PhilanTopic

The Social Progress Index: Measuring What Counts?

The Washington, D.C.-based Social Progress Imperative made a splash at the Skoll World Forum earlier this month when it launched its Social Progress Index (SPI), an ambitious effort to inform and influence development policies around the globe.

Developed by Harvard Business School professor and competitiveness expert Michael E. Porter in collaboration with Scott Stern of MIT, the index is founded on the principle that "what we measure guides the choices we make." To that end, the index analyzes fifty-two outcome-based (as opposed to input-based) indicators in three dimensions of social progress: meeting basic human needs; establishing the foundations of well-being that enable individuals to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives; and creating opportunity for all to reach their full potential. (For a complete breakdown of indicators, click here.)

While the index and the report (154 pages, PDF) released in conjunction with the launch of the index includes only fifty countries, those countries represent three-quarters of the world's population. Here's a chart from the report that plots their aggregate SPI scores against GDP per capita (PPP):

As the chart shows, the countries included in the index and report are fairly well distributed across income levels, ranging from Switzerland at the high end with a GDP per capita of $51,262; to middle-income countries such as the Russian Federation ($21,246), South Africa ($10,960), and China ($8,400); to lower-income countries like Egypt ($6,281), India ($3,627), and Mozambique ($975).

So, what do the SPI team's findings based on an analysis of a full year of data reveal? For starters, that countries' level of overall development -- as measured by GDP per capita and/or indices of global competitiveness -- often mask striking social and environmental challenges and strengths. For example, Costa Rica, a lower-middle-income country with a PPP of $12,157, ranks twelfth overall in the index, ahead of richer countries such as Israel ($27,825) and Argentina ($17,554); nineteenth in terms of basic human needs; and eighth for opportunity -- ahead of France, Japan, and Germany, all of which rank higher in terms of overall score. In contrast, the United Arab Emirates, the third-richest country ($47,893) in the SPI sample, ranks nineteenth overall, including eleventh in terms of basic human needs, but only thirtieth for opportunity and a disappointing thirty-seventh in terms of foundations of well-being.

The index/report also seem to indicate that economic development is necessary but not sufficient for social progress; that it is possible to achieve a high level of social progress at a relatively modest income level; and that while low-income countries are clustered at the bottom of the index, there is a wide range of social progress within this group. For instance, Mozambique, the poorest country in the SPI sample, is ranked fourteenth in terms of equality and inclusion, whereas Rwanda, the third-poorest country in the sample, is ranked forty-fourth for equality and inclusion. At the same time, Rwanda tops the index in terms of ecosystem sustainability, while the United States, which has the second-highest PPP in the sample and is ranked sixth overall, ranks near the very bottom (forty-eighth) in terms of ecosystem sustainability.

If by highlighting each country's strengths and weaknesses with respect to various aspects of social progress these data get you thinking differently about development, then SPI is off to a good start. "The purpose of the Social Progress Index," the report's authors note, "is to benchmark performance and motivate improvement while providing useful insights that will help all stakeholders to make better choices, prioritize investments, and strengthen implementation capacity to improve the lives of citizens."

Looking ahead, SPI plans to refine its model based on feedback and empirical testing, eventually expanding the number of countries in the index from fifty to a hundred and twenty. It also plans to form a Social Progress Network comprising partners from research and academic institutions, think tanks, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and international development organizations "to identify the policies, institutions, legal frameworks, and financing mechanisms that can drive more effective and efficient social progress, through international benchmarking and fostering specific research projects." And it will explore the possibility of creating a Social Progress Capacity Index to measure the potential of a country's government, business, and civil society institutions to contribute to innovation in the social sector.

In the meantime, governments are paying attention, with Paraguay already having agreed to incorporate the SPI model into its national development framework. Which perhaps begs the question: How will the philanthropic sector, in the U.S. and elsewhere, respond? The index has already begun to spark discussions about impact investing and social entrepreneurship. Will foundations become more active in those conversations than they have been to date? And how, if at all, might the index change the way we approach economic development -- both overseas and here in the United States? Have thoughts you'd like to share? Use the comments section below.

-- Kyoko Uchida

Weekend Link Roundup (February 16-17, 2013)

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Arts and Culture

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, James Irvine Foundation president and CEO Jim Canales discusses the foundation's new arts strategy, which has received both positive and negative feedback from the nonprofit community. "I admire those who have stepped forward to criticize aspects of our strategy, whether they believe it is wrong on its merits or they view it as yet another example of 'strategic philanthropy' gone awry, where we are dictating and imposing our solutions upon the field," writes Canales. "That is certainly not out intention.

What is different for us in our new Arts strategy is that rather than continuing with a broad-based approach that funded projects across multiple objectives, we made the strategic decision to direct our finite resources in a way that, in our view, will best position the arts field for future viability and success. In doing so, we are openly expressing a point of view about how we think the field must evolve to ensure its dynamism and relevance. Yet, we are very clear about our willingness to learn with our partners in this effort, to refine our approach accordingly, and to help to advance the field's understanding of the many ways to engage a broader cross-section of Californians (in our case) in the arts....

So, please keep the ideas, observations and critiques coming. It's the best way to ensure we can achieve the end we all agree upon: a vibrant, relevant and successful arts field....

Fundraising

The Mertz Gilmore Foundation and NYU Wagner's Research Center for Leadership in Action have issued a new report, Beyond Foundation Funding: Revenue-Generating Strategies for Sustainable Social Change (84 pages, PDF), that's designed to aid social change organizations, funders, and technical assistance providers in discussing and implementing different fundraising and revenue-generating practices.

Future Fundraising Now blogger Jeff Brooks has a few choice words for fundraising consultants who show up at sector conferences with slick PowerPoint presentations designed to shame attendees into contracting their services, but who never, ever reveal whether the campaigns they are so proud of creating actually worked or not.

Impact/Effectiveness

On her blog, Beth Kanter has a few tips for nonprofits struggling to measure "difficult stuff" like social media results and success. Among other things, Kanter suggests that organizations spend time "brainstorming the 'chain of events' of how your organization's strategic use of social media can be a pathway to your organization's overall definition of success or mission."

The Weakonomist reflects on a recent Wall Street Journal article from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair Bill Gates in which Gates described how his foundation is working to improve measurement of the problems it has set out to tackle, which in turn improves its understanding of a problem. An approving Weakonomist notes that while "Measuring a problem is sometimes more difficult than finding the solution...this is where more work should be focused."

On the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog, Mark Russell takes issue with Gates' argument, which Russell says "reinforce[s] the myth that if only nonprofits would follow the business model, the world would be a better place." Russell goes on to point out that there are any number of measurements that businesses don't track, such as the chemicals used in the hydrofracking process and how those chemicals might affect local residents, and/or information that businesses don't share about the things they do track, such as "who pays for [the] data (and who benefits)." And he closes by reminding us why key stakeholders need to be involved in any measurement process:

In short, to be data savvy is to be a bit of a data skeptic. As [MathBabe blogger Cathy] O’Neill says, there's "power behind a data collection process." Part of that power is to choose what to measure, based on values, or biases, or simply limited resources. As Fay Twersky, director of the Effective Philanthropy Group at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, puts it:..."We cannot evaluate everything, so we choose strategically...."

And in a long piece over at The Nonprofit Quarterly, Rick Cohen argues that mission-related investing is "worthy of recognition and support not just by nonprofits managing large endowments, but by mainstream nonprofits concerned about maximizing the capital markets' support of socially beneficial investment opportunities."

Journalism/Media

On the Humanosphere blog, Tom Paulson weighs in with a thoughtful consideration of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "strategic media partnerships and concludes that

as journalists and news organizations come to depend increasingly on philanthropies like the Gates Foundation for financial support, it is even more important than ever that we stay focused on our main job -- arguably, pushing for critical analysis and accountability -- and tread carefully when asked to strategically partner with even the most well-intentioned humanitarian in promoting a cause...or solution.

Philanthropy

On the GrantCraft blog, Lisa Philp, the Foundation Center's vice president for strategic philanthropy, discusses the genesis of Next Gen Donors: Shaping the Future of Philanthropy, a companion piece to the just-released Next Gen Donors: Respecting Legacy, Revolutionizing Philanthropy(80 pages, PDF), which found that high-net-worth Gen X and Geny Y (Millennial) individuals are keenly interested in structuring their philanthropy around personal values, measurable impact, and hands-on engagement. A project of GrantCraft, the Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University, and 21/64, the companion report highlights the "practical wisdom" and insights of next-gen donors with respect to their interest in engagement, new ways of learning, and making a difference sooner rather than later.

Transparency

On her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz reflects on two recent examples of a foundation confronting its critics publicly. In the first, Irvine Foundation CEO Jim Canales (see above) linked directly to bloggers critical of Irvine's new arts strategy. And in the second, the Knight Foundation said it regretted paying Jonah Lehrer, a journalist who was caught plagiarizing by his employer, The New Yorker, and subsequently fired, $20,000 to speak at a recent Knight-sponsored media seminar. Bernholz said she found herself

considering these two events from a few steps further back. We criticize foundations for being opaque, and mostly they are. Steps toward transparency aren't going to be easy (sounds real good if you say it real fast). Both of these examples involve foundations actually in conversation with publics they could (easily, legally, and rather comfortably) ignore. The more important question for all us may be -- why is that the case?

Water/Sanitation/Hygiene (WASH)

Over at the WASHfunders.org blog, our FC colleagues Nina and Seema share a three-minute video in which Water.org co-founder and award-winning actor Matt Damon pledges to stop using the toilet until more people take the issue of water scarcity seriously. "Aside from publicizing WASH issues, the video aims to inspire people to action," they write, "[and] directs viewers to a new web site, strikewithme.org, where they can learn more about the crisis, and donate their money and social media accounts to the campaign."

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And enjoy the long weekend!

-- The Editors

WASHME: Making WASH Orgs Sustainable

The Foundation Center has been collecting collaboration stories for its Nonprofit Collaboration Database, a searchable collection of 670+ profiles that gets 2,000+ visits every month. And this one just came in. (Have a story you'd like to share? Learn more here.)

"Sustainability is one of the most pressing issues facing the WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) sector today. More than 30 percent of WASH projects fail after two to five years." -- Sustainability WASH Web site

In 2011, a group of NGOs, funders, and academics started to ask hard questions about the sustainability of their own programs and those of other organizations in the WASH sector. One result of that effort was Sustainable WASH, an online platform for assessing, learning about, and sharing best practices in the field.

And one initiative of Sustainable WASH is the WASH Monitoring Exchange (WASHME), which was developed by several leading WASH organizations to eliminate barriers to post-construction monitoring in the belief that such monitoring is critical for the ongoing improvement of organizational practice and understanding. Any organization is encouraged to submit data, which will be made publicly available.

The ultimate goal of this work is to create a set of indicators that other WASH organizations can use to measure the sustainability of their own work. Leading partners in the collaboration are:

• Improve International (Atlanta, Georgia)
• Global Water Challenge (Arlington, Virginia)
• Blue Planet Network (Redwood City, California)
• Water 1st International (Seattle, Washington)
• Water For People (Denver, Colorado)

You can read more about the WASHME collaboration in the Nonprofit Collaboration Database.

And for submitting its story to the database, WASHME will receive a free Digital Grant Guide and a 20-percent discount on a full-day course.

How about you? Are you ready to share your collaboration story?

-- Sandy Pon

Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor…Your Grants Data

(Jeff Falkenstein is vice president of data architecture at the Foundation Center.)

To say that Jeff Raikes' announcement of the launch of Markets for Good was big news is an understatement. Raikes' call to improve the philanthropic information infrastructure and support the quality of and access to data speaks to the core of the Foundation Center's mission and vision. The center, along with fifteen partner foundations, recently made a big announcement of its own when it launched the Reporting Commitment, a movement to improve the transparency of, and reduce duplication among, foundations through the adoption of common reporting standards and a consistent geographic taxonomy. Needless to say, these two developments have the potential to significantly impact the future of the philanthropic sector.

For over fifty years, the Foundation Center has aggregated information on U.S. foundations pulled from publicly available 990-PF tax returns, annual reports, press releases, foundation Web sites, and other information sources. In addition to offering this data through the Foundation Directory Online, the center features it in its many research reports and issue-based portals, and has taken steps to incorporate it into grants management software as well as reports and portals developed with a number of foundations and other partners. Much of the value the center adds to the information we collect comes from an intensive review of hundreds of thousands of grants made by foundations from around the world. The center also identifies the recipients of those grants: who they are, what they do, where they (generally) work, and which populations they (generally) serve. Additional analysis is done to understand the purpose of the grant, the subject area funded, the type of support provided, the specific population and geographic area served by the grant, and the strategy behind it.

One of the biggest challenges of our work -- and the critique of our products and services we hear most often -- is directly related to the fact that it's difficult to get our hands on foundation data quickly enough to make these tools as useful as they need to be for program officers, researchers, academics, grantseekers, and others. Our response to this criticism has been to encourage foundations to report their grants data directly to us. In 1998, the center established its eGrant Reporting program, a set of standards for foundations to report data electronically to us via participating grants management software systems or through a self-created Excel file. Using the grants management software of their choice, foundations can generate Excel spreadsheets of their grants in a standardized format and e-mail them directly to us. Receiving grants information electronically in a consistent format enables us to process and publish the data in a more timely fashion, while giving foundations more control over how we represent their grantmaking and communicate their work to the world. The nearly seven hundred and fifty foundations currently participating in the program are able to report their grants in near-real-time and have that data uploaded to all the Foundation Center products and platforms where the data is featured. But while the program has been an important first step toward greater transparency in the sector, we’ve only scratched the surface.

Over the last few years, the center has been working with its foundation and grant management software partners to make it easier for foundations to report their data to us in a more timely fashion. In 2010, the center acquired Grantsfire and hGrant, an HTML-based micro-format grant reporting system, and adapted it to fully complement our existing eGrant reporting program. Grant feeds published by any foundation using the hGrant Reporting program are available to the public, for free, at Glasspockets.org, our transparency-focused Web site. Indeed, the hGrant system is at the heart of the Reporting Commitment initiative announced by the center and its fifteen foundation partners.

But the hGrant system is only a start. In the coming months, we will be developing xGrant, an XML-based machine-readable version of our eGrant Reporting standard that will allow for a more flexible and easily adapted standard beyond the current hGrant micro-format. We also will be surveying our software vendor partners about their preferred export method. Why offer three ways to report grants data? Because we recognize that foundations do things differently and have varying degrees of capacity, and we want to give them every opportunity to report their grants data in the most convenient way possible.

What's more, we are working to refine the eGrant reporting standard to align with other global reporting standards, including those developed by the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Why is this important? Because in order to get a holistic picture of how and where philanthropy complements international aid/bilateral organization/donor government financial flows, our standard needs to align with existing standards. To that end, we invite any and all standard-setting organizations and bodies to share their standards and taxonomies with us so we can map them to the eGrant standard. Creating "crosswalks" between standards will allow for deeper analysis of the full spectrum of development flows and contribute to greater collaboration among public, private, and philanthropic actors.

To demonstrate the usefulness of submitting data to the center in a standard format, we have been providing participating foundations with free maps of their grants -- maps that can be shared with their boards, staff, or deployed on their Web sites. Maps aside, we firmly believe that foundations which share their grants data via the eGrant Reporting program are also joining a larger conversation around transparency and open data, are putting themselves in a position to teach and learn from each other, and, as articulated by my colleague Larry McGill in the latest issue of Alliance magazine, are taking a significant step toward working more collaboratively and effectively.

New and powerful tools like WASHfunders, a Web portal for funders working to address the world's water crisis, and Philanthropy In/Sight Human Rights, an interactive mapping tool that displays grant funding for human rights issues, as well as studies like European Funding for Women and Girls are just a few examples of the ways in which foundations and funder coalitions are harnessing taxonomies and standards to forge a shared understanding of their work. The Foundation Center is delighted to contribute to this effort by offering products and services that can help funders and funder coalitions achieve their goals in this area. We encourage you to join us.

