Philanthropic Growth and Impact

With a few actions, grantmakers can boost the use of health data in their communities. This article draws upon the work of The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati and describes how it is using data and creating new data resources for its grantees and others in its service area – Cincinnati, Ohio and 20 surrounding counties in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.

If we were measuring the health of our foundations by financial growth over the past two years, some of us might be considering life-support systems. Fortunately for the field, and for those we support through our grantmaking, the health of our organizations is not measured by dollars alone. The measure of our work is defined in people

A recently released report from The Center for Effective Philanthropy, Indicators of Effectiveness, comments on foundations’ growing understanding and interest in assessing their overall performance, noting that many are “convinced that better performance assessment will lead to greater effectiveness and, in turn, to more social impact on the people and issues they affect.”

The current debate about government funding has sparked renewed interest in faith-based organizations and their role in meeting the economic, health, and educational needs of society. The small, open country chapel…the urban church with declining parishioners and rising community needs…the burgeoning suburban congregation of young families…the mega-church with a multimillion dollar budget…all are lumped together with countless other religious groups as one solution to the nation’s needs.

When it comes to funding biomedical research, there is a
perception among health grantmakers that only the Goliaths
of the world can make a difference. A foundation must be as
large as the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, for instance, to hire
a sophisticated staff that can comprehend complex scientific
protocols. It must have the deep pockets and staying power
of a Howard Hughes Medical Institute to afford the notoriously expensive equipment and salaries, and to take a gamble on a payoff that may be long in coming, if ever.