Foundations Find Benefits in Facing Up to Failures

Kudos to the foundations that are finally taking this much needed step (notice how many of the failure examples relate to education reform...).  My experience observing and dealing directly with foundations for nearly 20 years is that far too many of them are filled with clueless, ideological boobs (both from the left and the right, but more often the former) who have no idea how human beings and the real world really work, with the result that their grants do little good.  An important way to combat this is to have rigorous, independent evaluations and make them public.  (Let me be clear that this is not a blanket condemnation of all foundations -- I've also met many great people doing great work at them, but in many cases (like in much of Africa) people die if a foundation's program is poorly conceived or implemented, so my standards are high.  For a great book on the world's very mixed efforts to help Third World countries, I highly recommend The Bottom Billion.)

 Among the reports on a coffee table in the Carnegie Corporation’s reception  area is one on the foundation’s efforts to help Zimbabwe overhaul its  Constitution and government.
 
It gets straight to the point: “This is the anatomy of a grant that  failed.”
 
Just a few years ago, it would have been astonishing for a foundation,  particularly one as traditional as Carnegie, to publicize a failure. Today,  though, many of the nation’s largest foundations regard disclosing and  analyzing their failures as bordering on a moral obligation.
 
“There’s an increasing recognition among foundation leaders that not to be  public about failures is essentially indefensible,” said Phil Buchanan, the  executive director of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, which advises  foundations. “If something didn’t work, it is incumbent upon you to make sure  others don’t make the same mistake.”

------------------

Foundations Find Benefits in Facing Up to Failures
 
Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
A failed program of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation sought to reduce poverty in Bay Area neighborhoods like West Oakland, Calif.

By STEPHANIE STROM <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/stephanie_strom/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
Published: July 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/us/26foundation.html

Among the reports on a coffee table in the Carnegie Corporation’s reception area is one on the foundation’s efforts to help Zimbabwe overhaul its Constitution and government.