Twin Engines of Effective Philanthropy
Article
This essay provides a fast-paced tour of grantmaker approaches, launching with the advent of long-range planning in the 1980s and visiting scenario planning, social return on investment, human-centered design, big data, and other developments that have influenced practice. The author lands on strategy and evaluation as the anchor approaches that…
Strategic Planning
Many foundations develop or reassess their strategy through a strategic planning process. Below are sample strategic plan that show a wide range of planning processes and outcomes.
More example strategic plans can be found here. Another useful resource for those looking to engage an outside voice in this process is Hiring a Strategic Planning Consultant.
Case Studies
These case studies illustrate how families have developed and changed their philanthropic strategies:
