Summer 2007

Dear Friends,

For philanthropic organizations, identifying our customers and obtaining candid feedback from them is not especially easy. Businesses know how they are doing by how the market responds to their products and services. Our elected leaders get their feedback via the ballot box. And in the nonprofit sector, the ability to secure funds for your cause is certainly viewed as one means of assessing how well you are doing with at least one important constituent, your donors.

For private foundations, however, given their considerable endowments, the inherent power imbalance with the organizations that seek funds from them, and the lack of market forces in philanthropy, the ability to receive honest and constructive feedback is both limited and must often be initiated by the foundation itself.

Fortunately, we are seeing a trend where more and more foundations are eager to learn how they are perceived, what their customers value, and how they might improve. The creation of the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) in 2001 has contributed to this trend, given the increasing use of CEP's Grantee Perception Reports, which provide grantees with a means to provide confidential and candid feedback and offers foundations a tool to assess grantee feedback relative to that received by their peers.

As I reported in my spring letter, the Irvine Foundation participated in the fall 2006 round of surveys conducted by CEP, and we recently discussed the results at our spring Board of Directors retreat. We are grateful to all our grantee partners who took the time to provide their feedback, and we intend to honor that feedback by working hard to make improvements in those areas that grantees found less than satisfying. We are posting on our Web site the reports that CEP provided to our board, as well as an overview of how we interpreted the results and what we intend to do in order to improve our work going forward. (For the overview and reports, please click here.) I welcome your comments, suggestions or observations.

Finally, I am pleased to report that our ranks have been enriched by the addition of three new board members in 2007: Paula A. Cordeiro, Dean of the School of Leadership and Education Sciences at the University of San Diego; Isaac Stein, President of Waverley Associates Inc. and Managing Director of Technogen Associates LP, both private investment firms; and Lydia M. Villarreal, a judge for the Superior Court of California, Monterey County. All three individuals bring a demonstrated commitment to Irvine's mission of expanding opportunity for the people of California and significant community leadership experience to their governance role at the Foundation. We are pleased to welcome them and look forward to their leadership and counsel in the years ahead.

Sincerely,

James E. Canales
President and CEO

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