At Irvine and many other foundations, a key question that occupies our collective attention is: What impact are we having?

Arriving at a satisfying answer to that question is complicated by numerous factors. First, as philanthropic entities, most of what we “accomplish” is through others. Second, many of us focus on ambitious, long-term goals that can be difficult to measure and challenging to quantify. And third, it is rare that our institutions and resources alone are responsible for a particular success, so there are always questions of attribution. There are certainly other obstacles, but none of this should absolve us from a good faith effort to answer the question.

As one way to think about this, we developed a framework at Irvine five years ago by which we could measure our progress in a variety of areas we determined were important to understanding our impact. Although the central focus of this assessment framework relates to the outcomes of our grantmaking, we also include areas beyond our programmatic work that we believe contribute to our progress.

Based on this framework, we have prepared reports to our board each year and later posted those reports on our website. And, in conjunction with this letter, we are now sharing publicly our report for 2009, which we presented to our board at its annual retreat in March. The 2009 Annual Performance Report describes the Foundation’s activities across six areas, three related to our program impact and three related to our effectiveness as an institution.