This post originally appeared on the Foundation Center’s Transparency Talk blog.

More and more philanthropic professionals are accepting the idea that their organizations should be transparent and, in part because those who founded the organization took major tax benefits when it was established, have some accountability to the public. Many of our field’s big thinkers are making a compelling case that public accountability in philanthropy should be a core value in our work. But when it comes to accountability, what if foundations and the public are talking about entirely different things?

New research from Public Agenda and the Kettering Foundation presents evidence that the public and leaders across many sectors hold strikingly different ideas about what it means to be accountable. The report, “Don’t Count Us Out: How an Overreliance on Accountability Could Undermine the Public’s Confidence in Schools, Business, Government and More,” is based on new public opinion research. It outlines the key dimensions of accountability as the public defines it and contrasts the public’s perspective with prevailing leadership views. Although it isn’t mentioned in the subtitle, the report explores the ramifications for foundations, too.

For philanthropic professionals, the implications are significant – both for their foundations and the institutions they support. There are several pros and cons in the research for those foundations already committed to transparency and accountability. For those foundations on the fence about accountability, the research reinforces the fact that the public expects institutions to be accountable, but raises questions about just what that means.

There are several key points from the research that philanthropic professionals will want to consider:

Accountability requires ethics.

For foundations, the biggest “pro” in this research is that the public sees accountability first as a dimension of ethics and responsibility.  Foundations – especially those with an orientation toward accountability and transparency – will likely fair well with the public in this regard. On the “con” side, many leaders who see accountability measures as the principal way to ensure that their institutions meet their obligations to the public may be putting too much faith in how much the public values the setting of benchmarks, collecting data, measuring performance, disclosing information, and organizing system-wide reforms. Those mechanisms, while often valuable as management tools, fall far short of relieving the public’s most potent concerns, especially their fears about an ethical decline in our society. Foundations that demonstrate they are acting responsibly and ethically will be thought by the public to be accountable more than those that simply talk about benchmarks.

More information does not equal more trust.

Typically, people know almost nothing about specific measures, and they rarely see them as clear-cut evidence of effectiveness. Many Americans are deeply skeptical about the accuracy and importance of quantitative measures. Most are suspicious of the ways in which numbers can be manipulated or tell only half the story. So on the “pro” side, this research is good news for those foundations that have become adept at getting their message out with personal stories of those affected by their programs. For those that are still trying to talk about their impact with lists of grants made and lots of data, the “cons” in this research may be quite jarring. Many members of the public feel confused and overwhelmed by the detailed information flying past them in the name of “disclosure” and “transparency.” Many fear they are being manipulated by the complex presentations. More and more statistics do not reassure, so in fact, more information can actually lead to less public trust. It’s not that they don’t want accountability and information from foundations, but a whole lot of data (without any qualitative context) isn’t reassuring to them.

Responsiveness is just as important as benchmarks.

For the public, being able to reach someone who listens to you and treats your ideas and questions respectfully is a fundamental dimension of accountability. This may be the biggest challenge for foundations in this research, since even the most transparent rarely open the door more than a crack to let the general public in to give feedback on the funding programs aimed at them. For most people, not being able to talk to someone is a signal that the institution doesn’t genuinely care about those they serve. Foundations are particularly opaque to the public. The message is clear for those in philanthropy and other sectors who may fear being besieged by community input: the public wants a better balance and authentic mechanisms that allow them to be heard. On the “pro” side, those foundations that do seek community input and can demonstrate they are listening will likely be afforded a great deal of public trust. Foundations that rate well on the Foundation Center’s Glasspockets measures of transparency, especially those dealing with grantee surveys and grantee feedback, can probably feel some relief that they will likely be considered accountable in the public’s eyes.

The public expects to be held accountable, too.

For most Americans, the return to real accountability is not the job of leaders alone. Time and again, people in focus groups spoke about their own responsibilities and the near impossibility of solving problems without a broad base of responsibility at every level of society. Many foundations already get this. Institutions that embrace the idea of a public role in fostering institutional accountability must think creatively and proactively about how typical citizens can contribute their knowledge and actions to fulfill the organization’s mission. The report emphasizes that giving people more and more information or giving them more and more choices without truly considering public priorities and concerns is likely to backfire.

The “Don’t Count Us Out” report is getting a lot of attention in policy circles. The Washington Post’s education columnist Jay Mathews said, “Its message is vital. Accountability is a key word in our national debate… The Public Agenda/Kettering report may have exposed the greatest obstacle to getting our kids the educations they deserve.” And The Nonprofit Quarterly said, “The authors suggest that there is one other area that needs equal attention: philanthropy, which they say has ‘fewer true accountability mechanisms than any other field.’ However, there is one dimension of accountability in which philanthropy may be the strongest: the ‘publicly stated moral convictions of its leaders.’ How to measure that will, perhaps, be the biggest challenge of all.”

For foundation professionals involved in communicating the results of their organizations’ work, the first thing to recognize is simply the different orientation of your audience. The second is to understand that people expect more than just statistics and analyses of results to feel that the foundation is indeed accountable. Many foundations are hesitant to allow outsiders to even have easy e-mail access to staff (another Glasspockets transparency measure). So allowing the public to give feedback on the programs that are directed at them may seem like a radical idea to some. Many foundations are already doing grantee surveys and allowing public commentary on their blogs. These are likely to go a long way in engendering trust with the public.

Many foundations have already realized that telling stories is a more effective means of communicating with people than rolling off statistics and spewing facts. When it comes to demonstrating our foundations’ accountability, it may be time to consider the idea that bringing the public into the process is as important as enumerating outcomes.