-- Jeff Falkenstein

Interested in becoming part of the eGrant Reporting community? Leave a comment below or contact Jeff at eGrants@foundationcenter.org.

[Infographic] The Water-Rich vs. the Water-Poor

Our infographic of the week illustrates the disparity in water consumption between "water-rich" countries with plentiful access to clean water and "water-poor" countries with little or limited access to clean water. It was created by Seametrics, a manufacturer of water flow meter technology. (H/t WASHfunders.org)

 

Source: Seametrics

On Building Community Online: A 'Flip' Chat With Paull Young, Director of Digital, charity: water

(This video was recorded as part of our "Flip" chat series of conversations with thought leaders in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. You can check out other videos in the series here, including our previous chat with Helena Monteiro, executive director of the Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support.)

There are currently 800 million people living without the very thing most of us take for granted: safe, clean drinking water.

Founded by former nightclub promoter Scott Harrison, charity: water has helped bring that precious commodity to two million people in the developing world. How? For starters, it has perfected the art of collaborating with local partners who know the language and customs of the target population and have mastered the logistical challenges of working in local communities.

The New York City-based nonprofit is also brilliant at fundraising and, largely through innovative digital outreach efforts like its birthday campaign, has raised more than $60 million for water projects in the developing world since it was founded in 2006.

What explains charity: water's phenomenal success? According to the organization's director of digital, Paull Young, it boils down to the following:

1. Be positive. Powerful stories with positive messages are more effective than stories that make people feel guilty.
2. Don't ask for money. What works with direct mail often doesn't work online. Instead of making an ask every time you communicate with your donors and supporters, give people a chance to learn about the "cool stuff" your organization is up to.
3. Give. Raise. Influence. Focus on building relationships with your donors and supporters that enable them to see how they can maximize their ability to give, fundraise, and influence others over a period of years.
4. Do it wrong quickly.
5. Help donors and supporters see their impact. People are more generous if they understand clearly how their money is being used.

Recently, I had a chance to chat with Young before he addressed a 501 Tech NYC event about the organization's birthday campaign, the metrics it uses to evaluate its online fundraising efforts, and a few of the fundraising lessons he and his colleagues have learned over the years.

(If you're reading this in an e-mail, click here.)

 

(Running time: 8 minutes, 8 seconds)

Have a thought or comment you'd like to share? Use the comments section below....

-- Regina Mahone

Innovation Forum 2012

We thought it would be fun (and interesting) to share the livestream of the Rockefeller Foundation's 2012 Innovation Forum, which is supposed to start around 12:45 EDT and is one component of the storied foundation's centennial celebration.

The forum is designed to explore solutions to pressing global challenges and this year will focus on ways of ensuring that the benefits of new technologies do not bypass the world's poor. To that end, the event will showcase cutting-edge inventions, convene thought leaders from different sectors, and feature discussions that explore opportunities to help those who are becoming more vulnerable due to pernicious economic, social, and environmental forces.

Live streaming by Ustream

Later this evening, the foundation will honor Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Sons Ltd.; Sir Ronald Cohen, chairman of the UK-based Portland Trust and Big Society Capital; and J. Carl Ganter, director and co-founder of Circle of Blue, an international network of journalists, scientists, and communications experts working to address and raise awareness of the global freshwater crisis, for their innovative work and philanthropy. And you can watch the whole thing from the comfort of your air-conditioned office.

World Water Day: A PubHub Reading List

(Kyoko Uchida manages PubHub, the Foundation Center's online catalog of foundation-sponsored publications. In her previous post, she looked at four reports that examine racial/ethnic disparities in higher education.)

To help mark World Water Day, we searched PubHub for reports that discuss efforts to improve access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) in the developing world -- efforts that in turn are linked to progress in the areas of health, education, and economic growth.

While the 2015 Millennium Development Goal target for halving the proportion of people who do not have access to safe drinking water has been met, according to a recent report from UNICEF and the World Health Organization, the target for halving the proportion of those without access to basic sanitation has not. Moreover, the aggregate figures mask significant regional variations in the progress achieved to date. The two reports highlighted below explore the complex challenges of implementing and sustaining effective WASH-related interventions.

Off-Track, Off-Target: Why Investment in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Is Not Reaching Those Who Need It Most (68 pages, PDF), a report from WaterAid, notes that in sub-Saharan Africa the target for access to sanitation is so off-track that at current rates it will not be met for two centuries: "In developing countries, spending on water, sanitation and hygiene services is minimal compared to health and education, and the share of aid flows going to water and sanitation has fallen over the last 15 years." Not only does inadequate investment in WASH initiatives undermine progress in the areas of health and education, it also exacerbates already stark inequities in access to services between rich and poor, rural and urban areas, and for women-led households and other marginalized groups.

What are the reasons behind the slow progress toward WASH-related goals in the region? The report's authors lay the blame at the feet of multiple actors and causes:

Political priorities lead governments to favour other sectors, improve places already served, or exclude poor and marginalised groups. Inadequate information hampers policy-making and planning, and lack of transparency is an obstacle to good monitoring and scrutiny. Aid is not well coordinated, is only loosely targeted according to need, and its effectiveness is constrained by red tape and lack of alignment with government systems. The sustainability of services rarely receives the attention it requires. These factors in turn undermine weak capability to capture, absorb and spend funds effectively, and lead to a vicious cycle of low investment and poor performance....

