Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Ripple Effects Of Process Change, Rebekah Usatin, Nancy Herzog, Myriam Fizazi-Hawkins

The Foundation Review

· Decisions to change processes in one area have the potential to cause ripples throughout the entire grantmaking process, impacting both donor and grantee. Recognizing this, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) thoroughly examines and/or tests any changes before they are integrated into the grantmaking practice. In 2009, NED launched a pioneering grantee self-evaluation process that significantly altered its grantmaking processes.

· This article describes how NED tasked a team of staff from the different sections of its grantmaking program to determine the most effective way to capture the information needed to determine whether a grant should be recommended for …

Beyond The Numbers: What You Can Say With Instruction Evaluation Data, Emily Frigo, Ashley Rosener, Barbara Harvey, Anne Merkle, James Gulvas

Presentations

While data driven decision making is a hot topic in librarianship, collecting, analyzing and interpreting data can be intimidating. Where and how to begin? Instruction librarians from Grand Valley State University will discuss how they scaled up from unshared, nonstandard evaluations to a standard form that would make participant perceptions of library instruction more widely accessible in order to make data driven decisions within the Instruction Program.

The Impact Grants Initiative: Community-Participatory Grantmaking Modeled On Venture Philanthropy, Adin Miller, Elisa Gollub, Ilana Kaufman, Adina Danzig Epelman

The Foundation Review

· The Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund (JCF) launched the Impact Grants Initiative (IGI), a model of grant making based on venture philanthropy, but offering high engagement opportunities for previously unaffiliated local donors and community leaders.

· Before adopting the IGI model, the JCF used a community-participatory grantmaking approach that had become stale in engaging its donors, community leaders, and professional staff. Younger existing and potential donors were developing interests in documented outcomes, metrics, and impact, and those interests did not align with JCF’s grantmaking approach.

· IGI builds on the concepts of venture philanthropy, combining theories and techniques …

In Other Words, The Budgets Are Fake: Why One Funder Eliminated Grantee Budgets To Improve Financial Due Diligence, Molly Schultz Hafid, Carol Cantwell

The Foundation Review

· In 2013, the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock eliminated budgets from its application requirements. Over the last 18 months, it has worked to overhaul the financial information it requests and the ways in which it is used.

· This article examines the role of financial information in the grant application process, the practice of developing and reviewing funder budgets, and the ways in which they too often fail to provide information relevant to a thorough review of the financial health of a nonprofit organization.

· The Veatch Program provides a case study in how to engage board …

Mythic Rhetoric: Love, Power, And Companionate Marriage In Puccini's Turandot, Valerie V. Peterson

Peer Reviewed Articles

Using a rhetorical perspective, specifically Kenneth Burke's understanding of myths as "forward looking partisanships," this essay explores the mythic story of Turandot and its relationship to love, power, and companionate marriage.1 First, Burke’s understanding of myth is outlined and connected to the history and travels of Turandot. Then, a detailed rhetorical analysis of the 1998 PBS video of Puccini's opera performed at the Forbidden City, Beijing, suggests why the Turandot myth seems to appear in certain places and moments, and what it might have offered to audiences, in this instance, on a spiritual level.

Financial Analysis For Measuring And Comparing Risk In Grantmaking Portfolios, Sheena Ashley, Lewis Faulk

The Foundation Review

· Risk has not been treated in a systematic way that allows for a rich understanding of the extent to which foundations are, or should be, incorporating or evaluating risk in philanthropy.

· In this article, we conceptualize and develop a tool to evaluate the levels of philanthropic risk that foundations maintain through their grant portfolios.

· We create an index of aggregated risk at the portfolio level using several financial indicators based on previous theory and literature. Then, we test the index on a sample of foundations and their grantees in the state of Georgia and compare risk levels …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Using A Priority Grid As A Tool For Shaping Strategy And Building Impact, Lori Fuller

The Foundation Review

· This article describes the priority grid – an analytic tool to assess grant proposals – and how it has fundamentally changed and improved the work of the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust.

· Developed by the Trust, the priority grid focuses staff attention on key strategic elements: alignment with focus areas, depth of impact, and scope of impact. It has also served as an agent to develop, disseminate, and implement a foundation’s grantmaking strategy, helping program officers understand how specific projects serve the larger goal and cultivate projects and applications that align with the foundation’s long-term mission.

· With …

Grand Valley Forum, Volume 039, Number 06, September 29, 2014, Grand Valley State University

2014-2015, Volume 39

Grand Valley Forum is Grand Valley State's faculty and staff newsletter, published from 1976 to the present.

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 12, September 29, 2014, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 11, September 25, 2014, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Grand Valley Forum, Volume 039, Number 05, September 22, 2014, Grand Valley State University

2014-2015, Volume 39

Grand Valley Forum is Grand Valley State's faculty and staff newsletter, published from 1976 to the present.

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 10, September 22, 2014, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 09, September 18, 2014, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Double Jeopardy In Inferring Cognitive Processes, Mario Fific

Funded Articles

Inferences we make about underlying cognitive processes can be jeopardized in two ways due to problematic forms of aggregation. First, averaging across individuals is typically considered a very useful tool for removing random variability. The threat is that averaging across subjects leads to averaging across different cognitive strategies, thus harming our inferences. The second threat comes from the construction of inadequate research designs possessing a low diagnostic accuracy of cognitive processes. For that reason we introduced the systems factorial technology (SFT), which has primarily been designed to make inferences about underlying processing order (serial, parallel, coactive), stopping rule (terminating, exhaustive), …

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 08, September 15, 2014, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Grand Valley Forum, Volume 039, Number 04, September 15, 2014, Grand Valley State University

2014-2015, Volume 39

Grand Valley Forum is Grand Valley State's faculty and staff newsletter, published from 1976 to the present.

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 07, September 11, 2014, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Grand Valley Forum, Volume 039, Number 03, September 08, 2014, Grand Valley State University

2014-2015, Volume 39

Grand Valley Forum is Grand Valley State's faculty and staff newsletter, published from 1976 to the present.

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 06, September 8, 2014, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 05, September 4, 2014, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Grand Valley Forum, Volume 039, Number 02, September 02, 2014, Grand Valley State University

2014-2015, Volume 39

Grand Valley Forum is Grand Valley State's faculty and staff newsletter, published from 1976 to the present.

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 04, August 28, 2014, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Grand Valley Forum, Volume 039, Number 01, August 26, 2014, Grand Valley State University

2014-2015, Volume 39

Grand Valley Forum is Grand Valley State's faculty and staff newsletter, published from 1976 to the present.

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 03, August 25, 2014, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Toast To Peter Turner, Delivered At The Renucci's Party On August 22, 2014, Arend D. Lubbers

Presidential Speeches

Toast to Peter Turner, delivered at the Renucci's Party on August 22, 2014 by Arend D. Lubbers, who served as President of Grand Valley from 1969-2001.

Speech To The Improvement Association, Delivered On August 21, 2014, Arend D. Lubbers

Presidential Speeches

Speech to the Improvement Association, delivered on August 21, 2014 by Arend D. Lubbers, who served as President of Grand Valley from 1969-2001.

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 02, August 18, 2014, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Alumni-Pathways Scholarship Dinner Remarks, Delivered On August 7, 2014, Arend D. Lubbers

Presidential Speeches

Alumni-Pathways Scholarship Dinner Remarks, delivered on August 7, 2014 by Arend D. Lubbers, who served as President of Grand Valley from 1969-2001.