– Michael Hamill Remaley

by Michael Remaley, HAMILL REMALEY breakthrough communications & Public Policy Communicators – NYC

Among the many important and practical ideas that have stayed with me since last week’s Communications Network conference in Boston, perhaps the most penetrating has been one advanced by Eli Pariser in the first plenary. He spoke stirringly about a range of issues revolving around the themes of his book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You.  The idea that really struck me was the connection he made between the mutating corporations controlling information and the great food-industrial complex that has had such an immense impact on our lives over the past 60 years.

My friend and colleague Lucas Held also talked about how this idea hit home for him at the conference. Over the past week, as I’ve clicked “like” several times and chosen which stories I wanted to read online, I’ve done so with Eli’s voice in the back of my head.

Pariser’s food/information corollary is brilliant. The comparison of the food industry and the companies controlling our information intake provides an exceedingly useful means of examining the existential conundrums we face in our daily information consumption.

As a hardcore fitness freak, I must admit that I have been condescending and judgmental toward those who are overweight. Even though I know that there are many elements of our system and policies that conspire against those who are overweight – food policy that makes sugars and grains cheap, transportation policies that keep people in cars, family histories that induce unhealthy diets and sedentary living – I still tend to blame individuals for their poor choices.

We now face a similar set of issues and questions around information intake and how we exercise our roles as engaged citizens. If the links you see and the results of your searches are basically the product of your previous explorations, do we have anyone but ourselves to blame for the quality of the information that these companies present us?

The PR flacks of the food industrial complex have for years told us that they simply produce the products that consumers want. But we’ve come to realize that what they have been selling us for more than half a century is not what our bodies need but what provides instant gratification and maximum profit for the companies. Pariser has performed an Upton Sinclair-like service by illuminating the fact that Facebook, Google, Amazon and the other powers of the Algorithm-Industrial-Complex are in a similar position to impact our lives.

In the past week, I’ve been clicking on more political postings, “like”-ing negative stories that I want more people to read and trying to spend less time online looking at items that are merely entertaining. Still, just as with the food industry, I know that my own healthy choices may have little impact on the rest of the world. So the question is, how can we create a system that encourages healthy information consumption and the exercise of active citizenship without limiting or otherwise “censoring” people’s access to LOLcats, TMZ and Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter feed.

I’ve been giving it a lot of thought since I heard Pariser’s message, but I still can’t offer any viable solutions. I suppose the first thing to do, just like the healthy eating/exercise problem, is raise awareness. But looking at our nation’s success in that realm, I’m skeptical of our ability to make progress through awareness alone. Perhaps we need to get the successful anti-smoking campaign people on this issue. I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this.

Earlier this year, the Communications Network published the results of a survey of communications practitioners at foundations across the country.  The survey provides a helpful glimpse of the kind of work foundation communicators do, as well as the challenges they face. But there’s more to the story than the work itself, and to help round out the picture, we’ve started a new feature called A Quick Word With… Over the course of the series, we’ll invite people from different foundations — all sizes and types — to tell us about themselves, their work and where they draw their inspiration.

We kick off the series with Gail Fuller, director of communications, Rockefeller Brothers Fund in New York City.

A recent communications success you’re proud of?
Redesign of our Web site, which launched in December.

The target audiences for your communications efforts?
Primarily grantees and applicants, with limited media focus. My interest is in highlighting the work of our grantees, and bringing greater awareness to our interests—democratic practice, peacebuilding and sustainable development.

What did you want to be when you grew up?
The fanciful side of me thought of being a real-life Jane Marple or Hercule Poirot.  The other side of me, which loves to write, thought I’d become a children’s author. Of those, one I hope to still fulfill.

RBF’s site has many slideshows. Do you find them to be particularly effective?
My fascination with slideshows began with The New York  Times’ One in 8 Million slidecasts. I find slidecasts effective and cost-efficient; and a simple way to tell the sometimes complex stories of our work.

Is RBF into new media?
With the launch of our new site, we also launched Twitter and Facebook pages. We felt it was important to create an official Facebook page that drives visitors to our Web site. However, Twitter has been our primary social media focus.

Do you do an annual communications plan?
When I joined the RBF in 2005, I conducted a communications audit and created a two-year communications plan; and two years later I repeated that process. Having gone through many program reviews and having a much better sense of the Fund, I no longer create a formal annual communications plan. Instead as the yearly RBF goals are set, I develop communications objectives and strategies that help meet those goals.

Your undergraduate major?
Speech Communications from Wake Forest University.

Your favorite underappreciated journalist?
Amy Goodman comes to mind first. Democracy Now! is a wonderful source for global news.

Does RBF evaluate communications?
We conduct surveys with our trustees, staff, grantees, and applicants; and we also participate in the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s perception surveys. As RBF’s first communications director, my job actually evolved from a 2004 CEP survey.

As a major funder of “Democratic Practice,” how does RBF define “public engagement”?
We shifted from a goal that focused specifically on civic engagement to strengthening our democracy by looking at the democrat deficits—a decline in civic engagement; reduced participation in the formal institutions of democracy, and declining trust in all institutions, especially institutions of government—that impede us.

Last big improvement made to your Website?
Complete Web site redesign in 2010. The additions of moderated comments, a blog, and Twitter link were key steps for the Fund in engaging with our key audiences.

Favorite communications tool more foundation communicators should use?
Follow grantees via Twitter. We are able to track real-time news about and from our grantees.

Last nonfiction book you read?
The Al Jazeera Effect: How the New Global Media Are Reshaping World Politics. As events unfolded in Egypt, it was interesting to follow Al Jazeera and the greater role international media is playing in informing the world of current events.