The report calls on national governments, donors, and civil society to break the WASH-related "cycle of low investment and poor performance" by:

• strengthening sector leadership;
• making equity and sustainability the focus of service delivery;
• substantially increasing funding, including government spending of at least 1 percent of GDP on sanitation programs and donor investments of $10 billion per year in the form of targeted grants (not loans);
• targeting resources better on the basis of need;
• using resources more effectively through increased flexibility on the terms of funding as well as coordination and alignment; and
• improving transparency and financial reporting.

And what can we in the United States do to help improve access to clean water and basic sanitation in the developing world?  U.S. WASH Advocacy: Landscape Report (18 pages, PDF), a report from FSG, notes that while the U.S. government contributed more than $800 million to WASH-related initiatives in 2009, many past interventions have fallen short of their promise. In order to promote efficient, targeted use of funds, more effective advocacy efforts, and improved practice in the field, the authors recommend focusing on five interdependent goals:

• increase the sustainability and effectiveness of WASH programs and services;
• direct U.S. government and multilateral aid to populations most in need (sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia);
• maintain current U.S. government funding for WASH-related initiatives;
• push for greater funding from non-U.S. government donors (i.e., corporations, foundations, multilaterals, the general public), and highlight sanitation as a sub-strategy of broader WASH-related efforts; and
• boost the quality of, demand for, and access to data across the WASH field.

According to the report's authors, a successful advocacy campaign targeting USAID, the State Department, Congress, the executive branch, multilateral agencies, foundations, and corporations would require a robust evidence base and experienced high-profile leadership. The report also recommends different approaches for each donor group:

Foundations -- Many foundations that fund in related areas (e.g., global health, environment, women's rights) do not prioritize WASH issues. There may be opportunities for high-level conversations and awareness-raising to increase the number of U.S. foundations that see WASH funding as a priority investment.

Corporations -- As more corporations come to see the alignment between WASH issues and their core business, WASH advocates should be proactive in engaging corporations as partners in WASH-related advocacy and interventions. The Global Water Challenge has done some work in this area, but with deeper cross-sector collaboration, corporations can become exponentially larger contributors to WASH issues in terms of their financial resources, as well as their products, services, and global reach.

Multilaterals -- While multilaterals likewise face funding constraints in today's slow-growth environment, even modest increases in development bank aid have the potential to create large impacts in the WASH field and should be pursued as a critical element of an overall WASH strategy.

The Public -- While awareness of WASH issues among the public is low and the infrastructure for raising funds inadequate, "clean water" is a highly resonant message when paired with effective marketing. The field should encourage and build on the efforts of organizations like charity: water and water.org to build public awareness of and support for WASH issues.

Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates, Conrad N. Hilton, and Howard G. Buffett foundations, the report's recommendations include strengthening leadership in the field, building and engaging broad coalitions, greater support for advocacy efforts, and improving data collection and dissemination.

If we are to meet the MDG target for access to basic sanitation and continue making progress on other WASH-related issues, governments, NGOs, donors, and local communities need to work together to target resources to regions with the highest need. This won’t happen overnight, but the steady increase in WASH-related support by U.S. foundations would suggest that we are moving in the right direction.

If you're interested in WASH-related issues and would like to learn more, take a look at these reports:

• Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Strategy Overview (6 pages, PDF)
  Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Promoting Good Hygiene Practices: Key Elements and Practical Lessons (12 pages, PDF)
  WaterAid Australia; International WaterCentre; IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre
• Mapping a Healthier Future: How Spatial Analysis Can Guide Pro-Poor Water and Sanitation Planning in Uganda (52 pages, PDF)
  World Resources Institute; Uganda Ministry of Health; Uganda Ministry of Water and Environment
• Assessing Microfinance for Water and Sanitation: Exploring Opportunities for Sustainable Scaling Up (66 pages, PDF)
  Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Improving Water and Sanitation Governance Through Citizens' Action (12 pages, PDF)
  WaterAid
• West Africa Water Initiative: A Preliminary Assessment (17 pages, PDF)
  Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

And don't forget to visit PubHub, where you can browse more than 170 reports related to water, sanitation, hygiene, and other global health issues.

-- Kyoko Uchida

How Are Foundations Tackling the Global Water Crisis?

(Seema Shah is director of research for special projects at the Foundation Center. She can be reached at sms@foundationcenter.org.)

It's World Water Day. And for those of us lucky enough to be able to take clean drinking water for granted, the numbers can be difficult to wrap our heads around. Nearly one billion people globally do not have access to safe water and more than two billion do not have access to adequate sanitation. The implications for the physical, economic, and educational well-being of communities, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, are far-reaching. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted during last year's World Water Day events, "The water crisis is a health crisis, it's a farming crisis, it's an economic crisis, it's a climate crisis, and increasingly, it is a political crisis."

Given the scope and scale of the crisis, what are foundations doing to address the situation?

A year ago, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, which has a twenty-year history of supporting safe water initiatives, awarded a grant to the Foundation Center to create a Web portal that would serve as a data and information hub for grantmakers working on water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) issues.

