The Commonwealth Fund's Performance Scorecard is designed to help the Board achieve a reliable assessment of the foundation's overall effectiveness and spot weaknesses and opportunities to be addressed. It will be updated annually and revised as necessary, with particular attention to the need for new metrics in response to the foundation's evolving priorities and the emergence of new issues.
Surveys by the Center for Effective Philanthropy of a substantial group of private foundations reveal that the two top areas where foundation trustees seek more involvement in their foundation's activities are 1) assessing the foundation's social impact, and 2) assessing the foundation's overall performance.
(21) Development of performance scorecards by a small group of foundations, including The Commonwealth Fund, along with the work of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, and a few other organi-zations, indicates the potential of this and comple-mentary approaches for meeting not only the needs of trustees, but also those of regulators, legislators, and the media.
(22) Certainly, looking at a multifaceted set of performance indicators is preferable to the all-too-prevalent focus on poorly defined and often inappropriate measures of performance.
The challenge of developing a performance scorecard will vary greatly from one foundation to another, as will the appropriate features of any single scorecard. But it is difficult to imagine a situation, especially for mid-size to large foundations, where one is not feasible and where the institution and its stakeholders would not benefit from the process and findings.
