James E. Canales
President and CEODear Friends,
Last year, in this space, I wrote about how The James Irvine Foundation had developed a plan to assess its effectiveness and performance as a philanthropic institution. (Read my Winter 2006 letter here.) The result of this effort, which included significant board engagement, was Irvine's six-part Performance Assessment Framework, which we posted on our Web site early last year.
The subject of how to assess philanthropic effectiveness remains a timely one that many of our peer institutions are grappling with. A recent op-ed in the Chronicle of Philanthropy entitled "What Is an Effective Foundation?" and co-authored by Phil Buchanan, Executive Director of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, and Kathleen Enright, Executive Director of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, explores the challenges associated with this endeavor.
When we shared our framework last year, I committed us to reporting on our progress from time to time. To that end, we have posted on our Web site this spring a progress report we recently presented to our Board of Directors, describing our progress related to the six elements outlined in the Performance Assessment Framework. As you will see in reviewing the progress report, it still reflects an early stage for much of our activity, particularly related to reporting on programmatic outcomes and results. Indeed, we were still developing and refining our program priorities from 2004 to 2006. As our evaluation activity continues in the months and years ahead, we will report on those programmatic results and lessons learned.
In the meantime, we offer this snapshot of how we track and assess the Irvine Foundations performance. It remains a work in progress. We will learn as we go, refine accordingly, and will certainly benefit from the perspectives, counsel, and constructive criticism of others. In that context, my next President's letter in early summer will focus on the results of a recent set of surveys we commissioned the Center for Effective Philanthropy to carry out related to perceptions of the Irvine Foundation by our grantees. We will not only post those results, but we also intend to describe how we have interpreted the findings, including outlining the implications for our work going forward.
As always, we share this information about our work eager for your feedback, questions, observations, and ideas. Please write to me anytime with your thoughts.
Sincerely,
James E. Canales
President and CEO