Launched in October, the portal, WASHfunders.org, seeks to promote greater coordination among established WASH funders, while also serving as a resource for new funders in the sector. The centerpiece of the site is a robust mapping tool that helps funders minimize duplication of effort by identifying other foundations that are working on similar issue areas or in the same geographic region. Funders visiting the site also are able to share lessons learned through case studies that highlight both challenges and successes in the WASH arena. And they can access the latest WASH-related research, aggregated in one place. All these resources are designed to help funders work more efficiently and effectively, allowing them to maximize the impact of their grant dollars. (In fact, the portal has become a model for funders working in other issue areas, as they seek to become more strategic and use data-driven decision making and peer-to-peer insights to strengthen their grantmaking.)

In conjunction with its work on WASHfunders.org and this week's World Water Day events, the Foundation Center has released a new research brief that summarizes foundation investments in water, sanitation, and hygiene. Among other things, our findings show that support for WASH issues has been on the rise since 2003. Between 2003 and 2010, the number of funders making WASH-related grants jumped from 24 to 78, and that growth was accompanied by a nearly five-fold increase in the number of organizations receiving grants. In 2009-2010, U.S. foundation funding for WASH issues totaled $144 million, up from $11 million in 2003-2004. At the same time, WASH funding, having grown from 0.2 percent in 2003 to 1.7 percent in 2010, remains a very modest portion of international giving by U.S. foundations overall.

The research brief also highlights the top funders of WASH initiatives. Among private foundations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation continues to be the largest funder of WASH programs, with the foundation's grantmaking comprising half of all WASH funding in 2009-2010. Among corporate foundations, the PepsiCo Foundation leads the way, awarding grants of more than $12 million in 2009-2010.

Philanthropic investments to address safe water, adequate sanitation, and hygiene education are poised to increase in the coming years, with several foundations, including the Margaret Cargill Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Skoll Global Threats Fund, beginning to develop strategic initiatives focused on WASH issues.

Indeed, although the number of people lacking access to safe water and adequate sanitation is far too high, we are beginning to see evidence that the collective efforts of foundations, governments, and NGOs are making a difference. In fact, just last week UNICEF and WHO announced that the Millennium Development Goal for water had been met, the first of the MDG targets to be achieved.

For more data on foundation support for WASH issues, see the full research brief here. And feel free to use the comments section below to share how your organization is observing World Water Day.

-- Seema Shah

International Women’s Day: A Photo Essay

On this, International Women's Day, we are prompted to ask: To what extent is the global water and sanitation crisis largely a women's issue? After all, women almost exclusively shoulder the burden of water collection, suffer the most from lack of sanitation access and its resulting indignities, and, as primary caregivers, are affected the most when children fall sick with water-related diseases. Fully involving women in community water and sanitation programs, as WaterAid does, ensures that programs meet their needs. It also helps equip women with the skills and confidence they need to tackle other development challenges in their communities.

Written by Libby Plumb, senior communications advisor for WaterAid America, the post below reflects on and celebrates the role of women in the WASH crisis through photos. In her thirteen years with WaterAid, Plumb has undertaken a variety of roles in both the UK and U.S. and has visited many of the organization’s country programs. Plumb has a degree in philosophy, politics and economics from the University of Oxford. A version of this post appears on the new FC-powered WASHfunders.org blog.

Credit: WaterAid/Eva-Lotta Jansson

The indignity of lacking somewhere private to go to the bathroom is particularly felt by women. In many cultures women have to wait until it is dark to relieve themselves, causing discomfort and sometimes illness. It can also expose women to the risk of both sexual harassment and animal attacks. In Sandimhia Renato's village in Mozambique, women have to cross an unstable bridge to go to the toilet. Some have drowned crossing in the dark or at high tide.

Credit: WaterAid/Abir Abdullah

The world’s poorest communities are generally male-dominated, so extra effort has to be taken to ensure that women are equally included in all stages of water and sanitation programs, including planning, construction, and decision-making. A lack of education for women in developing countries means that very few women can be decision-makers, yet enabling women's voices to be heard is a crucial step in development. Above, women are pictured making latrine slabs for a WaterAid sanitation program in Bangladesh.

Credit: WaterAid/Jon Spaull

WaterAid helps to elevate women's status in society by giving them positions of responsibility in the water committees established to manage new water supplies. Zeinabu Kayisi (above), chairperson of a village water committee in the Salima District of Malawi, told us: "Being able to maintain the pump myself makes me feel independent and strong!"'

Credit: WaterAid/Libby Plumb

WaterAid often chooses women to become hygiene educators. Zubeyda Gudeta (pictured above), helping women wash their hands before eating at a wedding reception, works as a hygiene promoter for WaterAid in the Oromia region of Ethiopia. She told us, "There has been a great change since the WaterAid project. Before this, some people didn't wash their things like food containers. Now they wash their pots and plates three times. Now, people are healthier in this area than in other areas."

Credit: WaterAid/Caroline Irby

A safe water source makes everyday household tasks much easier. More importantly, mothers and expectant mothers, like Sila Adeke from the Katakwi District of Uganda (above), no longer fear for the health of their children. "The borehole is much closer so I can fetch more water than before. Washing clothes is so easy now and I can use a whole jerry can for washing plates. The rate of illness is much lower. With this new source my child will grow up healthy and I am not concerned that it will grow sick."

Credit: WaterAid/Jon Spaull

The privacy that comes with safe, clean bathrooms is especially important for women with disabilities for whom leaving the house is more challenging. Suffering from impaired vision, Rukhmani Devi from India (above) is pleased her family now has a private latrine: "When I had my eye operation [for cataracts], I realized just how convenient having a latrine is, as before I would have had to go to the fields. Life is good now, as before people would be able to see us using the fields and we weren't able to relax -- instead we were always alert and worried."

