Foundation management

2000, 61 pages; published by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, 250 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10177-0026, 212-551-9100.

We've all seen them, or worse, even written them: proposals and papers that promise to empower targeted entities to promulgate comprehensive cutting edge paradigms and strategies through proactive collaborative linkages based on intensive learnings and extrapolations that impact at-risk populations through best practices.

1999, 23 pages. Final report of collaborative research project, Millennium Communications Group, Inc., 58 Salem Street, Andover, Massachusetts 01810.

Although its main focus seems to be on exploring ways of expanding philanthropy among new donors, Philanthropy's Current and New Stakeholders: Building a Common Vision for an Expanded Future also offers some interesting — and disturbing — observations on how traditional philanthropy is viewed.

How can the arts promote positive social change? That's what the staff and board of the Kentucky Foundation for Women wanted to find out. We thought we knew. Or at least we thought we had a pretty good idea. After all, our mission is to promote positive social change through varied feminist expression in the arts, and we have been around for fifteen years.

A growing chorus of complaint has emerged about foundation giving in recent years. According to critics, foundations do not distribute enough in grant payments to justify their privileged position. On average, foundations pay out about 5.5 percent of their total assets each year and many critics believe that is just not enough.