Working with private foundations School of Nursing December 2, 2011

How foundations differ from federal funding agencies Genesis in individual success: legacy of values and vision, family involvement Example: Anna Harkness founded the Commonwealth Fund; original vision, family leadership Relationship grounds work: partnership is key High risk/high reward to leverage impact with relatively modest resources Limited staffing Lay review common; limited or no feedback Autonomous, often subjective, limited transparency

Recent trends in foundations Opportunity rather than need Solve problems Leadership expertise—business model, strategic planning, QI, ROI, metrics Infusion of resources from rapidly created technology wealth Pre-selecting partners Collaborative or consortia approaches—multi- disciplinary, multi-institutional Growing focus on policy, systems, scalability

Common proposal elements Theory of change, as expressed in – Problem statement – Evidence for claims – Baseline or pilot data—case for strategy’s promise Example: Cynthia Price’s abstract The field Scale and scope of work Method, approach Schedule

What intended outcomes are and how you will measure them Capacity, partners Feasibility Significance—why does this work matter? How you explain your answers will depend on who your funder is and how your work aligns with their vision.

Making strong matches Clarify your focus What is the heart or central purpose of your proposed work? Why is it important? Why is that important? Why is that important? What is the theory of change that informs your work? Are there secondary purposes? If so, how are they related to your primary purpose?

Are there ways to frame your work that don’t distort or betray its purpose? What is unusual or distinctive about this work? how can you turn that to an asset? How will you know your work has made a difference?

Making strong matches Evaluate your funder: understand the context What does your potential funder care about as expressed in its grant making program? What is your potential funder’s theory of change? Does the grant making program description employ key words or phrases? Example: The Commonwealth Fund

Making strong matches What can you learn from your potential funder’s practice? – Types of grants – Types of work funded – Types of organizations funded – Geographic focus – Amount of grants, range, distribution of grant dollars across programs, regions Example: Ford Foundation and Information School research

Making strong matches Assess the potential match How does your proposed work relate to or differ from the funder’s focus? Your primary purpose? Your secondary purposes? How does your theory of change relate to or differ from the funder’s? How does the language you use relate to or differ from that of the funder?

Create options: go “sideways” to go forward Reframe your work Example: Chemical Engineering NSF IGERT and Northwest Area Foundation Identifying components of your work for different funders Get an “outsider’s” perspective Supplementing federally funded work with foundation grants Example: College of Built Environments DoE grant and Kresge Foundation

Messaging Connect with your funder—align language and terms Appeal to your funder—“why is that important?” multiplied—drill down Engage your funder—selectively use attention- getting data, evidence, anecdotes where appropriate Watch those acronyms and specialized “jargon”

Innovation Rather than try to be innovative, innovators pursue specific goals using ‘unique’ strategies Unique strategies: distinctive, highly specific, highly focused Example: “Google’s original strategic aim was” not to be the leading search engine company, but “to produce the most relevant search results by using a special algorithm in their search engine.”

Innovators also may redefine or reframe the problem Example: Fewer than 10% of college students study abroad. Many programs seek to increase that percentage. Focusing on strategies that internationalize on-campus learning for the 90% and assessing that learning reframes the issue and creates new options for addressing it. Focus on articulating your vision, the work; let the funder discover its innovative qualities Extrapolate—think BIG

Opportunity: Hilaire Thompson’s abstract “Nurse-led Transitional Care (TC) models have the potential to address these identified gaps, but have not been used in injured populations to date.” What is the specific goal? What makes the strategy distinctive? What are the new challenges presented by this application? What are the risks? What is the potential reward/return? What is the BIG idea in this proposed work?

Contact information: Kim Johnson-Bogart Director, Foundation Relations