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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7. Staffing to Accomplish Value-Added Goals
Management consultant Jim Collins argues that great nonprofits, like great companies, concentrate on "getting the right people and hanging on to them" and sees "developing a sustainable resource engine to deliver superior performance" as being as important as strategic focus and pursuit of comparative advantage in distinguishing "great" from simply "good" nonprofits.(4) His principles apply with particular force to value-added foundations.

Hire expert, professional staff. Recruiting and enabling a professional staff is the sine qua non for a mid-sized foundation like the Fund to achieve its mission. The Fund has sought and succeeded in hiring staff who are highly qualified in the various disciplines associated with health policy, as well as research, survey techniques and analysis, and communications.

Strive to retain staff and promote stability. Staff turnover is inevitable in a field of high professional mobility like health care, but the Fund explicitly attempts to retain key staff and take steps to minimize the effects of turnover when it occurs. New staff members receive an orientation on ongoing work and are encouraged to assume accountability for that work.

Take steps to identify job satisfaction issues. The 2005 Center for Effective Philanthropy Survey of Foundation Staff (encompassing six peer foundations) revealed that Fund staff give their organization comparatively high ratings on the effectiveness of its programs and processes. The results also pointed to areas where the Fund could improve job satisfaction.

Lead major programs from inside the foundation. Over the past five years, the Fund has relied increasingly on its own staff to lead selected major programs-a shift from its earlier tendency to use external program directors who had responsibilities to their own organizations and other funders.
 
 
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Center for Effective Philanthropy, 2005 Survey of Foundation Staff (composite scores on multiple dimensions of job satisfaction, foundation processes, and foundation performance).