ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF FUNDING

Submitted by Tommer on April 1, 2009

From Alliance for Philanthropy and Social Investing

One of the most perennially vexing questions in philanthropy is how to assess the impact of funding, especially where there’s no obvious way of putting a price on the end product. A recently published paper on Measuring and/or Estimating Social Value Creation, written by Melinda Tuan and commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, features different models adopted for this purpose by a number of US foundations.

Alliance talked to representatives of some of these foundations about the strengths and weaknesses of their approaches, what they had learned from the research, and what they see as the next steps for the field. Fay Twersky (Gates Foundation) comments.

This lengthy piece features interviews with

Paul Brest President, Hewlett Foundation

Jed Emerson Managing Director of Integrated Performance, Uhuru Capital Management

Katherina Rosqueta Executive Director, Center for High Impact Philanthropy

Brian Trelstad Chief Investment Officer, Acumen Fund

Fay Twersky Director of Impact Planning and Improvement, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Michael Weinstein Chief Program Officer, Robin Hood Foundation, New York

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