Guide for Using Evaluations to Improve Grant-Making Effectiveness

Foundations and Evaluations: Contexts and Practices for Effective Philanthropy
edited by Marc T. Braverman, Norman A. Constantine, and Jana Kay Slater

This collection of essays by foundation officers, scholars, and consultants discusses how philanthropic organizations can increase their effectiveness by conducting evaluations of their work and the programs they finance.

The book’s first section provides a context for understanding how evaluations apply to the work of foundations. Too often, weak oversight from the board and a lack of emphasis on performance and results, combined with grant recipients’ reluctance to offer negative feedback, get in the way of a foundation’s ability to conduct evaluations, write Mark R. Kramer, of the Foundation Strategy Group, and William E. Bickel, of the University of Pittsburgh. Other contributors note the importance of maintaining a strong foundation-grantee relationship, which can be easily strained during an evaluation.

In the book’s second section, essayists offer recommendations to both foundation leaders and evaluators for improving their ability to plan and carry out successful evaluations. Melvin M. Mark, of

Pennsylvania State University, and William L. Beery, of the Group Health Community Foundation, write, for instance, that foundations must make systematic judgments about which programs to evaluate. By drawing up a set of criteria for making such choices, they say, evaluations will be more transparent. In another essay, Patricia Patrizi, a consultant, and Edward Pauly, of the Wallace Foundation, advocate asking experts in the fields a foundation supports to evaluate the philanthropy’s progress. Other chapters focus on how officials at small foundations and nonprofit grant recipients can make the best use of evaluations, and other topics.

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94103-1741; (317) 572-3986 or (800) 956-7739; fax (317) 572-4002; http://www.josseybass.com; 314 pages; $65; I.S.B.N. 0-7879-7077-8.