This week's Grantmakers for Effective Organizations' conference was titled: "Powerful Partnerships: Grantmaker Practices That Improve Grantee Performance". The conference has some great sessions on evaluation, assessing grantee performance, capacity building, foundation strategy, measurement, new technologies, etc. While these explicit themes were certainly topical, the burgeoning undercurrent was what I found to be particularly interesting. Cutting across all of the sessions was a real sense of soul-searching for what the proper role of foundations should be. ...

Here are some good snippets, tools and worksheets from our book Benchmarking for Nonprofits provided by our publisher, Fieldstone. ...

I was talking with a foundation CEO last week about why she really "cared" about measuring impact. I got a common response "we need to know our dollars are being spent...we need accountability." But then it hit me. The real problem is, that's a curiosity...but what's the hard business driver? Bottom line is: curiosity doesn't change markets; business drivers do. ...

As many of you know, the Senate Finance Committee (SFC), under Senator Grassley's leadership (Dean Zerbe is the key SFC staffer) , has been considering a series of new proposals ...

Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, is proactively making significant contributions to schools and hospitals in Angola as part of strategic market entry to that country. Exxon is one of the many multinational corporations seeking a license to operate through charity in emerging economies. By 2010, Exxon expects African nations to provide more than 30% of its oil and gas reserves. ...

CSI (Corporate Social Impact) is the new CSR. It's not just about doing good things. it's about having impact. And corporations are getting hip to that message. ...