Individual Donor

This brief article offers a concise and practical look at the important difference between "outcomes" and "impact" in measuring the effectiveness of grants and programs, and provides information on designing evaluation methods and what measures to best apply.

Posted courtesy of the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Download:

   On the Frontlines (312Kb)

This book features profiles of 18 family foundations and giving groups that have developed unique or noteworthy programs of arts giving, reflecting the values and character of the donors in a variety of ways. Interviews with principals and trustees from each foundation provide further insights to how these programs were developed and realized.

90 pages, perfect bound
ISBN 0-9705157-4-X

This Field Resource Book profiles nine foundations that provide general operating support to arts organizations. The featured foundations reflect geographic and institutional diversity, as well as myriad grantmaking approaches. The chapters are the result of research and interviews with senior staff at each of the nine foundations.

Each chapter includes six sections:

Investing in Capacity Building: A Guide to High-Impact Approaches Improving management practices—the most challenging aspect of capacity building—is essential to increasing the impact of a nonprofit's limited resources. Author Barbara Blumenthal helps grantmakers and consultants design better methods of helping nonprofits, while showing nonprofit managers how to get more effective support.

Author Paul Firstenberg challenges grantmakers to proactively assist their grantee's management in maximizing the nonprofit's social impact, showing grantseekers how potential funders increasingly emphasize organizational capacity building.

Author James Joseph has traveled the world interviewing men and women who contribute to the public good. In The Charitable Impulse, he explores the varied impulses that motivate philanthropists in different cultures.

The Foundation Center, September 1989, 210 pp.

Available online from The Foundation Center.

Authors Barbara Kibbe and Fred Setterberg explain how the appropriate use of consultants can generate exciting methods of forwarding your organization's goals.

John Nason, drawing on years of experience as a trustee, guides foundation officials and their boards through difficulties and provides insights into critical areas of concern.

The Foundation Center, March 1989, 173 pp.

Available online from The Foundation Center.

2008, 150 pages. National Endowment for the Arts, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C., 20506, 202-682-5400, www.nea.gov

http://www.nea.gov/research/ArtistsInWorkforce.pdf