Most interesting locale RBF has taken you?
South Africa in 2006. It was a wonderful experience, and helped shape the grantee communications work I would later undertake in South Africa and NYC.

Something you learned recently from a communications colleague?
I received wonderful advice from colleagues last year on social media that helped shape my report and presentation to the board; and it was the catalyst for moving us forward into the social media realm

RBF ever talked publicly about failure?
Yes. Following both CEP grantee surveys—in 2004 and 2010—we shared our results on our Web site; and identified key weaknesses to address.

Got a novel deep down inside you?
Yes, and I have several journals with story ideas and characters that have over taken my closet. My next birthday milestone in five years will be 50. Hoping to have made a dent in writing a children’s book—since I missed the milestones at 30 and 40.

When Bruce Trachtenberg came to me soon after last year’s annual Communications Network conference in LA and asked if I might be interested in executing a national survey of foundation communications professionals, I was super stoked.  It wasn’t just because I had once been the communications director of the public engagement and survey research organization Public Agenda for six years and I am a huge social science data freak.

I was most excited to be a part of Communication’s Network’s “2011 Survey of Foundation Communications Professionals” because, coming out of the LA conference, I was deeply aware of just how much communications for social good has changed since the last survey in 2008.

I think that most of the time, social science research essentially provides evidence and some hard numbers for hypotheses that are already fairly well accepted.  This research was exciting because, while talking to our colleagues at the annual conferences is immensely helpful, there really isn’t much in the way of solid information about how the whole of the field is actually approaching its work on a daily basis.  The research is focused on foundation communicators, but it also has many insights for nonprofit communicators related to how foundations are prioritizing their communications funding and their relationships with grantees.

“Foundation Communications Today: Findings from the 2011 Survey of Foundation Communications Professionals” contains some serious revelations.  For one, we found that there are hardly any differences in the actions and priorities of those who invest time and resources in creating formal communications plans and those who do not. And yet, there does seem to be at least one crucial difference between the two groups that may make such processes a worthwhile investment of time (you’ll have to read the report to get the 411 on that teaser).

The “Websites, Online Capacity and Social Media” section of the report contains some of the information Bruce and I found most fascinating. For example, the organizations of nearly half our respondents now have blogs. In this section, as in the all the others, we really tried to connect various pieces of information from across the questionnaire. We wonder aloud why, since respondents say they want to do so much more with multimedia, the average budget allocations for multimedia are so small. We also go beyond the finding that almost all foundations are now engaged in social media to look at the differences between private and community foundations on which types of social media work best for them.

We covered much more territory in this survey than the 2008 survey in about a third fewer questions.  Still, the survey was a significant investment of time for those who participated (we know just how valuable 20 minutes can be in a foundation communicator’s day), so we are immensely grateful to all who participated and provided both essential quantitative answers and some immensely insightful qualitative responses.

The last section of the report presents some of the questions that occurred to us as we examined the data – implications for future discussions among us all.  We hope that you will take us up on the invitation to ask the questions that arise as you read the report.  My personal feeling is that the best research provokes even more questions than it answers.  I hope you will flatter us with many questions and comments.

This post was developed and researched for The Foundation Center’s Glasspockets initiative and appeared originally on its “Transparency Talk” blog.

“If you hit the bull’s eye every time, you’ve set the target too close.”

I thought of this, one of my favorite aphorisms, at the Communications Network’s annual conference last September when the Hewlett Foundation’s Communications Director Eric Brown talked about his organization’s “failed grantmaking” contest.  Hewlett’s smart internal exercise forces each department to name one grant from its portfolio that did not meet expectations, think through and explain what went wrong and help the entire organization learn from its failure.

This is a learning exercise that more foundations should consider adopting. But more than that, it is an important example of how Hewlett’s leadership has set the tone for candor about the unavoidable truth of philanthropic experimentation: failure is part of the equation.

It is no coincidence that Hewlett is also one of the few foundations that has talked publicly about initiatives that didn’t live up to expectations. It is also no coincidence that Hewlett’s profile on Glasspockets gives a good indication of its commitment to transparency.  I would assert that Hewlett’s reputation for being one of the most innovative, thoughtful, and effective foundations is directly related to its transparency, willingness to publicly question its strategies, and forthrightness in discussing the limitations of its successes. And that reputation further enhances its ability to exert influence and make change.

The hard sciences learned the importance of sharing candid assessments of “failed” experiments centuries ago. In fact, scientists seem to treasure results that do not meet expected outcomes even more highly than those that confirm what is already believed to be true.

I am hardly the first person to call upon foundations to talk more openly about failure, experimentation, and unexpected outcomes. (See list below.) Hewlett’s Paul Brest seems to have really kickstarted the conversation in 2007 by writing and talking about his foundation’s experiences. That was followed by Robert Giloth and Susan Gewirtz’s seminal 2008 piece in Foundation Review, “Philanthropy and Mistakes: An Untapped Resource.” Many others, including Bob Hughes, Larry Blumenthal, Edward Pauly, Grant Oliphant, and Sean Stannard-Stockton, have added important insights about the need for foundations to be more open about their lessons learned.  The conversation about failure and experimentation seemed to grow and deepen over the past three years.  So you might think that foundations would be making major changes in how they communicate about failure.  You would be wrong.

Foundations give a lot of lip service to supporting “experimentation” in social sciences. But you almost never hear them talking about outcomes that failed to meet expectations, and even more rarely, those that call their basic strategies into question. If foundations want to be real leaders in advancing social change, they must move past the endless happy-talk that makes every grant sound like a success. Instead, they should use their web sites to detail how they are evaluating their work and what they’ve learned from unexpected outcomes.

