Creating lasting environmental, social, and economic change requires discipline—a concept with which many foundations, grant makers, and committed wealthy individuals have traditionally struggled. With few external parties holding them accountable or offering candid feedback, philanthropic investors have had insufficient experience assessing their own performance and making hard decisions about programs and people. Our experience suggests that to change, foundations and their counterparts should embark on a philanthropic strategic process we think of as getting clear, getting real, and getting better. In this November 2009 Harvard Business Review article, Bridgespan Partners Susan Wolf Ditkoff and Susan J. Colby explore how some foundation leaders answered the fundamental questions underlying this process and made the tough decisions that helped them dramatically increase the effect they’ve had in their communities and globally. Read more>>
Can the promise of the Promise Neighborhoods be realized? We believe the answer is “yes.” We also believe that doing so will require an unusual degree of discipline and clarity from those involved, including policy makers, who will be pressured to base crucial decisions on political considerations rather than objective criteria, and from community leaders, who may be tempted, given the challenges their neighborhoods face, to spread the available resources too thinly to effect real change. Read our perspective and add your own point of view to the conversation. Read more>>
Why do nonprofits and funders alike continue to shortchange overhead? Bridgespan research reveals that a vicious cycle fuels the persistent underfunding as funders’ unrealistic expectations about how much it costs to run a nonprofit put pressure on nonprofits to conform to those expectations. The result: Nonprofits spend too little on overhead, and they underreport their expenditures on tax forms and in fundraising materials. This underspending and underreporting in turn perpetuates funders’ unrealistic expectations.
Changing funders’ expectations, however, will require a coordinated, sector-wide effort. At a time when people need nonprofit services more than ever and when government is increasingly turning to nonprofits to solve social problems, this effort is necessary to keep nonprofits healthy and functioning Read more>>
This unique case study explores the "nuts and bolts" of how YES Prep Public Schools, a charter organization based in Houston, Texas, succeeds in preparing low-income students not only to graduate from high school, but also to enter college ready to meet the challenges of a post-secondary education. By incorporating video, text, and sample documents, the case offers a multidimensional view of how YES operates. Read more>>
ALSO ON EDUCATION
Great Teachers on the Fast Track
In this Fall 2009 Stanford Social Innovation Review opinion piece, Bridgespan partner Susan J. Colby and manager Tia Martinez discuss and provide examples of alternative pathways to teacher training as the real answer to education reform.
Overcoming the Resource Gap
Nonprofit organizations across the country serve the needs of rural communities in critically important ways. Yet the conditions under which they operate, challenging in the best of times, are becoming even more difficult as the current economic crisis unfolds. To help inspire discussion and additional research on the management of rural nonprofits, the Bridgespan Group undertook the research reported in this paper—research that shines the spotlight on one particularly acute challenge, the resource gap. Read more>>
A Guide and Toolkit for Funders and Nonprofits Committed to Large-Scale Impact
Field building is a critical strategy for social change; it’s also why funders and nonprofits committed to large-scale impact know that they need to be intentional about strengthening the fields in which they operate. Yet these agents of social change often struggle to understand how to focus their field-building investments and activities. To help address this challenge, The James Irvine Foundation asked Bridgespan to develop an approach to assessing the strengths and needs of a field. The result is a framework for building more robust fields, The Strong Field Framework, presented in this report. Read more>>
Nonprofit organizations are turning to tougher measures than they were at the end of 2008 to weather the economic downturn. According to Bridgespan’s recent survey of nearly 100 nonprofit leaders, organizations have made more layoffs, more program reductions, and more reserve draw-downs. At the same time, many leaders anticipate that their organizations will be stronger financially in a year’s time. This report shares our recent survey findings, including the more draconian steps many organizations are taking to deliver in the short term and plan for the future. Read more>>
Six Steps to Finding the True Costs of Programs
Although nonprofits generally have a good understanding of their revenues, their knowledge about costs can sometimes be less robust. Our "Nonprofit Cost Analysis Toolkit" walks nonprofit leaders through six steps to help them discover the true costs of their programs. It includes numerous templates and examples as well as links to additional Bridgespan and third-party resources intended to help organizations gain critical cost clarity. Read more>>
Nonprofits foresee a need to fill 24,000 vacant or new roles in 2009, according to a new report by the Bridgespan Group. Yet despite the economic downturn, nonprofit organizations anticipate challenges in finding candidates who are both qualified for the roles and who are cultural fits with their organizations. Read more>>
Money is a constant topic of conversation among nonprofit leaders: How much do we need? Where can we find it? Why isn’t there more of it? In tough economic times, these types of questions become more frequent and pressing. Through our research, we have identified ten nonprofit models that are commonly used by the largest nonprofits in the United States. This article describes the models so that nonprofit leaders can more clearly articulate those that they believe could support the growth of their organizations.