Roadmap to Results

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Roadmap to Results

• Tools to Improve Impact in Education
• Session Three Leverage and Impact
• GFE Web Seminar July 12, 2007

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Leverage, Simply Put
Making your resources go even farther in
effecting change. Carl J. Schramm, President
CEO Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
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Why is Leverage Important?

• Philanthropic giving to public schools
  constitutes a small fraction of the total amount
  of public money spent less than ½ of one
  percent.
• The depth and range of problems in public
  education make it difficult to achieve meaningful
  change in isolation or without changing public
  policies and practice even at the local level.

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Causing Change
Cash
Catalyst

• Grants
• Loans
• Program-Related Investments

• Initiate
• Convene
• Unify
• Collaborate

Critical Voice
Conceptualization

• Advocate
• Gadfly
• Seal of Approval

• Fact-Find
• Analyze
• Test
• Evaluate

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Leveraging Cash

• Attract and aggregate funds
• Coordinate grantmaking or pool funding
• Offer challenge or match grants
• Help meet public or national funders match
  requirements
• Fund public / private partnerships
• Support high-performing organizations
• Fund capacity building

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Leveraging Ideas

• Bet on the new fund pilot and demonstration
  projects with potential for replication and
  scaling
• Fund evaluation and publicize what works (or what
  doesnt)
• Fund research e.g., on a specific public policy
  issue that reaches state or national policymakers
  
• Support efforts to change public opinion or
  influence public policy
• Advocacy, organizing and mobilization
• Public education campaigns

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Leveraging People

• Use your networks knowledge, relationships and
  credibility e.g.
• Trustees access to private and public sector
  stakeholders, decision-makers
• Technical assistance to grantees
• Get people to interact
• Convene stakeholders and broker cross-sector
  partnerships
• Coordinate strategies to address a common problem
• Create learning networks (project-, issue- or
  craft-focused)
• Fund intermediaries

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Questions

• Besides funder, what roles are you currently
  playing, or might you like to play, in improving
  public education?
• Have you collaborated with other
  grantmakers/stakeholders, or are you currently
  involved in a collaboration? How did you work
  together? Did the benefits outweigh the costs?

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Results
What do we want to accomplish through our
contribution?
What else do we want to learn?
Some possible answers ...
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Results

• What did my gift do or help do? (quantitative)
• Who was served? What activities undertaken?
  What knowledge produced?
• How well was it done? (qualitative)
• How was the project implemented? How much did
  it cost? Did it meet objectives? Why or why
  not? What was learned?
• Is anyone better off? (effectiveness)
• What were the outcomes? Did the investment
  improve students well-being, opportunities,
  performance?

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Sample Proxies

• Of grantee impact
• Quality of services vis-à-vis other organizations
  or itself over time
• Reputation in the field
• Organizational leadership, improvement in capacity

• Of foundation impact
• Strength of relationships with / influence on /
  buy-in from key stakeholders
• Grantee perception

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Questions

• Consider a grant or initiative where you had
  clear expectations around results.
• How did you assess the success of the gift?
• Were your expectations borne out?
• Did you, or will you, make changes to your giving
  strategy based on your findings?