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Resource Type: Playbook

What Does It Take to Learn Together Well?

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When we learn with others, we are not simply conducting final program evaluations; we are regularly assessing ways to improve our work and finding ways to be smarter and more effective in achieving our goals. Learning together means collaborating with partners throughout the learning cycle, as identified by Innovation Network, which includes planning, collecting and analyzing data, and acting and improving our work in response to findings. When grantmakers join their partners in the learning journey, we acquire better information, which leads to better results.

What Does It Take to Spend Down Successfully?

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Increasing numbers of grantmakers are opting for a spend-down strategy — meaning they intend to give away all of their philanthropic resources within a specific, limited timeframe and then close their doors. They do so for a variety of reasons. Some want to “give while living” and be personally involved in their philanthropy. Others see sunsetting as a way to become more agile and flexible in their grantmaking.

What is Collective Leadership and How Can Grantmakers Support It?

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With growing recognition of the complexity of the issues the nonprofit sector faces, many grantmakers and nonprofits see the need for a shift to a more collective leadership style. Collective leadership assumes that leadership can come from many places in an organization or a community, rather than solely from the executive director.

What do Nonprofits Need to Make Leadership Development a Priority?

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A nonprofit organization’s resiliency and capacity to navigate change successfully depends largely on its people. Ask any grantmaker about the distinguishing characteristics of strong and effective nonprofit organizations, and the conversation inevitably will turn to leadership.

How Can We Grow Impact?

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In the midst of a mounting imperative to achieve better and more substantial results, grantmakers of all kinds are shifting the way they think about scale, emphasizing not size or reach but impact. Growing impact doesn’t necessarily require organizational growth or the wholesale replication of programs — it may instead require expanding an idea, technology, advocacy or policy change.

How Do We Select the Right Evaluation Approach for the Job?

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The most difficult part of evaluation can be to know where to begin. There is so much information we could gather, but the key is determining what is most useful for what we need to know now to make better decisions and improve performance. This piece offers a matrix to guide thinking about what we want to learn from our evaluation, what tools and methods can support that learning and what key questions can help shape evaluation plans.

How Will We Know If Our Capacity-Building Support is Working?

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One of the biggest barriers to supporting capacity building is knowing how to tell if the support we give is having the desired impact. It can be difficult to measure improvements in organizational capacity and even more difficult to make the connection between capacity improvements and organizational outcomes.

How Do We Know If a Grantee is a Good Candidate for General Operating Support?

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The primary purpose of providing general operating support is to give grantees flexibility to pursue their goals as they see fit. So, how can grantmakers assess whether a grantee is a good candidate for general operating support? Grantmakers usually opt for general operating support when our goals are substantially aligned with those of the grantee, and when our due diligence affirms that the grantee has the capacity to achieve its goals.