Foundation News —Chip Edelsberg

Foundation News
—Chip Edelsberg, Executive Director

July 2011

Since its inception in 2006, the Jim Joseph Foundation (JJF) has committed itself to continuous improvement. Often continuous improvement is just a catch phrase or a professed (but typically, undocumented) pattern of performance. JJF, however, is refining a set of measures it uses to assess its improvement efforts.

For JJF, “getting better” points the foundation to a number of behaviors and indicators. First, as is well known to readers of this column, we work closely with grantees to track the number of beneficiaries of JJF grant support. So, for example, it is affirming to JJF that 2,625 youth are in Jewish residential summer camps in the summer of 2011 (1,615 in JWest camps and 1,010 in the five JJF-funded Specialty camps) by virtue of JJF funding. The Foundation for Jewish Camp has informed us that the majority of the growth during the past several years in Jewish residential camp enrollment has been the result of these two JJF supported programs.

Of course, we strive to augment data on quantity with independent verification of the quality of the Jewish education and engagement JJF funds. Here, we have evidence from the likes of the Jewish Student Union, Moishe House, Pardes, Reboot and other JJF grantees that the foundation’s resourcing independent evaluations provides organizations new information on their experiences that in turn become the basis for infusing quality into their programming.

We have now begun the next phase of results-oriented philanthropy by exploring ways to aggregate evaluation of individual grants into same sector, cross grant assessment. A preliminary step in this direction is to compile interview and survey questions used in grants where desired outcomes are similar or related -- both for JJF and other foundation-funded grantees. We hope to begin this work in the near future.

Internally, JJFs’ continuous improvement focuses on trying to be “zero defects,” paying grantees in accordance with established terms and conditions of grant awards. We view it as one of our highest responsibilities to ensure these payments are timely. To this end, we communicate routinely with grantees in order to make certain we are supporting their grant administration and monitoring as well as to understand the inevitable changes in grant implementation that most often occur.

Operationally, JJF benchmarks itself against peer groups found in both the Council on Foundations (CoF) and Foundation Financial Officers Group (FFOG) databases. Our challenge is to hold our non-grant related expenses in check. In this regard, our staffing as well as grants management and administration expenditure ratios, while obviously not as low as they were in JJF’s initial years, still translate into JJF putting $9 into the field for every $10 it spends. And five years running, JJF has concluded its calendar year spending less than the Board approved for JJF’s annual budget.

Finally, JJF is trying to improve how the field perceives the foundation. I have reported previously on the results of JJF’s Grantee Perception Report, conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP). Based on CEP’s findings, JJF is now involved in a series of projects designed to streamline JJF’s grant making process and to enhance communication. In the future, we hope you will find our messaging to be more concise and consistent. I would also alert you to a website redesign we will undertake later this year. When completed, we will launch JJF’s revamped site with an online Annual Report.

Improvement is a process. If it is to have import, it must be continuous and ingrained in the daily activities of an organization. In foundation philanthropy, continuous improvement can lead both to more efficient operations and more effective grant making. That is why continuous improvement is serious business at JJF.

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