|
|
|
We publish our ideas and findings as part of our commitment to accelerating social progress. A recognized thought leader, FSG draws on our client work as well as the experiences of our funders and partners to offer insights that are both leading-edge and practical. You can browse by the topics at left or search using the search box below the topics.
What’s new
Mark Kramer
Despite spending vast amounts of money and helping to create the world’s largest nonprofit sector, philanthropists have fallen far short of solving America’s most pressing problems. What the nation needs is Catalytic Philanthropy — a new approach that is already being practiced by some of the most innovative donors.
Download PDF»
Watch VIDEO here»
Mark Kramer, Marcie Parkhurst, Lalitha Vaidyanathan
The social sector’s ability to solve complex social problems is limited by traditional approaches to grantee performance and outcome measurement. By focusing on individual grants and nonprofit initiatives, these measurement approaches neglect the reality that no single organization alone can solve the scale of today’s major social challenges. Our research highlights 20 examples of social enterprises that have developed innovative and coordinated web-based approaches to reporting performance, outcome and impact measurements over multiple social enterprises and stakeholders.
See report series here»
Share your experience in our Shared Measurement Wiki»
Justin Bakule, John Kania, Ellen Martin, Hallie Preskill
Community and place-based foundations are in the midst of an incredible transformation. Their historic roles as fund managers or check writers primarily focused on local philanthropic assets, are evolving to becoming influential catalysts in their communities for social change. This report explores how, through the Knight Community Information Challenge, community and place-based foundations are incorporating community information needs into their work for the benefit of both their communities and foundation missions and strategies.
Download PDF»
Mark Kramer, Adeeb Mahmud, Serah Makka
Foundations and individual philanthropists are increasingly choosing investments that advance their social missions and also earn financial returns. Very few funders, however, have yet developed a comprehensive approach that links mission investing and grantmaking into a single integrated strategy. With funding from The Surdna Foundation, FSG has developed this report to help foundations identify how various mission investing instruments and opportunities can help them create greater impact, with a specific focus on climate change.
Download PDF»
Mark Kramer, Eva Nico, Samantha Nobles-Block
Is your foundation’s use of evaluation relevant to your decision making? Are your board conversations about evaluation productive? Is it time to improve evaluation? The Evaluation Kit for Trustees is a project of FSG Social Impact Advisors, based on interviews with foundation trustees, CEOs and evaluation experts from across the country, made possible with funding from The James Irvine Foundation. The toolkit is intended to help trustees and foundations engage in evaluation to help better plan work, improve implementation, and track progress toward goals.
See Toolkit Here»
Greg Hills, Leigh Fiske, Adeeb Mahmud
Corruption is not a peripheral social concern that corporations can ignore or passively address — it is a bottom-line issue that directly affects companies' ability to compete. Widespread in emerging markets, corruption is becoming an increasingly important issue for business to address. Furthermore, it inflicts enduring harm on disadvantaged populations by diverting resources for critical services like education, clean water and health care into the pockets of dishonest public officials.
Download PDF»
Watch WEBCAST here»
Hallie Preskill, Nathalie Jones
An evaluation’s findings may be more relevant, credible, and useful when a wide range of stakeholders are involved in developing its guiding questions. In this practical guide, FSG notes that soliciting input from stakeholders early in the evaluation design process addresses specific stakeholder interests for improving program effectiveness, influencing policy decisions, and instituting behavioral and organizational change. The guide describes a five-step process for engaging stakeholders in developing evaluation questions, and includes four worksheets to facilitate the planning and implementation of a stakeholder engagement process.
Download PDF»
Rebecca Graves, Fay Hanleybrown, Veronica Borgonovi
This report profiles the actions taken by funders across one region of the U.S. in order to surface lessons for community-based funders in all regions. To do more with less, these funders were intentional about how best to apply and leverage assets, often collaborating with others to avoid wasting time, effort and money. Funders now have an opportunity to look back at their initial responses and determine what they have learned that is relevant in their ongoing work. How can these experiences inform strategies going forward, knowing only that our communities always face an unpredictable future?
