September 24, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
While foundations are sometimes viewed as organizations that are slow to change, Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, told members of the Clinton Global Initiative that her fund is doing more to innovate grant making.
She said donors should be more open to giving money to individuals or organizations that come along with new, if unusual, ideas. To illustrate her point, she told a story about John D. Rockefeller Jr.
When Albert Einstein sent a proposal to the philanthropist asking for $500, he said, “Why don’t we give him a $1,000? I think he’s onto something.”
Ms. Rodin also said her foundation has explored “innovative processes” to help this. For example, using the Internet and other technology, foundations can use “crowd sourcing” to receive feedback and suggestions from the people they and their grant recipients are trying to assist.
Nonprofit groups talk a lot about listening to their beneficiaries, “but user-driven innovation actually does that,” she said.
Ms. Rodin added that pursuing innovative grant making can at times clash with another growing trend in philanthropy: the effort by donors to measure the effectiveness of their giving.
Such focus on “impact” can lead to “too much heavy handedness,” she said.
“Measurement should not oppose experimentation and risk taking,” the Rockefeller leader emphasized.
