Executive Vice President—COO's Report
Foundation Performance Measurement: A Tool for Institutional Learning and Improvement
The Fund's Approach to Performance Assessment
Principles for Value-Added Grantmaking
1. Developing Sound Strategies
2. Capitalizing on the Fund's Comparative Advantages
3. Executing Strategy
4. Selecting and Positioning Grantees for Success
5. Contributing to and Monitoring Work in Progress
6. Communicating Results to Influential Audiences
7. Staffing to Accomplish Value-Added Goals
Learning From Experience

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4. Selecting and Positioning Grantees for Success
The success of any grant is ultimately contingent on the abilities, experience, and commitment of the principal investigators and the strength of the partnership established between them and the Fund.

Look to researchers with practical experience in large public programs. In the Fund's areas of interest, researchers with backgrounds in the Medicaid or Medicare programs often prove to be unusually productive because of their policy instincts and understanding of administrative practicalities. These individuals tend to be based in premier research consulting firms, and therefore expensive, but they usually demonstrate their worth.

Work with project directors who have performed well in the past. The Fund benefits greatly from capitalizing on past investments and relationships. Yet our experience also indicates the need to be on the lookout for diminishing returns with higher-profile researchers whose professional responsibilities and external commitments are continually expanding. In such cases, it is probably not wise to press grantees who are reluctant to take on additional assignments.

Be cautious about putting research responsibilities into the hands of non-researcher practitioners. Investigators whose strengths are largely operational or activist are unlikely to carry out data-specific analysis successfully. In some instances, the pairing of an implementer/activist with a researcher yields a productive partnership.

Recognize that technically oriented investigators may need help with communications. Grantees with strong technical skills and reputations ensure that the work produced is well received in their fields. Products from such grantees sometimes benefit from the efforts of Fund staff to sharpen their policy relevance.

Pay particular attention to the leadership of multidisciplinary, synthesizing projects. The success of chartbooks and commissioned sets of papers depends on a very energetic and capable coordinator, one expert in his or her own right and skilled at leading multidisciplinary teams and drawing out the major lessons from a large body of material.
 
 
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The success of the Fund's chartbook series on health care quality in the U.S. is due in large part to the skill, experience, and energy of Sheila Leatherman, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a leading expert in the quality field. The latest chartbook, on care provided to Medicare beneficiaries, was released in May 2005 at the National Press Club.