A letter from the Office of Strategy and Evaluation

When I joined the John Templeton Foundation in August 2006, I was reminded of a quip about feedback: it's simple to define, and almost impossible to avoid – unless you work in philanthropy. While freedom from the usual commercial pressures can be liberating in some respects, even highly creative organizations need timely and precise feedback in order to achieve the great things they originally set out to do. That is why we are determined to develop and implement mechanisms that will give us the honest, objective feedback we need if we are to be successful as a catalyst for significant discoveries and breakthroughs in our funding areas – a tall order under any circumstance, no matter how large the endowment or how passionate those involved.

This lack of feedback problem certainly isn't new for philanthropy, but in recent years it has gotten more interesting – and complicated. This foundation and its peer institutions of similar scale and scope are running 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 my colleagues and I will be working to develop intuitive, visual and un-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.

A foundation's freedom from commercial imperatives also means having to define what success really is, and isn't. However, being rigorous with donor intent, clear in objectives and honest in evaluation doesn't 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 have so far been overlooked or sidestepped – or which have been unresponsive to the previous application of money and talent. Acknowledging that 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).

In a spirit of humility, I also want to acknowledge that philanthropy is actually a very old activity, and that not everything valuable can be precisely measured. Around the year 1263, a man named John de Balliol funded a house rental so that a group of poor students could get a university education. Nearly seven centuries later, that single act of inspired grant-making was still paying dividends, helping to give a young American named John Templeton a profoundly transformative life experience at what was by then world-famous Balliol College, Oxford. The philanthropic Return on Investment? I couldn't even begin to guess.

Sincerely,

Stephen Klimczuk
Vice President, Strategy and Evaluation

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