Our annual foundation-wide assessments measure progress toward Irvine's institutional goals and priorities.

In 2005, as part of an effort to define how the Foundation should track its progress and measure its impact, we developed a six-part framework to assess progress towards advancing Irvine's mission of expanding opportunity for the people of California. While we have always regularly monitored individual grants and examined the impact of our program initiatives through targeted evaluation (see Program Evaluations), this framework focuses on our progress toward the Foundation's overarching goals and priorities. Accordingly, we track and assess the Foundation's effectiveness and impact in two broad domains — program impact and institutional effectiveness — as described below:

Program Impact:

1. Grantmaking: We track where our grants are going to assess alignment with the Foundation's mission, strategic priorities and values.
2. Outcomes: We look at the results of program and initiative evaluations, which are designed to measure progress toward our program goals.
3. Learning and Refinement: We examine how these results and other lessons from our program work were used to refine program strategy, and whether we shared our learning broadly.

Institutional Effectiveness:

4. Exercising Leadership: We focus on how well the Foundation is fulfilling its obligation as a philanthropic entity to frame understanding of and draw attention to key statewide issues.
5. Constituent Feedback: We assess how the Foundation is perceived by its key constituencies, such as grantseekers, grantee partners, other foundations, board and staff.
6. Finance and Organization: We monitor the Foundation's investment performance, commitment to prudent financial stewardship, operational effectiveness and efficiency, and organizational health.

This framework is more fully described in the Foundation-wide Assessment: An Overview (PDF, 44 KB), which provides details about the goals and assumptions of the framework, and our approach to assessing the Foundation's program impact and broader organizational performance. This is a work in progress, and we welcome opportunities to learn from others and to improve our approach in this important area.

Assessments:

Several examples of our foundation-wide assessment efforts are below:

2007 Annual Performance Report: This second annual report describes our programs in 2007 with respect to the six elements in our Performance Assessment Framework.

2006 Annual Progress Report: Our first annual report describes our progress in 2006 with respect to the six elements outlined in our Performance Assessment Framework.

Statistical Review of 2006 Grantmaking: This review describes how our grant dollars were distributed across the programs and our priority regions in California.

2006 Grantee Perception Reports: These reports about how grantees perceive the Foundation, by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, led us to redesign our competitive, small grants program.