Credit: WaterAid/Suzanne Porter

When women are freed from having to spend hours each day collecting water, they have more time available for other activities that can help them to escape poverty. Mary Chukle (above) from Takkas in Nigeria credits the new water supply with enabling her to open a business: "Before we got the well, we had to trek down to the river with the children and it took up to two hours. Because of the time I save now from getting water the old way, I was able to work more and apply for a loan to buy a small village shop which I now run."

Do you have a story about how women are meeting development challenges in their communities? Feel free to share in the comments section below...

-- Libby Plumb

2011 Year in Review: Foundations Bet Big on New Initiatives

Global, public-private, collaboration, thinking big -- these were some of the themes in play as foundations sought to boost their impact while addressing some of the most pressing challenges at home and abroad in 2011.

In the field of international development, the Chevron-sponsored Niger Delta Partnership Initiative Foundation and USAID pledged $50 million in February to support programs that promote economic development, improve the capacity of government and civil society institutions, and help reduce conflict in the oil-rich Niger Delta region. A month later, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation announced a five-year, $50 million commitment to help improve water conditions for more than one million people in sub-Saharan Africa and areas of India and Mexico -- a commitment that included a grant to the Foundation Center to build an online portal to serve as a central hub for information about water-related issues. In July, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation stepped up its own commitment to WASH issues by awarding grants totaling $41 million in support of efforts to increase access to affordable long-term sanitation solutions for millions of people in the developing world. And in October, George Soros and the Open Society Foundations pledged $27.4 million to the Millennium Villages Project to boost development in villages across rural sub-Saharan Africa.

Closer to home, a number of foundations announced major initiatives benefitting underserved communities and vulnerable populations. In April, the Home Depot Foundation launched a three-year, $30 million initiative to address veterans' housing issues; in May, the New York City-based NoVo Foundation announced a ten-year, $80 million initiative to strengthen the movement to end violence against women and girls; and in July, the California Endowment announced the creation of a $200 million public-private loan fund, the California FreshWorks Fund, to support efforts to increase access to healthy and affordable food in underserved communities.

Filmmakers and performing artists also were beneficiaries of bold thinking on the part of foundations in 2011. In January, the New York City-based Ford Foundation committed $50 million over five years to help identify and support a new generation of documentary filmmakers; in February, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, announced a $60 million documentary film initiative of its own; and in October, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation announced a ten-year, $50 million commitment to support more than two hundred individual artists in the field of jazz, theater, and contemporary dance.

Finally, in the area of health and health care, in September the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation's largest healthcare philanthropy, announced the launch of a three-year, $100 million "impact" fund to help its grantees leverage additional funding from multiple sources and share solutions that actually improve health and health care for all Americans. As part of the effort, RWJF awarded $10 million to NCB Capital Impact, a national Community Development Finance Institution (and the program administrator for the California Endowment's FreshWorks Fund), to create a low-interest credit facility that will support the development of Green House nursing homes over the next ten years.

"Our goal with this initiative is to go beyond traditional grantmaking, to drive social change, achieve measurable impact, and collaborate with partners who can help us achieve our mission," said RWJF president and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey. "This commitment allows us to better leverage our funding and spread innovative models, like the Green House Project."

Related Links

Ford Foundation Announces $50 Million for Documentary Film Initiative (1/19/11)

HHMI Launches Documentary Film Unit (2/08/11)

Chevron, USAID Pledge $50 Million to Improve Living Standards in Nigeria (2/21/11)

Hilton Foundation Commits $50 Million to Help Improve Global Water Conditions (3/23/11)

Home Depot Foundation Launches $30 Million Initiative to Address Veterans' Housing Issues (4/14/11)

NoVo Foundation Establishes $80 Million Initiative to End Violence Against Women and Girls (5/20/11)

Latin American Water Funds Launched With $27 Million in Funding (6/15/11)

Gates Foundation Announces $42 Million to Address Global Sanitation Issues (7/20/11)

California Endowment Announces $200 Million Public-Private Loan Fund (7/22/11)

Rockefeller Foundation, Partners Launch Initiative on Role of Philanthropy in International Development (8/10/11)

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Establishes $100 Million Impact Capital Fund (9/12/11)

Soros Pledges $27.4 Million to Aid Development in Rural Africa (10/04/11)

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Commits $50 Million to Support Individual Artists (10/21/11)

Open Data Master Class

(David Jacobs is director of foundation information management at the Foundation Center. In his last post, he wrote about the bankruptcy of Solyndra LLC.)

Recently, Foundation Center staff participated in an Open Data Master Class presented by members of the World Bank, which has made all of its data freely available to the public. Over the course of the day-long session, staff learned how to use easily accessible Web platforms like GeoCommons to mash up geographic information and data from multiple sources to create informative, eye-opening maps on almost any subject imaginable.

Why is this important? Well, in addition to data-rich organizations like the World Bank, a number of donor country governments are beginning to make all sorts of valuable data available to the public as part of the so-called open data movement. Among the biggest and most accessible date troves are those amassed by the U.S. government and its frequent "special relationship" partner on the other side of the Atlantic, the UK. These open data sites, along with the World Bank site, offer a wealth of economic, development, and demographic information.