Download PDF»
Marc Pfitzer, Valerie Bockstette, Mike Stamp
Switzerland has a long and rich tradition of philanthropy, dating back nearly 700 years. Recently, philanthropic activity in Switzerland has grown considerably in scope and significance. Encouraged by this momentum and by the widespread feeling that Swiss philanthropy has not yet achieved its full potential, the initiative for promoting philanthropy in Switzerland seeks to identify and define best practice approaches for a high impact philanthropic sector in this country. The final report, available in English, French, and German, recommends a program of initiatives and specific projects to attain the two key priorities highlighted within the report: "Catalyzing cooperation" and "Putting philanthropy on the map."
Download PDF»
Benchmarking Beyond Asset Size: New Top 100 Lists
Rebecca Graves, Melissa Scott, Diana Cook
"What’s your foundation’s asset size?" This is the most commonly asked question in the community foundation field. However, every community foundation is unique; assets represent just one way to describe how a community foundation operates. Other factors, such as grantmaking, fundraising, donor engagement, and community context all contribute to a community foundation’s unique attributes and challenges.
In this publication, we highlight attributes that characterize community foundations in ways beyond asset values.
Download PDF»
John Kania, Emily Gorin, Valerie Bockstette
Do you believe that advocacy-oriented community leadership and fundraising are naturally at odds with one another? In our latest paper, “Raising Money While Raising Hell”, we beg to differ. This provocative new paper debunks the myth that advocacy-oriented community leadership is naturally antithetical to fundraising, and highlights examples where foundations have built their fundraising efforts by playing advocacy-oriented community leadership roles.
Download PDF»
John Kania, Rebecca Graves, Melissa Scott, Diana Cook,
Valerie Bockstette
Current economic conditions indicate challenging times ahead for community foundations and their abilities to plan effectively. In response, the Community Foundations Leadership Team (CFLT), Community Foundation Insights team (CF Insights), and FSG have created a new interactive forecasting tool, The Economic Scenario Planning (ESP) model: a financial ‘stress test’ for all sizes and types of community foundations. This user-input, interactive assessment tool can help forecast impacts on budget and business decisions, and allows users to test the implications of market performance, donor behavior, and adjustments to operating budgets over a five year period of time.
Download the ESP User Guide»
View the ESP Stress Test materials»
Jason Lee, Hallie Preskill, Rebecca Graves
Communicating social metrics efficiently can be a challenging but essential component of effective program or advocacy strategy. Our research highlights eight types of communication tools, which demonstrate options to convey complex data to a wide range of users.
Download full report»
Download short report»
Kathy K. Hedge, Eva Nico, Lindsay Fox
Over the last decade, growing numbers of nonprofit organizations and grantmakers have recognized the need for capacity-building in nonprofit organizations. In 2006, U.S. funding for capacity-building topped $1 billion – a 126% increase over 2000. Leadership capacity has received particular attention, but utilizing the board of directors has often been overlooked. Today, nonprofits and grantmakers are seeking to leverage the inherent assets of these governing groups. This report represents a revealing overview of nonprofit grantmaking in the new economy.
Download PDF»
Kyle Peterson, Marc Pfitzer
Defying the stereotype that all corporate lobbying is self-interested, some companies are using their government affairs staffs and advocacy skills to lobby for important social issues. Mary Kay sends its pink-suited sales reps to Capitol Hill to lobby for re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Cartoon Network empowers kids to lobby for recess in their schools. As a part of strategic CSR, lobbying for good should focus on issues that matter to business. This feature article in the Winter 2009 Stanford Social Innovation Review issue explores how socially responsible lobbying is part of a larger, emerging trend--where CSR draws from all parts of the business, becoming more wholly integrated and vital.
Download PDF»
Mark Kramer and Anne Stetson
U.S foundations have considerable freedom to invest their assets in ways that further their missions, even at greater risk or lower financial return. The legal framework that governs the investment of foundation assets is both complex and ambiguous, however, with the result being that many foundation leaders and investment advisors are unclear about what is legally permissible. Authors Anne Stetson and Mark Kramer have prepared two reports, a brief guide and a more comprehensive version, in consultation with nationally-recognized legal experts and senior foundation officers, analyzing the federal tax and state fiduciary laws as they apply to US foundations. In addition to legal analysis, the reports provide practical recommendations as to how foundations can best navigate these laws in making mission-related or program-related investments.
