Foundations today are experimenting with an impressive array of approaches as they seek to create ambitious and complex social change. In addition to traditional methods of funding programs, foundations are helping nonprofits strengthen their organizations, informing policy makers about important issues and options, catalyzing collaboration across fields, and disrupting entrenched power dynamics.
These changes require new approaches to staffing foundations and an upending of traditional expectations (particularly among boards) about the size, background, roles, and interactions of foundation staff members.
To learn how foundations are evolving, we interviewed 114 leaders and employees from 50 grant makers (with annual spending of $5 million to more than $500 million) and eight organizations that provide philanthropic services, such as headhunting, in the United States, Canada, and Europe. We asked about their approaches for creating impact: how they define their staffing model, organizational structure, and culture and how they navigate internal change.
From these conversations, we identified 12 practices that have transformed their impact, which we explore in a new report from FSG, “Being the Change.”
Within those practices, we found a common theme: The foundations we spoke with are creating an “ensemble cast” to elevate the voices and talents of all staff members, especially those not traditionally associated with grant making.
This is not to say the role of the program officer is any less important — far from it. But whereas program officers may once have had the starring role, now the whole cast of staff members helps grantees create change. We identified three key trends in how grant makers are building their ensemble casts.
Foundations are recognizing that all roles and people can contribute more directly to creating social change.
This can include building out existing roles — especially in hiring and training, communications, and organizational learning — or adding brand new roles.
For example, the Lumina Foundation, which focuses on improving and expanding access to postsecondary education, notes in its strategic plan:
“The scale of change needed to build a new postsecondary learning system will require action on the part of numerous policymakers, educators, and employers and millions of individual Americans. Lumina can play multiple roles to create change at this scale, but it is as thought leaders that our influence will need to be most felt. Everyone involved needs to understand the urgency of Goal 2025 — an effort to increase the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees, certificates, and other credentials to 60 percent by 2025 — and commit to action to reach it.”
To play these roles, Lumina created a team consisting of its vice president for strategic engagement; a strategy director focused on getting key players involved, coalition building, and meetings; and two in-house conference and meeting planners. In addition, the foundation expanded its strategic-communications team to include people who know the tactics and techniques of influencing decision makers and people in media relations, digital-content creation, and digital-audience growth. These groups complement the work of other teams that focus on areas like helping federal and state policy makers understand key issues and options.
Foundations are enabling more and different types of voices within the organization to shape strategy and grant making.
For example, the Mastercard Foundation and the Episcopal Health Foundation each engaged their full staffs in recent strategic-planning processes to build greater shared understanding of one another’s work and the foundations’ visions for the future.
The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health has added two consumer and family-liaison positions to ensure that consumers of mental-health services are included in decisions on grants and partnerships, creating a sea change in one of the most stigmatized problems in health care.
Foundations are creating new roles or dedicated responsibilities to bust silos.
Examples include the Kresge Foundation, which created the role of chief program and strategy officer, and the Walton Family Foundation, which now has a deputy director of strategy and learning. Both of these officials work in all areas of grant making.
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.”
It is important to note that the ensemble casts at these foundations are not acting just within their own theaters. By experimenting with new approaches to staffing, foundations hope to foster connectivity, vibrancy, and engagement both within their organization and with grantees, community members, and others, ultimately opening up new ways to make an impact on important causes.
Valerie Bockstette was until June managing director in the Washington office of FSG, a social-impact consulting firm. Abigail Stevenson is a director in FSG’s San Francisco office.