A foundation sharing its experiences with grants gone wrong is still very much the exception.  Anyone who is on the receiving end of foundation annual reports and newsletters knows this is true.  But to substantiate my assertion, I decided to do a little systematic poking around.

I figured the 21 largest supporters of the Center for Effective Philanthropy (most of which are also supporters of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations) would be the foundations most attuned to the value of self-reflection, evaluation, and sharing results that defy expectations, and also those that would have budgets big enough to support substantial evaluation efforts. I spent many hours exploring the nooks of crannies of these foundations’ web sites.  I looked at numerous publications and evaluation sections of the sites, and I searched each site on the terms failure, failed, unmet expectations, unmet objective, unmet goal, experimentation, mistake, lessons learned, and assessment.

What I found was that few foundations make it easy to learn from projects that didn’t go as spectacularly as planned, let alone talk frankly about what has been learned from the shortcomings of foundation strategy or execution.   Many of the 21 foundations I examined made no mention at all of evaluation criteria and organizational outcomes, even though their association with CEP and GEO implies that they demand that kind of forthrightness from grantees. The majority of the foundation sites I examined had a few project evaluation reports scattered among other foundation supported research – and many of those evaluation reports were laudatory with pablum like “real collaboration is a challenge” tacked on at the end.

Some of the best exceptions were Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Wallace Foundation. Each of those foundations not only makes it easy to find many project evaluations that are balanced in presenting positive and negative outcomes along with what was learned through the process, but also present self-critical examinations of foundation strategy and progress as whole. It is also not a coincidence that each of those foundations’ profiles on Glasspockets indicates a commitment to transparency demonstrated by making public an assessment of overall foundation performance.

But perhaps the best example – the foundation that gets the Gold Star for Succeeding in Failing – is the James Irvine Foundation. The evaluation section of its site describes their approach to evaluating grantee success and links to all of its individual evaluations of initiatives. It also links to a Foundation Assessment section that has foundation annual progress reports for the last four years.  These progress reports are exceptionally detailed and well-documented, as well as frank about successes and failures.  Irvine has also produced “Insights: Lessons Learned” publications with candid assessments of their experiences with collaborations and other grantmaking practices. A search of the Irvine site on “lessons learned” produces lots of useful and interesting evaluative information and insightful critical analysis.

We are all members of the social science community and contributors to the social experiment that is American philanthropy. We now have enough examples of foundations talking humbly about their shortcomings to know that such candor only accelerates social progress and enhances the reputations of those philanthropic leaders. We’ve seen no evidence that talking forthrightly about the real-world circumstances leading to failure damages nonprofits or the foundations involved, so I wonder why foundations seem so reluctant to take on this leadership role.

What has your organization learned from experiments that didn’t meet expectations?

Selected Readings: A Chronology of the Dialogue on Failure and Experimentation in Philanthropy

• Center for Effective Philanthropy (unattributed). “Indicators of Effectiveness: A Call for Foundations: Understanding and Improving Foundation Performance.” 2002.
• Paul Brest. “Evaluating Our Work. Hard Lessons about Philanthropy & Community Change,” Commentary on The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation website. March 2007.
• Paul Brest.  “Hard Lessons about Philanthropy & Community Change: Reflections on The Neighborhood Improvement Initiative.” March 2007.
• Stephanie Strom. “Foundations Find Benefits in Facing Up to Failures.” The New York Times. July 26, 2007.
• Paul Brest and James E. Canales. “Let’s Stop Reinventing Potholes.” The Chronicle of Philanthropy. August 9, 2007
• Sean Stannard-Stockton. “The Poster Child for Failure in Philanthropy.” Stanford Social Innovation Review blog. May 14, 2008.
• Robert Giloth, Ph.D., and Susan Gewirtz, Annie E. Casey Foundation. “Philanthropy and Mistakes: An Untapped Resource.” Foundation Review, September 2008.
• Maisie O’Flanagan, McKinsey & Company; Jacob Harold and Paul Brest, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. “The Nonprofit Marketplace: Bridging the Information Gap in Philanthropy.” 2008.
• Sean Stannard-Stockton. “Anatomy of a Failed Grant.” Tactical Philanthropy Advisors blog. March 25, 2009.
• Grant Oliphant with Susan Herr (Online Video Interview). “What’s the Upside of Philanthropic Failure?” The Communications Network. December 2009.
• Grantmakers for Effective Organizations and Council on Foundations (unattributed). “Evaluation in Philanthropy: Perspectives from the Field.” December 15, 2009
• Larry Blumenthal. “A Helpful Guide to Failure in Philanthropy. Use Carefully.” Philanthropy News Digest, Commentary & Opinion. January 7, 2010
• Bob Hughes. “Can Failure Be the Key to Foundation Effectiveness?” Center for Effective Philanthropy blog. January 11, 2010.
• Grantmakers in Health (unattributed) “Taking Risks at a Critical Time.” Essays written specifically for the 2010 GIH annual meeting. March 2010.
• Edward Pauly. “Philanthropy with Impact: A Guide to Evaluative Thinking for Foundations and Donors.” A guide published by Forum for Active Philanthropy. 2010.
• Robert G. Hughes. “The Role of Failure in Philanthropic Learning.” Book Chapter In: To Improve Health and Health Care XIII, pp.93-106. Publisher: Jossey-Bass. 2010
• Patricia A. Patrizi. “Death Is Certain, Strategy Isn’t: Assessing RWJF’s End-of-Life Grantmaking.” Published in New Directions for Evaluation, by Wiley Online Library. Volume 2010, Issue 128, pages 47–68, Winter 2010.
• Ellie Buteau. “A higher bar for transparency, accountability.” Philanthropy Journal. September 14, 2010.