Download the PDF of the brief guide»
Download the PDF of the full report»
Taking Informed Action in Challenging Times
Wendy Horton, Valerie Bockstette, Melissa Scott
CF Insights and FSG Social Impact Advisors are excited to release their follow-up study on the impact of the economic crisis on community foundations. This research, funded by the Community Foundations Leadership Team, uncovers how community foundations are continuing to weather the economic storm and how they have succeeded in “making lemonade” from these difficult times. Community foundations are using limited resources to meet greater community needs and have emerged as strong community leaders through increased convening, capacity building, and collaboration. The report goes beyond a basic playback of data; rather it validates decisions made through several peer benchmarking analyses, provides direction for 2009 and 2010, and inspires future action for increased community impact and sustainability.
Download PDF»
Link to CF Insights Website»
Laura Herman, Leigh Fiske, Jennifer Splansky
This document summarizes the findings of an external scan commissioned by PATH, a global health nonprofit organization, to help in form their advocacy strategy around diarrheal disease, the world’s second leading killer of children.
Download PDF»
Making Informed Decisions in Uncertain Times
Wendy Horton, Valerie Bockstette, Melissa Scott
Financial markets are volatile, leading indicators point to an economic downturn of epic proportion, and community foundations are particularly vulnerable in this tumultuous time. What do you do? FSG and CF Insights have completed a study to identify strategies and recommendations for coping with today’s challenging fiscal environment, to provide relevant information to share with boards and the community. The study looks at forecasting key indicators for the next fiscal year, changes to operating budgets, changes in approaches to grantmaking and community leadership activities, and changing communications with donors, grantees and staff, and, includes a list of ideas for how to respond to your community.
Download PDF»
Link to CF Insights Website»
Marc Pfitzer, Mike Stamp
CSR reporting needs to move from a long list of activities and standard metrics to showing how and why change is happening against major corporate business and social objectives. Much of reporting today could be generalized as a defense of corporate actions. Instead of proving CSR, we suggest to place the focus on improving it.
Download PDF »
Marcie Parkhurst, Amber Johnson
Funding is scarce for human rights issues related to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) groups across the globe. Approximately $10 million USD was spent in total on LGBT issues in the Global South and East in 2005, compared to $336 million to support 48 LGBT rights organizations based in the US in the same year. 93% of human rights funders who do not currently support LGBT human rights work in the Global South and East acknowledge the community’s responsibility to help. This report explores a call to action to mobilize additional funding for LGBT human rights work, by identifying obstacles to funding among human rights funders, exploring the implications of those obstacles, and surfacing approaches to mitigate or overcome them.
Download PDF»
Kyle Peterson, Laura Herman, Leigh Fiske, Elliot Marseille, James G. Kahn
This FSG research report examines how the female condom fits within the landscape of HIV prevention tools currently available; and makes recommendations for increased cost-effectiveness and impact.
Download PDF »
Marc Pfitzer, Mike Stamp
In April 2008, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker,
addressed a full auditorium at the country’s first national convention on
philanthropy. In a keynote speech, he declared, “it is time for Luxembourg
to develop a real philanthropic policy.” He went on to announce a package
of reforms, including a sweeping legal and fiscal review and support for the
launch of a new foundation, that together represent one of the most important
developments to affect philanthropy in the Grand Duchy in 80 years.
The convention was the public launch of a major national effort on
philanthropy. Banque de Luxembourg had identified a need to act while working with
WISE to develop a philanthropy advisory service. The bank engaged
FSG to conduct a detailed analysis of the current
situation. This brief
offers an example of how the financial sector — in this case represented by a
leading private bank — can help improve the environment for philanthropy
in a way that benefits itself and society as a whole.
