Transcript The Wallace Foundation

Reflections on
the role of foundations
Will Miller
President, The Wallace Foundation
Efficient Investment for
Urban Education and Economic Revival
The Ford Foundation
January 30, 2013
Foundations in America
 Growing rapidly
 1987: 25,000
 2010: 70,000
 Giving away substantial sums
 $47 billion annually
 Small in the grand scheme of things
 $5 billion to K-12 public education
 Only 1% of $536 billion in public spending on K-12 (2004)
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The functions of philanthropy
• Public functions
• Create social and political
change
• Locate and support important
social innovations
• Improve economic equity
• Pluralism as a civic value
• Private functions
• Self-actualization of donors
Source: Strategic Giving: The Art and Science of Philanthropy,
Peter Frumkin, University of Chicago Press, 2006
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Social risk capital
 “Free of market and political
constraints, [foundations] are
uniquely able, if they choose, to
think the unthinkable, ignoring
disciplinary and professional
boundaries. They can take risks,
consider approaches others say
can’t possibly work – and they
can fail with no terminal
consequences.”
-- Helmut K. Anheier and Diana Leat,
Creative Philanthropy
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Value creation by foundations
 Selection: Carefully selecting grantees who can most
effectively use scarce resources
 Signaling: Signaling to other funders that an activity or
organization is important
 Improving effectiveness: Improving the overall effectiveness
of grant recipients, thus improving the social return on all
the money they spend
 Advancing knowledge: Advancing the state of knowledge
and practice by learning from the work of the grantees,
filling knowledge gaps in fields, and helping to set agendas
Source: Philanthropy’s New Agenda: Creating Value, Michael Porter & Mark Kramer,
1999, Harvard Business Review
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The Wallace Approach
(Our theory of change)
Understand the
Context
(Engage with the external
environment to identify
knowledge gaps, field
interest, and time lines)
Catalyze Broad
Impact
(Improve practice and
policy nationwide)
Generate
Improvements and
Insights
(Build promising new
approaches and new
evidence/knowledge)
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K-12
 More kids are succeeding, but the achievement gap in math is
widening
NAEP 4th Grade Math Proficiency
1996
2011
African Americans
4%
17%
Whites
27%
52%
 Both achievement and opportunity gaps persists
 Affluent parents increased spending on enrichment activities for
their children 9x more than low income parents form 1960 to
today
 We lag in some international comparisons
 High school graduation: 22nd of 27 OECD countries
 Odds of children of less-educated children going to college: 26th of
28 OECD countries
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A job too big for one institution
 Problems complex – few
silver bullets
 Taking action rarely the
province of a single sector
 Especially true in a time
of strained fiscal
resources
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Partnerships are not easy
 Problems can stem from:
 Insufficient resources
 Activities tangential to
mission
 Tension between
partners
Francie Ostrower, Stanford
Social Innovation Review, 2011
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A collective impact model
Development of
trust among
partners who
closely coordinate
their actions
Shared agenda
and approach -metrics based on
agreement about
what success
looks like
A team to plan,
manage and
support the effort
Persistence over a
long time frame
Collective
impact
Adapted from: Collective Impact, John Kania and Mark Kramer, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011
Collective impact: Columbus, IN
 Shared agenda: Ensure youth have training to get jobs
 Team: Community Education Coalition
 Metrics: Move focus at community college from enrollment to
relevance of coursework and graduation
 Trust: Weak at first, built by working on the facility needs of
the institutions
 Persistence: Columbus Learning Center opened in 2005
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Say Yes: What we might learn
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Questions
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