Articles

Channeling Change: Making Collective Impact Work

Fay Hanleybrown, John Kania, Mark Kramer

Despite the difficulty of getting collective impact efforts off the ground, those involved report a new sense of optimism that dawns early on in the process.

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Developing a Master Data Sharing Agreement: Seeking Student-Level Evidence to Support a Collaborative Community Effort in Education

Neil E. Carlson, Edwin Hernández, Chaná Edmond-Verley, Gustavo Rotondaro, Eleibny Feliz-Santana, Susan Heynig

How the development of a data sharing agreement was key to providing the longitudinal, student-level data required to drive and evaluate multiple efforts to close the achievement gap in an urban neighborhood.

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Can China Lead The Development Of The Shared Value Economy?

Kevin Lee

This article examines the potential of shared value in China with an emphasis on youth culture.

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Was „echter Mehrwert“ ist

Interview mit Valerie Bockstette in der Südtiroler Wirtschaftszeitung zum Thema Shared Value.

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First, Make Money. Also, Do Good.

Steve Lohr

This New York Times article examines the concept of Creating Shared Value and cites examples of corporations that are are pursuing the idea that profit-making should be a priority of their social responsibility programs.

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NS Raghavan on Way to Change Indian Philanthropy

Naren Karunakaran

Nadathur S. Raghavan's plan to chaperone Indian philanthropy from a charitable, crisis-alleviation mode to a sector that can take on larger developmental issues. The emphasis of his strategy is to engender transformational change through collective impact.

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Shared Value and Open Innovation

Kurt Matzler, Stephan Friedrich von den Eichen

Innovative Management Partner, an international think tank, interviews FSG's Mark Kramer about creating shared value. 

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What Does It Take for Philanthropy to Deliver Results?

Leslie Crutchfield, John Kania, Mark Kramer

Donors large and small often think that they can simply throw money at a problem and hope for the best. Successful giving requires more involvement than that.

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Roundtable on Shared Value

Mark Kramer, John Kania

Executives from 10 major corporations gathered in New York City to discuss the innovative ways that they are putting societal issues at the core of their companies’ strategy and operations.

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Video

Learning From an Adaptive-Consultative Approach

Srikanth Gopalakrishnan, Hallie Preskill

This article describes a creative relationship between the Ball Foundation and the Rowland Unified School District, based on the concept of “adaptive leadership".

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FSG's New Book: Do More Than Give

Leslie Crutchfield, John Kania, Mark Kramer

This book provides a blueprint for foundation leaders, trustees, and individual donors who want to catalyze change in the world.

Book

Video

Museum Evaluation Without Borders

Hallie Preskill

This article invites readers to think outside of evaluation’s current boundaries and to see the deep connectedness between what museums hope to achieve and how we evaluate the extent to which these aspirations may be realized.

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Creating Shared Value

Michael Porter, Mark Kramer

The concept of creating ‘shared value’ focuses on the connections between societal and economic progress and has the power to unleash the next wave of global growth.

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Webinar

Collective Impact

Mark Kramer, John Kania

Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, yet the social sector remains focused on the isolated intervention of individual organizations.

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Event

Lobbying for Good

Kyle Peterson, Marc Pfitzer

Companies are defying the stereotype that all corporate lobbying is self-interested by advocating for social issues that matter to business.

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Catalytic Philanthropy

Mark Kramer

Despite vast spending, philanthropists have fallen short. What we need: Catalytic Philanthropy.

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Webinar

Strategy & Society: The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility

Michael Porter, Mark Kramer

Moving past generic CSR principles, learn how societal influence is becoming the new frontier of competitive advantage.

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Podcast

The Networked Nonprofit

Jane Wei-Skillern and Sonia Marciano

Some of the world’s most successful organizations stay small, sharing their load with like-minded, long-term partners. The success of these networked nonprofits suggests that organizations should focus less on growing themselves and more on cultivating their networks.

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The Power of Strategic Mission Investing

Mark Kramer, Sarah Cooch

To foster dramatic change, foundations need a fundamentally different approach to mission investing: making mission investments that complement grantmaking.

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Why Engage the Public Sector and How?

Greg Hills, Maximilian Martin

This article explores different ways in which foundations can interact with governments in order to achieve social impact.

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Changing the Game

Mark Kramer, John Kania

Companies that get into the CSR game and play to win will reap disproportionate social impact, economic rewards, and reputational benefits.

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Scaling Social Impact

Mark Kramer

The business metaphor has imprisoned much new thinking in the social sector – and the limitations are most apparent in this widespread ambition, shared by many funders and nonprofit leaders alike, of “going to scale” through rapid organizational growth.

