Learning from our Grantmaking Investments

The John Templeton Foundation is currently searching for a Vice President to lead our Evaluation Department. We encourage qualified candidates to visit www.templetoncareers.org to learn more about this opportunity.

The Foundation is fully committed to documenting and analyzing the philanthropic return on our philanthropic investments. We recognize, however, that the field of philanthropic evaluation offers no single "silver bullet" that can provide or simulate a bottom line genuinely comparable to the kind of clear return on investment (ROI) data that every for-profit business receives in the normal course of its work.

Still, we are determined to develop and implement systems and mechanisms that will give us the honest, objective feedback that will bring about benchmarking and organizational learning. In the years ahead, we hope that the implementation of these systems will result in significant insights that enhance and significantly strengthen our grantmaking strategies, including our processes for the submission and review of proposals.

Currently, however, the Foundation has yet to put in place these evaluation and feedback systems.

This lack of feedback certainly is not new for philanthropy, but in recent years it has gotten more interesting — and complicated. Foundations of similar scale and scope are managing ever larger and more complex program portfolios around the world, and we are awash with data of various kinds — "pixels" rather than a clear "picture." That is why we are seeking to develop intuitive, visual and non-bureaucratic tools and techniques to help us and our grantees track progress, measure success, and make adjustments and improvements along the way. We also hope to learn from — and share our learning with — a variety of other foundations, organizations, and companies.

Our freedom from commercial imperatives allows us the opportunity to define what success really is — and is not. However, being rigorous with donor intent, clear in objectives and honest in evaluation does not mean that we should expect "success stories" only. Like venture capital firms, foundations are designed to work on difficult and untested problems and opportunities, including those that so far have been overlooked or sidestepped — or which have been unresponsive to the previous application of money and talent. Acknowledging this reality means openly accepting — and expecting — a broader spectrum of outcomes, including not-so-occasional failures in more speculative and cutting-edge activities (just as you would expect with a research lab or startup company).

We invite you to visit this section of our website periodically to learn about our progress in establishing a full-service Evaluation Department. We also welcome your suggestions. Please email us at evaluation@templeton.org.

About