Aligning Program Impact

Kraft Foods Inc., as one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world recognizes meeting its corporate responsibilities as a public company and global citizen is the right thing to do and right for the business. To that end, Kraft manages Health & Wellness philanthropic programs including Healthy Lifestyles and Hunger through its Corporate Community Involvement (CCI) team.

Aligning Headquarter and Chapter Outcomes

Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) creates, finds, and supports programs that directly improve the health and well being of children. The organization wanted to measure and thereby improve the performance of its Global Office (GO) and its more than three hundred RMHC Chapters around the globe. Additionally, RMHC needed to understand the meaningful outcomes it was achieving through its myriad programs including Ronald McDonald House®, Ronald McDonald Family Room™, Ronald McDonald Care Mobile™, and global grantmaking. Ultimately, RMHC sought a more meaningful relationship with its donors, including McDonald’s Corporation and its Owner/ Operators; prioritizing outcomes and measures provided the perfect opportunity for the various stakeholders to communicate.

Achieving Healthy Growth

Easter Seals, a nonprofit organization helping people with disabilities gain greater independence, experienced tremendous growth in the 1990s and early 2000s. However, this rapid growth presented a quandary for the organization’s leadership: how could they ensure each additional affiliate maintained the quality of the Easter Seals brand? They settled on a strategy called “Healthy Growth” that would enable the organization to grow in a sustainable manner. To meet this end, Easter Seals leadership wanted to create a systematic process for comparing the performance of its 84 affiliates and establishing best practices.

Communicating Organizational Impact

KnowledgeWorks Foundation, Ohio’s largest public education philanthropy, empowers communities to improve education through a hands-on approach to philanthropy. Although the Foundation had been committed to rigorous performance measurement since its inception, the board and senior leadership sought to further integrate measurement into the management of philanthropic programs and business processes. They wanted to enhance decision-making capacity, improve resource allocation, facilitate communications, and build greater alignment between initiative-level and organization-wide strategy. Initiative leaders were interested in communicating program performance to the board and senior leadership.

American Red Cross
The Ball Foundation
Boys and Girls Clubs of America
Easter Seals
Goodwill Industries    
Humane Society of the United States
LaSalle Bank
Levi Strauss Foundation
OfficeMax
Ronald McDonald House Charities
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
United Way of Metropolitan Chicago
White-Williams Scholars