July 24, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Foundations and Public Policy Grantmaking, by Julia Coffman, was written to help the James Irvine Foundation begin to work for policy change. Foundations should make grants to influence public policy, argues Ms. Coffman, an advocacy and policy-change consultant. Philanthropy is sometimes able to discover promising new programs and ideas, she writes, but to “scale up” and make a larger and more lasting difference often “requires public investments and government directives.” This publication offers grant-making approaches to help foundations define public-policy goals and understand what other funds are doing. One section provides case studies and lessons from the California Endowment, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the Lumina Foundation for Education.
Publisher: James Irvine Foundation, 575 Market Street, Suite 3400, San Francisco, Calif. 94105; (415) 777-2244; fax (415) 777-0869; http://www.irvine.org; 21 pages; available free for download on the foundation’s Web site.
