Just what is knowledge management and what has it to do with grantmaking and organizational effectiveness? Searching for "knowledge management" in GEO's content database displays over 200 results! (Google finds over 70 million!) The page below attempts to select from the best and organize them in a useful fashion. Please let us know how we did.
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A knowledge foundation is a philanthropic institution that views knowledge as a distinct asset and strategically develops, captures, uses and shares knowledge to achieve its mission. The foundation recognizes that it relies on both external and internal knowledge, and develops strategies that are appropriate to both sources.
Lucy Bernholz
Spending Smarter: Knowledge as a Philanthropic Resource |
Knowledge Resources: What Funders Know and How it Can Help Nonprofits
In this October 2003 Nonprofit Times column, GEO executive director Kathleen Enright discusses and shares examples of how--after grants--knowledge might be the most important asset grantmakers can offer nonprofits and to expand their impact. For example, funders devoted to a specific issue often provide the latest information in that field, while community based funders often provide information relevant to the region. She also points out three challenges learned by foundations that practice knowledge management:
- Capturing the right kind of knowledge is one of the hardest elements of knowledge management.
- A knowledge management system must avoid becoming a dumpster for information.
- Knowledge management requires a culture change throughout the organization.
Funder Networks' Knowledge Management Practices highlights findings of this 2004 GEO study of nearly 200 funder networks.
In Spending Smarter: Knowledge as a Philanthropic Resource, Lucy Bernholz helps us imagine an organization that routinely gathers data, systematically derives new learning from it, makes decisions based on those lessons, invests both dollars and expertise that is gathered from the organizations it supports. Such a knowledge foundation makes strategic use of its information assets, supported by new structural incentives and the judicious application of information technologies, to to significantly increase the impact of their grantmaking. (Blue Print R+D, June 2001)
Leveraging What You Know: Knowledge Management Strategies for Funders. Increasing numbers of grantmakers are developing a newfound appreciation of the value of the data, information and "lessons learned" they generate on a day-to-day basis. They are developing new ways to capture and communicate their knowledge, both inside their organizations and with others. This report, drawn from GEO's 2004 Knowledge Management conference in Seattle, WA, presents an overview of knowledge management in philanthropy and explores key issues such as technology-supported taxonomies, organizational culture assessment and effective communication.
Marketing Your Knowledge: Ten Practices That Work. In an effort to help philanthropic organizations share what they know and with greater impact, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation commissioned Williams Group, a communications consulting firm, to research common obstacles to effective communications and identify successful approaches. Practitioners surveyed identified ten effective approaches to knowledge sharing.
Employing Knowledge Management To Improve Performance. These six essays published by the The Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation answer the following questions:
- Why should foundations commit resources to knowledge management?
- What are the essential characteristics of a knowledge management systsem that really works?
- How are knowledge management and accountability related?
- What does the knowledge management team do and how much does it cost?
- How do you organize the output of knowledge management so that it supports decision making?
- How do we approach evaluation at various levels of programs and operations?
One way to learn how to implement knowledge management strategies is to learn from others. The following stories describe how grantmakers are thinking about, implementing and using knowledge management to fulfill their philanthropic missions.
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The Barr Foundation made a conscious decision to align the daily work of program officers with the vision and strategy of the trustees and executive director. Working with a consultant, they established a road map for implementing KM at their organization. See also Knowledge in Action: The Barr Foundation.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation, after looking at the information needs of its staff, chose to establish more structured forms of sharing to help staff be more connected, facilitate the creation of more and better knowledge and utilize to their fullest the various technologies available. They also learned that several activities already underway within the foundation were "knowledge-management like" and could thus be leveraged without feeling like the foundation was taking on something entirely new. See also Developing a Foundation-Wide Knowledge Management Strategy.
The Columbus Foundation sought to more effectively serve as a source of community and philanthropic information to local nonprofits. They already knew that they were recipients of vaste stores of information that could be valuable to others. They conducted an audit of this information, reviewed what other foundations were doing with knowledge management, and chose to invest resources where sharing of information was slow or a gap existed between what's available and what's needed. See also: Knowledge in Action: The Columbus Foundation.