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Leading Boldly

Ronald Heifetz, John Kania, Mark Kramer

Foundations can enhance the impact of their traditional approaches to social change by harnessing imaginative and even controversial leadership. This Stanford Social Innovation Review article focuses on how Adaptive Leadership can be applied to complex social challenges.

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Mapping Grantee Clusters

Mark Kramer

Foundations can boost impact and sharpen strategy by explicitly mapping clusters of grantees and managing the clusters.

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Aspiring to a Plan - And Acheiving It

Owen Stearns

This article features an interview with Wendy Ault, the Executive Director of the MELMAC Foundation, and in which she talks about the problem they faced and the process FSG and MELMAC went through together to create a strategic plan.

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Corporate Giving and the Corporate Foundation

John Kania, Marc Pfitzer, Kyle Peterson

There is no compelling reason why every corporation should have a foundation. Companies must focus instead on the best way to achieve social impact and competitive advantage.

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Notable Books: How to Change the World

Mark Kramer

Mark Kramer reviews the book "How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas" by David Bornstein.

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The Evaluation Matrix

Mark Kramer

Evaluation is one of the most confusing topics in philanthropy – in part because it embraces multiple definitions that are often jumbled together.

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Benchmarking Philanthropy

John Kania

Benchmarking philanthropic performance against industry peers is extremely helpful in finding ways to increase both the business and social benefit of every dollar the company contributes.

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Doing More With Less

Mark Kramer, Sarah Cooch, Owen Stearns

How one financial services company dramatically enhanced its social impact by focusing less than half of its giving on a strategic initiative.

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CSR - A Religion with Too Many Priests?

Michael Porter

In this interview, Michael Porter discusses corporate philanthropy, the implications for corporate competitiveness and calls for academics to provide a conceptual framework for the topic.

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Measuring Success in Donor Development

Rebecca Graves, Owen Stearns

If community foundations are to learn from each other’s success, they must find ways to create truly comparable performance data.

Report

Design for Giving - Understanding What Motivates Corporate Philanthropy

John Kania, Mindy Oakley

What motivates corporate philanthropy? The majority of grants can be explained by three motivational clusters: community obligation, reputation building, and strategic. Maximizing impact means managing the mix.

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The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy

Michael Porter, Mark Kramer

The authors argue that CSR should be a win-win situation – for society and the corporation.

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Allocating Resources in a Time of Scarcity

Mark Kramer, John Kania

In tough times foundations should concentrate their giving in those areas in which their expertise, relationships, and grantees create the greatest value.

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A Different View on Community Funds

Mark Kramer

In this letter to the editor, Kramer takes exception to an article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy--and argues that the most successful community foundations will be those that respond simultaneously to the needs of their community and their donors.

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Paying the Price of Innovation

Mark Kramer, John Kania

Our communities would be poorer were community foundations to forego the rich range of services they provide. On the other hand, community foundations cannot be expected to sustain these services without paying for them somehow.

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Who Exactly are the Customers of a Nonprofit Organization?

Mark Kramer

Every nonprofit institution has three “customers:” the clients it serves, the donors, and the volunteers or staff members who help get the work done. The failure to serve any one, will sooner or later undermine the organization's survival.

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Foundations Don't Understand What it Means to Take Risks

Mark Kramer

Risk isn't necessarily bad. In fact, the goal should not be to eliminate it, but to understand it, mitigate it through grant design where possible, and to match the level of risk taken to the importance of the associated results.

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Helping to Prevent a Culture of Inadequacy

Mark Kramer

Foundations often complain about the inefficiency and “lack of scale” that characterize many of the small organizations they support. Yet seldom do they recognize that their own philosophy of giving may be one cause of the problem.

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Grantmakers Shouldn't Play with Matches

Mark Kramer

Making a matching grant seems like the easiest way for a foundation to get the most “leverage” from its giving.  However, the leverage, or added value, of a matching grant is often only illusory. 

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Philanthropy's New Agenda - Creating Value

Michael Porter, Mark Kramer

FSG founders Porter and Kramer make the case for foundation strategy in this seminal piece. If foundations serve only as passive middlemen, as mere conduits for giving, then they fall far short of their potential and of society's expectations of them.

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When Is a Seed Grant Not a Seed Grant?

Mark Kramer

Donors should not reflexively reject providing operating support to grantees. By providing operating funds to well-run nonprofits, foundations help put ideas and research into
practice.

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Mixed Motives

Mark Kramer

Any donor's giving has multiple motivations. In this piece, Kramer argues that there are three primary motivational categories of giving and that by establishing budgets for each type and consciously considering one's motivations, donors can improve their impact.

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