Winter 2006

Dear Friends,

I have often noted how fortunate private foundations are: we have significant resources at our disposal, we can easily engage creative and thoughtful leaders in our fields, and we usually operate free of external pressure or critical feedback. Along with these privileges, however, come important obligations, including the responsibility of prudently stewarding our resources and being clear and transparent about our priorities and processes.

Recently, many foundations have embraced another important obligation: comprehensively assessing their impact and openly communicating the results. Foundations have a long history of commissioning evaluations of their program work and tracking the effectiveness of individual grants. What is new, however, is that foundations are beginning to think more expansively about their impact as institutions, and, as a result, are engaging in assessment that looks beyond grantmaking.

I support this deeper commitment to assessing impact, and am pleased to share with you The James Irvine Foundation's plans to assess our own progress. Last year we developed a six-part framework (PDF, 44 KB) to assess Irvine's progress towards our mission to expand opportunity for the people of California. In developing this framework, we acknowledged the importance of monitoring our grants and evaluating our impact in specific programs. However, we realized that we must also look at broader, foundation-wide issues in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of our impact as a philanthropic organization.

This framework remains a work in progress. We are sharing it at this early stage, both to make our contribution to the philanthropic field on this important issue, and to invite suggestions for improvements to the framework.

Private foundations in the United States hold over $400 billion in assets. Understanding what impact these institutions have with those tax-exempt dollars deserves our close attention. We are committed to doing our part at Irvine to search for the often-elusive answer to the question of philanthropic impact. We encourage your participation in this important exploration and hope you will let us know how we might advance our evaluation efforts.

Sincerely,

James E. Canales
President and CEO

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