Download PDF»
Marc Pfitzer and Ramya Krishnaswamy
The food & beverage industry has a unique role in expanding economic opportunity because it is universal to human life and health. The industry operates at multiple levels of society where billions of people grow, transform, and sell food, particularly in developing countries where agriculture dominates all other economic sectors. Yet a vast share of these workers cannot both satisfy their immediate consumption needs and earn sufficient income from food markets to improve their lives. This report provides insight into how pioneering large firms are breaking this dilemma and building economic opportunity around food & beverage value chains.
Download PDF »
Marc Pfitzer, Ramya Krishnaswamy, Claudia Genier
Millions of smallholder farms in poor countries are disconnected from markets and caught in potentially destructive cycles of economic, social and environmental degradation. For agricultural input companies whose success depends on raising farm productivity and having sustainable farm enterprises as customers, the transformation of smallholder operations into intensive, sustainable and diversified farm enterprises is the future business and development challenge.
This new perspective on the companies that deliver products and services to farmers has
captured their growing business and philanthropic engagement to transform smallholder
agriculture.
Download PDF »
Adeeb Mahmud and Marcie Parkhurst
This report provides an overview and critical assessment of the ways in which multinational pharmaceutical companies currently participate in expanding economic opportunities in developing countries. The analysis and case studies contained in the report highlight companies’ contributions to economic opportunity expansion through job creation, training and capacity building, and shaping public policy.
Download PDF »
Mark Kramer and Sarah Cooch
This report provides a guide to mission investment intermediaries, organizations that collect capital from multiple sources and reinvest it in people and enterprises, whether nonprofit or for-profit, that deliver both social impact and financial returns. A growing number of foundations and other funders are beginning to use such intermediaries versus making mission investments directly. This is due to a number of advantages that intermediaries can provide, such as ease of investment, reduced risk, lower transaction costs, specialized expertise, performance reporting, and an expanded deal flow. Yet our research disclosed that many funders are unaware of the wide range of mission investment intermediaries that are available and of the advantages they can offer.
Download PDF of the report »
Eva Nico, Rebecca Graves, Tracy Foster, Fay Hanleybrown
It's a striking paradox: as community foundations grow their assets, their sustainability is often threatened. This report, written by FSG Social Impact Advisors and sponsored by The James Irvine Foundation, is based on research with growing and community foundations. Community foundations of virtually any size will find valuable information, case studies and economic models. An executive summary and discussion guide are also available as separate files for easy distribution. A board presentation introduces core concepts of the report.
Download PDF »
Greg Hills and Adeeb Mahmud
This FSG study is a compilation of best practices in international corporate volunteering (ICV). Sponsored by Pfizer Inc and The Brookings Institution, the study examines ICV within two principal models: local service, in which employees based in countries outside headquarters volunteer in their local communities; and cross-border service, in which employees travel abroad to volunteer.
Download PDF »
Mark Kramer and Sarah Cooch
A growing number of foundations are offering low-interest loans, buying into green business ventures, and investing in other asset classes to advance their missions. Yet most mission investing remains haphazard and inconsequential. To bring about real change, foundations need to take a fundamentally different approach, making strategic mission investments that complement their grantmaking. Authors Mark Kramer and Sarah Cooch talk about strategic mission investing in the Fall 2007 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review.
Download the article »
Major corporations, philanthropic organizations, governments, and social sector organizations have joined forces to develop health products for neglected diseases. At the center of these multi-sector collaborations are innovative organizations, known as product development partnerships (PDPs). With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, FSG completed a comprehensive review of the state of performance measurement among PDPs and developed a working paper to establish a common approach to performance measurement among PDPs and donors.
Download working paper »
This FSG white paper, released in May 2007 and sponsored by Ernst and Young LLP, provides a critical assessment of opportunities for corporations to help transform the U.S. public education system through innovative corporate philanthropy.
Download Executive Summary »
Sarah Cooch
This recently published report provides the first comprehensive analysis of mission investing by U.S. foundations. The study, funded by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, analyzes the mission investment activity of 92 U.S. foundations, which have made a combined total of $2.3 billion of mission investments. Mission investing is a more specific type of social investing, and represents the use of financial investments as tools to achieve a foundation’s mission.
Download Executive Summary »
Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer
Moving past generic CSR principles, learn how societal influence is becoming the new frontier of competitive advantage.
Download PDF »
|
|
|