Having read the report “Talking to Ourselves? A Critical Look at Annual Reports in Foundation Communications,” and helped create its companion discussion site WhyAnnualReports.org, I didn’t really think I would pick up any new insights when I joined in on a webinar covering the same topic. I was sure wrong about that.

In case you missed it, you can hear and see playback of the Communications Network hosted webinar at: http://bit.ly/gL1u7A

Moderated by the always astute Andy Goodman, the discussion produced several new pieces of quality thinking that helped me crystallize my own opinions about foundation communications. With dozens of fellow foundation communicators participating in the webinar, there was a considerable amount of diverse thinking about annual reports contributed.

The report’s creators Mark Sedway of Philanthropy Awareness Initiative and Mary Green of Williams Group first presented the core findings and conclusions in the report, which painted a rather unflattering picture of the annual report’s ability to reach engaged citizens.

Reacting to the research report’s findings, Goodman said, “If a grantee came to a foundation with a plan for a communications project and said, ‘This one piece of outreach is going to do all these things, we’re not going to actually measure whether or not it does them, and we’ve already heard from the people we’re trying to reach out to that they don’t pay attention to it,’ I couldn’t imagine that a foundation would actually fund that project.”

The fulsome discussion that followed had many points of view, including those who are still strong believers in the worth of annual reports and those who are adapting them to the web with more interactive features.

I was particularly interested to hear from Charity Perkins of The Duke Endowment who talked about her experience. She had been at the 2008 Communications Network Annual Conference when this topic was discussed and at that time stood up then to say that, regardless of her feelings or any facts on the matter, she believed her foundation would continue to publish an annual report until after the trustees were dead and gone.  But, when she brought the information on the questionable efficacy of annual reports back to her foundation in 2008, her trustees actually decided to do something different. Since then, they have been doing a considerably downscaled print report and have created a great annual report micro-site online with imbedded video and a report delivered verbally by the president and board chair. It was great to hear that, when foundation leaders were presented with the current thinking on annual reports, at least one foundation made a big change.

Apparently, that foundation wasn’t the only one!

At the end of the call, the webinar leaders presented a screen where participants could register whether or not their foundations planned to produce another annual report.  The results:

Would your organization be willing to end production of printed annual reports?

Already Have:             31 %
Yes:                                    24%
No:                                    22%
It Depends:                        22%

That stands in stark contrast to what people seemed to be thinking just two years ago when a survey of Communications Network members revealed that 90% expected to continue producing annual reports (21% saying they expected to continue producing them but spending less and 69% saying they expected to continue producing them and spending the same), 8% said they expected to produce an annual report in only an online format and just 3% said they did not expect to produce another annual report.

Admittedly, the quick-survey sample from the webinar is not an exact match with the full membership survey sample of 2008.  Still, the webinar’s informal poll results seem to match what I’m hearing from my foundation colleagues across the country.

Is the foundation annual report dying a slow death?

Tell your fellow communicators what you think by going to the Share Your Thoughts section at the bottom of the WhyAnnualReports.org home page.

At 2 pm ET (11 am PT), Thursday, December 2, 2010, the Communications Network is holding a no-holds barred online conversation about why foundations continue to publish annual reports, whether they really are a strategic investment in time and effort, or if there is a better way.  Because of the importance of the topic, the Network is making a limited number of spaces available to non-members for this webinar on a first-come, first-served basis. Email Bruce Trachtenberg for details.

The occasion for the conversation is the release of “Talking to Ourselves? A Critical Look At Annual Reports in Foundation Communications” and a companion dialogue site, WhyAnnualReports.org. (Full disclosure: the site was created by HAMILL REMALEY breakthrough communications, which is headed by PPC’s director.)

A co-production of the Philanthropy Awareness Initiative, the Williams Group, and the Communications Network, the report and website were inspired by a spirited 2008 Communications Network conference session that explored the value of foundation annual reports.

We want to grow the dialogue about the worth of annual reports.

The featured webinar leaders are:

-       Mark Sedway, project director of the Philanthropy Awareness Initiative

-       Mary Green of the Williams Group

-       Andy Goodman, the storytelling guru who will act as moderator

The phone lines will be open so you can say what’s on your mind.

To get a jump start on the conversation, click here to read “Talking to Ourselves?” online in magazine format or here to download a pdf.

To see what advance reviewers had to say about the report and annual reports, visit WhyAnnualReports.org. The site creators also hope you’ll add your own comments between now and December 2. And those of you who do, we hope you’ll take part in the webinar and be prepared to say more.

To register for the webinar, email brucet@comnetwork.org.

Several prominent foundations, to their great credit, are doing a good job of fostering public dialogue on how to support community journalism and international reporting. But a related concern has, at least to my understanding, gone largely unacknowledged.  That is, the uncertain future of independent documentary photography.  But interestingly, documentary photographers are coming to the aid of foundations and nonprofits.

“Documentary photography does face many great challenges because the media industry, which is changing so quickly, is not adequately supporting this important work,” The Magnum Foundation’s President Susan Meiselas told me.  As a leading photographer for nearly 40 years whose work has appeared on the front page of The New York Times, has been exhibited on the walls of The Whitney Museum of Art and was honored with a MacArthur Fellowship, Meiselas speaks with authority.