The Fannie Mae Foundation took on knowledge management practices that helped both internal staff as well as external stakeholders seeking information about affordable housing. The foundation established "knowledge coordinators" and learning and sharing proficiencies for staff. They also developed processes and systems to capture, analyze and interpret grant outcomes in order to inform their own strategy development. See also An In-Depth Look at Knowledge Management at the Fannie Mae Foundation.
The Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation sought to consciously track the information and expertise developed through the various initiatives they supported. They also wanted to better track the impact their grants were having. Strategies for imbedding knowledge management into their organizational culture included writing KM into most job descriptions and screening new staff for collaborative temperament.
Implementing a Foundation-Wide Integrated Information System at the Kresge Foundation. Throughout the 1990s and into 2001, the Kresge Foundation realized that it needed to better steward the preservation of its 75-year grantmaking history. It needed a coordinated way to track not only its grantmaking information, but also all the institutional knowledge gained from its many years of existence.
The Warner Foundation: Capturing Tacit Knowledge.The Warner Foundation has instituted a few of practices aimed at capturing and sharing tacit knowledge among staff and board members. The foundation is especially interested in documenting what people learn at conferences and meetings and has developed an easy three-step process. |
GEO's Work in Knowledge Management
GEO's 2004 Knowledge Management Conference's program, pre-readings, copies of the session presentations and handouts.
GEO's 2005 Building Learning Organizations Conference
Find session summaries and lessons learned.
KNOWLEDGE
Archives of GEO's KM e-newsletter (2003-2005).
Foundations Meeting on Knowledge Management. Materials from this meeting held by the Annie E. Casey Foundation June 11, 2003.
Share KM resources with colleagues.
Use GEO's content database to find and share such resources as taxonomies, pilot designs, assessment tools and audits.
Search for Colleagues
Search GEO's member directory for foundations or individuals with shared interests. (Have you updated your own membership profile recently?)
GEO thanks the following organizations who have partnered with GEO on its Knowledge Management work:
Consortium of Foundation Libraries
Technology Affinity Group
The Communications Network
Grants Managers Network
GEO thanks the following for their financial support of our knowledge management work:
Barr Foundation
The Annie E. Casey Foundation
Lumina Foundation for Education
Charles & Helen Schwab Foundation
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In addition to case studies, a number of organizations share tools and tactics they've adopted to implement KM effectively:
Building Knowledge Management Capabilities. This Power Point presentation from McKinsey is a good tool to adapt when engaging others in your organization. Said one reviewer: "The Barriers slide is a useful mirror--holding it up to one's own organization helps identify where the challenges to overcome are located. And the framework section highlights several key considerations--KM is a way of working that requires appreciation for each step of the way--capturing, organizing, and leveraging every resource--and is fed by attentiveness to training and incentives for use."
No IT Department? No Research Librarians? No Problem! Implementing Knowledge Management Solutions for Smaller Grantmakers. The staff in small organizations tend to wear many hats, and adding the additional burden of capturing and cataloguing knowledge can become an onerous task. However, this does not have to be the case, and there are advantages to being a small organization when embarking on knowledge management.
Technologies that Enable Knowledge Management: Understanding the Options and Getting Started. This large (2+ megabyte) PowerPoint presentation is well worth the download time. Martin Schneiderman provides an excellent overview of the different types of technologies available for managing different types of information, and throws in some great lessons learned.
Seeking, Managing and Disseminating Knowledge in Education Philanthropy. The lessons taken from Grantmakers for Education's information audit provide insights for any grantmaker network seeking to establish an effective knowledge management system. Writes reviewer Tom Kern of the Annie E. Casey Foundation: "The GFE study highlights the importance of designing a knowledge management approach based on real needs, with attention to what is affordable, and maintaining it with a pragmatic eye toward encouraging what the likely level of commitment by the overall network should be."
In this executive summary of Measuring the Impact of Knowledge Management, the American Productivity and Quality Center focuses on how to measure the gains that KM promises. See also their 5 Tips to Measure the Impact of Knowledge Management.