Resolving Issues Inherent in Philanthropy and Foundation Management

NEW BOOKS

Effective Foundation Management: 14 Challenges of Philanthropic Leadership — and How to Outfox Them
by Joel J. Orosz

Many foundation leaders come from outside the philanthropic sector, and can stumble when confronted with the idiosyncrasies and difficulties of grant making, writes Joel J. Orosz, a former program director and the founding director of the Grantmaking School.

“A hard-won knowledge base exists — garnered from the painful failures and creative successes of past foundation initiatives — that offers ways to meet the challenges and resolve the dilemmas, but most new foundation leaders are unaware of its existence, or worse, ignore its lessons entirely,” he adds.

Mr. Orosz describes 14 of the most-common complexities facing foundation executives. Seven of these are “vexing challenges” that are symptomatic of philanthropy, like the lack of reliable feedback from grant seekers, ideological differences between more-conservative board members and more-liberal staff members, and the absence of a widely accepted set of good practices.

The other seven problems that arise in grant making are “inescapable dilemmas or trade-offs that arise from strategic decisions made in the course of managing every foundation,” such as low overhead versus high overhead, expert-based versus community-based grant making, and strategic planning versus flexibility.

The problems are detailed in 14 chapters, with advice on how foundation leaders can manage these complicated issues.

“The knowledge base for effective leadership exists,” Mr. Orosz writes. “It need only be taken seriously by foundation boards in order to be widely taught to their staffs.”

Publisher: Altamira Press, 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Md. 20706; (301) 459-3366; fax (301) 429-5748; http://www.altamirapress.com; 162 pages; $22.95; ISBN 0-7591-0987-7.