“Even though photographers are accustomed to flexible work arrangements and producing work that they must convince outlets to distribute, the fundamental changes occurring in the media world are choking off funds for the development of documentary photography projects.  That’s why we created the Emergency Fund,” Meiselas says. “We are attempting to take up the challenge of creating a new economic model to support work that focuses on critical issues.”

Media organizations are cutting back and supporting far fewer photographers in projects where they go into the field and produce the images that powerfully illustrate the humanity, the messiness, and the beauty of our world.  Meiselas says that independent documentary photographers play a very special role, approaching social issues with an open mind and not trying to produce images that support specific foregone conclusions about the nature of an issue. But the fact that they are not tethered to organizations leaves them unsupported.  Which is where the Magnum Foundation comes in.

The Magnum Foundation is working with social purpose organizations through its BE SEEN initiative to pair them with exceptional documentary photographers to tell their own stories through images.  For example, in 2009, the Woodcock Foundation provided support for Ashoka, one of its grantees, to collaborate with photographers to begin documenting the projects of Ashoka Fellows through the use of photography, video and multimedia.  The plan is for their work will be showcased in “an exploratory web landscape populated with stories about individuals overcoming obstacles to improve their own lives and communities, inspired by the social entrepreneurs whose insights were a catalyst for social change.” The Woodcock Foundation’s support of the pilot produced two exceptionally engaging examples of multimedia storytelling, and Ashoka is currently seeking funding to complete the vision of documenting the work of 30 Fellows.

The Magnum Foundation has a particularly impressive history of working with human rights organizations. Meiselas’s own 30-year history of working with Human Rights Watch has included a series titled “In Silence: Maternal Mortality in India.” It is an arresting example of how stories can be told powerfully with strong documentary photography (the multi-media for the project was produced by Magnum in Motion, which assembles visual narratives for online and offline platforms, including screenings in museums, festivals, and workshops.).

The Foundation’s BE SEEN initiative additionally provides personalized service and advice on how organizations can optimize their visual communications efforts.

The Magnum Foundation has a brochure that makes a strong case that “powerful images can open minds.”  I asked Meiselas about the nature of documentary photography as it relates to the proliferation of photographic images that come from the cell phones of average citizens in African villages, the streets of Tehran and the hills of West Virginia, and which are being used by media outlets to show the “reality” of conditions on the ground.

“Images abound, surely. There are tons of images being uploaded every day and they are hard to perhaps distinguish at times, especially when they are so decontextualized… it’s sort of like noise, cacophonous noise with no clarity,” she said. “But documentary photography can produce a coherent story, a narrative structure with a progression of images that evokes deeper meaning. I very much welcome the accessibility of digital democracy and love that citizens are able to photograph their own experiences, but I think that professional documentary photography has an important role to play in modeling narrative story telling through visual images.”

The Magnum Foundation is closely associated with Magnum Photos, the collective of independent photographers founded sixty years ago by such luminaries as Henri Cartier-Bresson. One of the priorities of the foundation is to make the extraordinary and growing archives of Magnum Photos more accessible to foundations, nonprofits and other social purpose organizations.

Meiselas and I talked at length about how BE SEEN differs from the growing number of stock photo services available on the internet.  “BE SEEN is not a ‘click & buy’ process, we actually want to talk to you and find out what you are trying to accomplish, think about what kinds of images are available in the archive and work with you to find the right images.”  And, while service is one of the important differences, anyone can browse the Magnum Photos archives online unassisted.

Having used many of the stock photography services in my work as a director of communications, I was very curious to see the difference for myself.  As an experiment, I did a search on “religion” at Magnum Photos and then at iStockphoto.com. The resulting images told me everything I needed to know and definitely supported Meiselas’s case.

The stock photos are staged and clichéd.  They are Anglo-centric and explore very little of the unknown.  The Magnum Photos, on the other hand, are visually stunning.  They have texture and extraordinary vibrance. The variety of subject matter that came up on my Magnum search was vast and fascinating.  Each image seemed to tell a singular story that might lead to other related images that would tell a fuller story, and they made me want to learn more about the subjects in the photos.

Magnum Foundation has attracted supporters like Open Society Institute and The Atlantic Philanthropies, but still, there are many who are not yet aware of the state of independent documentary photography or what this kind of photography can accomplish for social purpose organizations.  Meiselas’s metaphor of “noise” versus “clarity” got me thinking about a parallel with foundation support for public radio. It seems to me that Magnum is to stock photography what National Public Radio is to talk radio.  Magnum and NPR both strive to demonstrate that investing in excellence produces insights and discoveries that commercial sources rarely do.

One of the Magnum Foundation’s most immediate objectives is simply to have more foundations and nonprofits know that the work of its photographers is available. So check out the Magnum Photos archive.  And think about whether or not pairing with a documentary photographer through Magnum Foundation might be a productive way of developing images that powerfully tell your organization’s story.

There was a time when almost all foundations simply made grants to social services, the arts and other community improvement efforts and avoided direct involvement in public policy.  Those days are long gone.

Many of the most well-known foundations are flexing their muscles and attempting to influence policy in myriad ways – from producing health news that increases understanding of necessary system reforms to supporting cross-agency communication and coordination to improve metropolitan land-use policies and practice. Aggressive and innovative communications are central to the strategies employed by these increasingly influential foundations.

How do the foundations most highly-identified with public policy work use communications to advance their efforts and what can the rest of us learn from their experiences?

That is the subject of a new discussion paper from the University of Southern California’s Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy, “The Communications Supercharge: How Foundations are Using Communications to Boost Policy Engagement.”

