Talking Transparency: The Case for Sharing What We're Learning
This post first appeared on Foundation Center's GlassPockets blog in its #OpenForGood series on transparency.
As a private foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund advances a just, peaceful, and sustainable world through grantmaking and related activities. We believe that discerning and communicating the impact of our grantmaking and other programmatic contributions is essential to fulfilling the Fund’s mission, as is a commitment to stewardship, transparency, and accountability. Philanthropy exists to serve the public good. By opening up what we are learning, we believe that we are honoring the public’s trust in our activities as a private foundation.
As part of our commitment to serving the public good, we are proud to be among the first foundations to join the new #OpenForGood campaign by sharing published reports on our grantmaking through Foundation Center’s open repository, IssueLab, and its new special collection of evaluations, Find Results, and continue to make them available on our own website. These reports and impact assessments are materials authored by third party assessment teams, and sometimes by our own program leadership, in addition to the published research papers and studies by grantees already on IssueLab.
We feel strongly that we have a responsibility to our grantees, trustees, partners, and the wider public to periodically evaluate our grantmaking, to use the findings to inform our strategy and practice, and to be transparent about what we are learning. In terms of our sector, this knowledge can go a long way in advancing fields of practice by identifying effective approaches. The Fund has a long history of sharing our findings with the public, stretching as far back as 1961, when the results of the Fund’s Special Studies Project were published as the bestselling volume Prospect for America. The book featured expert analysis on key issues of the era including international relations, economic and societal challenges, and democratic practices, topics which remain central to our grantmaking work.
We view our grantmaking as an investment in the public good, and place a great deal of importance on accountability. Through surveys conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy in 2016, our grantees and prospective grantees told us that they wanted to hear more about what we have learned, as well as what the Fund has tried but was recognized as less successful in its past grantmaking. Regular assessments by CEP and third-party issue-area experts help keep us accountable and identify blind-spots in our strategies. While our evaluations have long been posted online, and we have reorganized our website to make the materials easier to find, we have also made a commitment to have additional reflections on what we’re learning going forward and to more proactively share these reports. We are grateful to Foundation Center for creating and maintaining IssueLab as a sharing platform and learning environment hub for the public, practitioners, and peers alike to locate resources and benefit from the research that the philanthropic sector undertakes.
Hope Lyons is the director of program management at the RBF
Ari Klickstein is the communications associate/digital specialist at the RBF
Related Links:
RBF.org: Program Impact and Learning
IssueLab.org: Rockefeller Brothers Fund Reports and Grantee Reports