The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) held their annual conference in Chicago, IL earlier this month. I had the chance to attend the entire conference and will be sharing some of what I learned over the two days of plenary sessions, breakout groups and casual conversations with philanthropic colleagues.

The major conference theme was foundation strategy, leveraging off of some insightful research completed by CEP staff. A summary of CEP's work in this area can be found at http://www.effectivephilanthropy.org/research/research_fps.html.

CEP defined ‘strategy’ as decision making that is consistent with and acknowledges external context and internal alignment. Essentially, can somebody draw a logical link between external needs and internal abilities and actions? CEP’s classifications are shared below, with ‘degrees of strategic thinking’ increasing from top to bottom:

Classifications were based on phone interviews with just over forty private foundations. CEP staff then reviewed the transcripts (1,700+ pages worth!) and built characteristics for each foundation type. Surprisingly, the forty respondents were classified evenly across the four types. Gill Foundation was noted as an example of a “Total Strategist.”

Our take: I find it unlikely that any foundation falls solely into one category. More likely, foundations share features and characteristics of multiple strategy types and possibly even all four. The challenge, of course, is for foundation leadership to acknowledge their tendencies and make the commitment, if so inclined, to increase their strategic intent and ability to measure social impact. We have found that measurement and strategy are inherently tied and one tends to beget the other.