The discussion paper is relatively short and straightforward with important insights, so it is definitely recommended reading. To my mind, its most important contribution is its breakdown of the varied ways in which communications practice is employed, which helps the reader think more clearly about one’s own efforts and the possibilities for more innovative communications practice.

The discussion paper looks first at practices within grantmaking programs that support communications efforts of grantees and then at practices that build the communications prowess of the foundations themselves, and which constitute the more direct efforts to use communications to influence public policy. And really, it is this second area that is new to most foundations.

Here is how “Supercharge” breaks it down (the discussion paper includes fuller explanations and concrete examples):

Five Strategies to Boost Policy Impact within the Grantmaking Work of the Foundation

-       Build communications support into the budget for a larger program.
-       Give grants or contracts specifically for communications.
-       Provide expert consulting support to grantees, beyond the grant.
-       Offer communications capacity-building to grantees.
-       Train program officers on communications.

Five Strategies Beyond the Grant Program to Boost Policy Impact

-       Sponsor convenings.
-       Do direct media outreach.
-       Use the CEO’s bully pulpit.
-       Establish communications departments within the foundations.(In my opinion, this one is actually mislabeled based on the explanation and examples. What they really mean is establishing a media production unit within the foundation.)
-       Build a cause brand.

I talked with Marcia Sharp, the discussion paper author and Principal of Millennium Communications Group, about what the discussion paper’s research means for the field of philanthropy.  “One thing to realize,” Sharp said, “is that when we look at the sum total of a foundation’s communications efforts, we should be looking at both the efforts of the communications department itself and the communications efforts supported through grantmaking programs. I would love to see a full accounting that tallies all of that.”

The name of the discussion paper came from a quote from one of the 18 communications leaders interviewed in the research: “My focus is transitioning… to the larger strategic communications needs of the program areas and the foundation, and asking the question: how does communications really supercharge what we are doing?”  As discussion papers are designed to do, this one is best at helping the reader ask questions of one’s own practice rather than laying out any sort of definitive roadmap to public policy impact.

I asked Sharp what she thought was the most surprising finding produced by the research.  She said it was fascinating that even these foundations that were trying to use communications in innovative ways to impact public policy were operating with such small numbers of communications staff relative to the size of the budgets involved. The paper itself discusses that topic in broad strokes and identifies the qualities that communications directors say are essential for communications staff working in foundations today – and it’s a pretty long list!

Toward the end of my conversation with Sharp, I wondered aloud, “As foundations become more aggressive and sophisticated in their public policy communications efforts, producing reports, convening panels, creating multi-media that influences public action, is there really any difference between these kinds of foundations and what we generally think of as think tanks?”

Sharp says that, while drawing that line of connection is an interesting area for discussion, foundations will always be different from think tanks because they are not just producing reports and trying to influence public policy, they are also using their resources to support programs that are making a huge difference in communities.

As foundations like The Pew Charitable Trusts morph into operating foundations that dedicate most of their resources to influencing public policy, I’m not sure if the distinction holds.  If foundations become spectacularly effective communicators impacting public policy, are they then essentially endowed think tanks that happen to also fund some direct-service programs?

“The Communications Supercharge” is a thought-provoking discussion paper on several dimensions.  Read it and consider whether or not “supercharging” your communications work is right for your organization.

Can games move people in ways that other forms of media like print, interactive websites and video can’t?  Some really smart people in foundations, government and media say it is absolutely true. However, if you are a skeptical communications professional, you probably have a lot of questions about that assertion.

A few weeks back, I came across a valuable piece on “social games” written by Marcia Stepanek in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. The bulk of the piece was an interview with Games for Change chairman Alan Gershenfeld in which he made some very bold claims about the state of the social games movement, including:

“Today, almost every major foundation and major government agency is either funding games or looking at funding games.”

And…

“There are, certainly, a lot of examples of people who have created games that have created behavior change in the real world.”

Now, I believe that I am fairly well tuned-in to what philanthropic and nonprofit leaders are doing and what new forms of communication are gaining traction. I’ve heard a few examples of interesting social games that are indeed intriguing and I am very impressed that the MacArthur Foundation is investing $50 million in its Digital Media and Learning initiatives that have a strong emphasis on games. Still, I don’t think that that the vast majority of social-change leading organizations out there have given games a great deal of consideration.

That’s not to say that they shouldn’t be thinking about the potential of social games.  But we do need to provide more information about who is experimenting with social games, what are some concrete examples of success that point to the real potential of the medium and what are the factors that foundations and nonprofits considering gaming ought to think through before leaping forward.

Thankfully, two exceptionally thoughtful people helped me clarify my own thinking about social games.

First I talked to Jessica Goldfin, a Journalism Program Associate at the Knight Foundation who is immersed in the foundation’s growing commitment to social games.  She told me that Knight’s interest in the medium grew organically out of its Media Innovation Initiative after three of the 2007 Knight News Challenge winners were cutting-edge games that engaged citizens. That was three years ago.  There was no need to persuade Knight’s president Alberto Ibargüen of the medium’s potential, he was actually the major proponent of exploring what social games could accomplish.

While Goldfin herself is passionate about games and their ability to draw people into social problems and get them thinking and acting in new ways, she says that the foundation took an especially deliberate and studied approach to funding in this area.  As Knight sought to develop a strategy for funding games, Goldfin and her colleagues first gathered research and conducted interviews from a variety of sources including experienced game developers, leading academics in the field, the Entertainment Software Association, other funders and Games for Change. From their analysis they constructed a matrix of factors they felt were necessary to consider before funding a game, such as game genre, target audience, platform, time spent in the game, development costs, production length, necessary maintenance, marketing and distribution, and shelf life. “Game development is complicated,” says Goldfin.  “One of the most interesting things we learned is that sometimes the most compelling or successful socially-minded games don’t appear to be ostensibly related to the driving issue, but instead use design to engage people in new experiences. The best of these can create connections that lead to real world action.”

