Philanthropy for the Future (Post #1)

This week I’ll be discussing an article that was published on “Dialogues on Civic Philanthropy”, www.civicphilanthropy.net. Rick Cohen, the former Executive Director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, posted an opinion piece on that website entitled What Can and Should Philanthropy Do in the Future?  This is the FIRST in a series of posts on Cohen’s article.

Foundations Should Focus Philanthropy on the Most Critical Community Needs.

Rick Cohen states, first and foremost, that foundation philanthropy should be focused on the most critical needs of the service area. The core of any foundation’s work, therefore, is to deeply understand these needs and then consistently focus the foundation’s unrestricted philanthropy on them.

As a strategic framework for foundation grant making, priority attention given to priority issues seems obvious enough. But it takes considerable time, effort, focus, relationships, curiosity, and data to truly understand the most critical needs of a community. While some needs are visible and therefore obvious, others may only be uncovered with the kind of hard research that a community indicators project reveals.

In 2008, the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia undertook just such a research study. We commissioned the Northern Virginia Health Systems Agency to do a Child and Youth Needs Assessment across our entire service area. We later partnered with Voices for Virginia’s Children on the assessment, which will be published before the end of calendar 2009. What I like most about our project is that we did it for the primary purpose of informing our own unrestricted grant making in the areas of children and youth, education, and family health.

Cohen directly ties the responsibility that comes with foundation philanthropy to the public trust. Whether or not our grant making meets critical community needs is therefore a litmus test of our relevance. We must always check in with our selves – our Board of Directors and grant making staff – and consciously understand at all times exactly what we are doing and why we are doing it.