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

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.

This is the first in what is to be a series of posts for Communications Network, and appeared originally on its site.  It is also appearing on the Foundation Center site.

I just read an interesting case study about how to engender more substantial media coverage of foundation activities and it helped me think more deeply about both the challenges and potential for helping reporters see that there is a story that goes beyond ”x foundation gave x dollars to do x.”

The case study was written by Theodora Lurie for the Philanthropy Awareness Initiative, as part of its ongoing work with foundations and philanthropy associations to improve communications and outreach to influential Americans.  In the first of what PAI calls its “Moving Beyond the Money” series, Lurie presents an example of a successful foundation effort to garner news coverage that “conveys a broader vision of how foundations make a difference – and identif[ies] the strategies that brought such coverage about.”

It is a short, engaging read that highlights the communications efforts of the Ford Foundation around the announcement of its $50 million program related investment (PRI) in the National Community Stabilization Trust. The large low-interest loan to the Trust will be used to acquire and renovate houses, which will then be sold to moderate and low-income buyers.

The large dollar amount of the Ford investment was probably enough to get the attention of many journalists.  But Ford took advantage of the opportunity to use the attention-grabbing announcement – in May 2009 when the U.S. real estate market was still spiraling downward and the problem of empty houses adding to blight in neighborhoods had many Americans worried – to go beyond the dollars and speak more broadly about Ford’s long-term work in this program area, the potential societal impact of the investment and the nimble, experimental role foundations can play in solving complex problems.

Halfway through reading the case study it occurred to me that only two stories in outlets that have a particularly sophisticated audience (The Wall Street Journaland National Public Radio) might seem like not a particularly stellar achievement if the idea is to communicate the role of foundations to a broader swath of influential Americans. But the amount of coverage (which may be more extensive than the two pieces discussed in the case study) and the composition of the two outlets’ target audience aren’t really the point of the case study.  The point is about how foundations should take more responsibility for – and can find success in – getting more substance into media reports on philanthropy. The case study provides details on how Ford Foundation staff pursued its communications strategy for the PRI announcement and how its well-crafted messages resulted in stories that, though brief, effectively illustrated the foundation’s role as a creative, knowledgeable and influential shaper of societal change – not just a “grant maker.”

The case study makes clear that “there are opportunities to help shape coverage if you prepare well, crystallize your key message points, and train staff who will be speaking with reporters to stay on message. It also helps to get a credible outside endorsement of the value of a grant or project.”

This wise counsel reminded me of a July 2006 opinion piece by Grant Oliphant and Bruce Trachtenberg in The Chronicle of Philanthropy titled “Let’s Not Focus Simply on Size of Buffett’s Gift.” In that piece, the authors, president of the Pittsburgh Foundation and Network executive director, respectively, advised, “when foundations announce that they are supporting new efforts, their news releases should routinely be more explicit about the goals, expected achievements, what success will look like, and when they will be able to demonstrate whether that effort is working (or not). By doing that, reporters might be encouraged to focus more on the potential results of a grant, rather than the fact (or size) of the award itself to the exclusion of all else.”

I am quite interested to read the next in the “Moving Beyond the Money” series. This first one got me thinking about the actual process of harvesting more substantial coverage of foundation impact.  Of course, for foundations to really do this, they need to seed the field with clear statements on medium- and long-term objectives of the projects they support, and take some risks in saying specifically how success will be judged.

Both Miller’s post and the Foundation Center Glasspockets site are important to check out and incorporate into our thinking about public policy communications.  I have my own thoughts/critiques, which I share below.  But first, a bit more on the Miller post and the Glasspockets site.

The Glasspockets site (in its own words) hopes to…

Inspire private foundations to greater openness in their communications.

Increase understanding of best practices in foundation transparency and accountability in an online world.

Illustrate how institutional philanthropy is relevant to the critical issues of our time.

Highlight the many stories of philanthropy that show how private wealth is serving the public good.

Illuminate successes, failures, and ongoing experimentation so foundations can build on each other’s ideas to increase impact.

It’s most important contribution to truly advancing those objectives is the development of a metric for actually gauging transparency.  It includes 28 specific elements demonstrating foundation transparency.  And, the site has begun to post examples of individual foundations and how they stack up on those 28 factors.  They’ve started with some of the foundations with reputations for being very transparent.  This is a GREAT start in fostering greater openness among foundations, even if the examples focus on foundations that are pretty far along in the transparency curve.  I think that creating a real set of metrics, however debatable, is the key first step in moving the transparency movement forward.

Most of the 28 elements that are part of the Glasspockets metric are very basic things that you would think EVERY foundation would do, like making publicly available mission statements, lists of boards of directors, lists of key staff, basic financial information that is reported to the IRS anyway, and having a website.  But some of the elements are efforts that most foundations still avoid, like assessing the foundation’s performance, making those performance evaluations available for review, gaining grantee feedback, and many aspects of modern 2-way communications through social media.

Elizabeth Miller’s Communications Network post takes up some the more “advanced” transparency issues, especially social networking and web 2.0 communications.  There is much of value in her piece and I think that it is great that Overbrook Foundation aims to do more than just what is minimally required in the foundation community.

That said, I think both Miller’s post and the Glasspockets initiative sort of skirt around the crux of the transparency issue.  That is, very few foundations are courageous enough to be openly introspective, to wonder aloud if their grants and programs are actually having the impact they intend.  Almost every foundation puts forth a constant stream of “success stories” that mask the truth.  It’s all happy news.  Don’t get me wrong, stories of success are important — to say what is working is good.  But very few foundations even take the time to evaluate how effective their programs really are, let alone reveal publicly the learning that comes from those evaluations.  I think that the efforts outlined by Miller and the elements highlighted by Glasspockets are great.  But until foundations are willing to simply open themselves up publicly to examination and critique, they will never truly be understood or accepted as leaders in social change.

Think about the politicians and social activists you trust.  Are they the ones who always say everything is going great and that every idea they’ve ever put forth was the right one?  No.  Real leaders are those who can talk candidly and with honesty about what didn’t work and why.  That is the heart of transparency.  Putting a foundation’s Form 990 online so people can get at that information more easily is great.  But until foundations go beyond constantly putting out the endless stream of “happy news” about themselves, they will never be trusted or understood by the public.