When asked about other foundations and nonprofits that are leaders in the field exploring the power of social games, Goldfin talked about MacArthur’s efforts, the National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson’s Games for Health, ADM’s STEM education game, the UN World Food Programme, USAID and the Obama Administration.

“Games are becoming a dominant form of media,” she said, and then talked about Knight’s work in Macon, GA, and Biloxi, MS, where the Foundation is working with the game design firm Area/Code to create locative games to engage citizens and promote community problem solving.  In Macon, the game in development will use an alternative form of local currency to connect residents to each other and to their community. In Biloxi, the game will focus on increasing awareness and changing habits toward disaster preparation.”

According to Goldfin, there are lots of innovative social games that are getting traction.  She named the multiple games being used effectively in educational curriculum by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s iCivics initiative; an initiative of the World Wide Web Foundation that teaches kids how to create their own games; the World Bank Institute’s Evoke and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s Budget Ball game, among several that foundation has created.

She also talked about several of the leading game development companies doing innovative work on social games including Area/Code, Filament Games and Persuasive Games.

Next I talked to Games for Change’s new Co-President Asi Burak. He says that games have the power to bring people into a social condition that other forms of media cannot, that they “allow people to make real, meaningful choices and to get feedback on those choices.”  He described media like print and video as “linear/passive media” and said that those forms mostly project from a single, scripted perspective, whereas games allow people to explore multiple perspectives in an immersive way.  “It is quite powerful to put a person in another’s shoes. And, you can let people experience failure in a safe environment that allows for solution creation they wouldn’t otherwise experience.”

He noted Alan Gershenfeld’s previous comments on how several foundations that are funding games are becoming “accidental publishers,” and may not be aware just how complicated game development can be. It’s not like producing a video, which is fairly straightforward and the product can be played on many platforms.  Games production is exceedingly complex and the technologies for every platform are different – so you can’t produce a single game product that runs on the web, on a game console and on the various mobile platforms for iPhone, Android, etc.  Therefore, foundations and nonprofits interested in doing games need to take the time to really think through who they are trying to reach, what platforms the audience uses (and in what context) and what concrete social change they want to move toward.

In the coming months, Games for Change is going to be putting on their website a lot more information and advice for foundations and nonprofits looking to get into games, including a list of developers, case studies and key issues to consider.  They are also going to offer consulting services to those who would like more hands-on guidance.

He gave a very helpful list of “Eight Steps” in the game development process that any serious organization should discuss and detail before even beginning to reach out to potential game developers:

1. Audience. You should define your audience in very fine detail.  What is the age of the audience? What is their geographic location? What language do they speak? What is their socio-economic status? What is their gaming ability?
2. Context. Where would the audience be playing the game, in front of a computer, on the subway, on a mobile phone in Tehran? Would the player be assisted by a moderator or a teacher?
3. Goals. This is all about the impact you want to make.  What do you want users to take away from the game? Do you want your audience to take action in the real world? Donate? Learn specific information or skills? Have a change in perception?
4. Platform. This is strongly tied to audience, context and goals.  A game that runs on iPhone will appeal to a certain audience.  If you’re trying to reach young, poor African men, then an SMS-based game is more realistic.
5. Financial model and sustainability. You can’t just budget for the cost of creating a game. You need to budget for ongoing maintenance and upgrading of the game itself as well as costs for dissemination and publicizing the game beyond its launch.
6. Game Design. Not until this point can you fully consider the actual construction of the game and what “gameplay” will be taking place on the screen.  All the other decisions in the steps before should feed into the action on the screen that might be appealing to users and drive the impact goals you defined.
7. Execution. Given all the decisions that have been considered in the previous steps, who might be the best development team to partner with?  Plus, who are the other partners that would be key to distribution efforts and other aspects of sustainability?
8. Assessment. Developing concrete metrics of desired impact is important and obviously should be strongly linked to the goals of step 3.  Discussing the metrics is important, but so is planning how information will be collected and the costs associated with evaluation.

I asked Burak about some of the best examples of leaders in the field.  He also named MacArthur Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the World Bank Institute, and iCivics, but added USAID, the European Union and a host of U.S. government agencies.

At this point, I felt like I had heard a lot of really important information about what to consider and what some of the leading organizations are doing. But I still had questions about demonstrable impact.  I had asked both Goldfin and Burak to name an example of a game that had really created some significant social improvement.  Burak talked about how the “Darfur is Dying” game had generated “50,000 actions” (in the form of letters to legislators) and about an organization in India that had partnered with mobile carriers to embed an HIV awareness game on 64 million devices that had actually generated 10 million sessions.

Both Goldfin and Burak are strong believers in the importance of dedicating funds to evaluate the impact of games and are confident that research and experience will eventually substantiate the power of social games.

Goldfin and Burak also both said that the future of social games is surely in mobile platforms – games that are played on phones and other small devices.  More and more nonprofits and foundations are indeed creating iPhone and Android “apps” that provide consumers quick access to programmatic information, so perhaps social games are the next wave.

In the end, I came away from these conversations even more intrigued by the possibilities that social games present.  The complexity of the process for creating and disseminating them is daunting, but I think many nonprofits and foundations are up to the challenge.  I will definitely be keeping my eyes open for examples of success in this medium and maybe even playing a few social games myself to get a feel for what works.