However, as many of you know, releasing gigabytes of data in context-free tables and hard-to-read files doesn't guarantee transparency or do much to advance knowledge. In fact, it can have the opposite effect, thanks to something called information overload. Which is why it is so important for programmers, GIS experts, information specialists, and others to be able to access this data and filter it in ways that can reveal valuable hidden nuggets of knowledge. A good example of this is the funding map on our new WASHfunders portal, which makes use of both free and professionally managed data to show private- and public-sector funding for clean water and sanitation projects by country and region.

While open data and GIS mapping are still young fields, making once-inaccessible data available to members of the public to mash up with other types of information -- demographic or geographic, for example -- has great potential to yield real social benefit.

And while the buzz around open data has been building, it shouldn't be limited to governments and large multilateral organizations. In fact, any organization in the sector can leverage their knowledge and contribute to the public good by sharing their own data and/or mashing it up with data provided by others to identify hidden needs, regions or communities that are underserved, and a host of other things.

What do you think? Where do you see opportunities for the sector to take better advantage of open data? Where have we been good? And where is there room for improvement? Share your thoughts (and data!) in the comments section below.

-- David Jacobs

Weekend Link Roundup (November 19 - 20, 2011)

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Communications/Marketing

Writing on the Communications Network blog, Rebecca Reyes, a communications associate at Everyday Democracy, shares an eight-step plan for measuring digital media.

Current Affairs

Have Fun Do Good blogger Britt Bravo, who is based in Oakland, explains why the Occupy Wall Street movement makes her "sad, and a bit tired." Writes Bravo:

The Occupy movement feels like the human race is screaming, "Help! Something is not right! Life is out of balance!" Thing is, there isn't anyone there to hear us, except us.

Only the 99% can help the 99%. Only we can help each other. How are we going to do it?...

In a brilliant post, The Atlantic's Alex Madrigal shares a few thoughts along those lines and, in the process, articulates what may be the best metaphor yet for the Occupy movement: social protest as API.

Education

What does the American dream look like for the current generation of college students? On December 1 in Atlanta, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation will host a panel discussion on that topic featuring Bob Herbert, former columnist for the New York Times and now a senior fellow at nonprofit think tank Demos; Deborah Bial, president and founder of the Posse Foundation; and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Garrow, who will moderate. Students from several area colleges and universities -- including Agnes Scott, Clark Atlanta, Emory, Georgia Tech, Morehouse, Oglethorpe, and Spelman -- are invited to participate. "The nation's future depends on the next generation gaining full access to the American dream," says Blank Foundation president Penelope McPhee. "A world-class education is the key that unlocks the American dream for millions of young people." The talk will be Webcast live starting at 6:00 p.m. EST.

Impact/Effectiveness

On the FSG blog, FSG managing director Mark Kramer "suggests that while investing in small to mid-size enterprises (SMEs) that provide a new solution to a social problem can indeed deliver social impact, "the high transaction costs, limited liquidity, and scarcity of good managers sets a ceiling on [the] ultimate scale of [that] impact." Instead, such investments should be augmented, Kramer argues, with new financial instruments like the $3.5 billion in vaccine bonds issued by the International Finance Facility for Immunisation or social impact bonds. "As the field matures," adds Kramer, "funders will realize that innovative financing structures, rather than individual social enterprises, offer the greatest chance for large-scale leverage."

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Paul Connolly, chief client services officer at the TCC Group, suggests that foundations should not only support individual nonprofits but provide funding to foster the development of issue-focused networks.

Leadership

Rosetta Thurman has some advice for young nonprofit professionals looking to grow their network "the old-fashioned way." For starters, says Thurman, join a professional association, which, among other benefits, will "provide you with a ready-made network as soon as you pay your membership fee."

Nonprofit Management

Kim Cook of the Nonprofit Finance Fund shares some notes from the Theatre Communications Group's fall conference, which was dedicated to issues of governance.

Philanthropy

In a post on the Fast Company blog, Nathaniel James, founder of the Awesome Foundation's Seattle chapter, talks with "well-respected philanthropy wonk" Lucy Bernholz about the emergence of the "open philanthropy" movement, which Bernholz describes as a "little revolution" that aims to encourage foundations to embrace transparency and use the "vast repositories of information" at their disposal to help solve stubbornly persistent social problems.

Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene

On Oxfam's From Poverty to Power blog, WaterAid senior policy analyst Daniel Yeo wonders why more NGOs aren't working on water issues. While diarrhea is the biggest child killer in sub-Saharan Africa and preventable diarrhea associated with dirty water and poor sanitation "kills more children than AIDS, malaria, and TB combined," Yeo notes, WASH issues just aren't perceived as being "sexy" or a high priority in developed countries. And that, says Yeo, is a tragedy.

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a great Thanksgiving!

-- The Editors

World Toilet Day

Every year, November 19 is set aside to spotlight the global sanitation crisis and acknowledge the life-saving power of the toilet. Yes, I'm literally talking sh*t. And for a good reason. Consider these facts (source: UN Water):

• Globally, diarrhoea is the leading cause of illness and death, and 88 per cent of diarrhoeal deaths are due to a lack of access to sanitation facilities, together with inadequate availability of water for hygiene and unsafe drinking water.
• Roughly 2.5 billion people, including almost one billion children, live without even basic sanitation. Every 20 seconds, a child dies as a result of poor sanitation. That's 1.5 million preventable deaths each year.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, treating diarrhoea consumes 12 percent of the health budget. On a typical day, more than half the hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from faecal-related disease.
• While the percent of population with access to improved facilities has increased since 1990 in all regions, the number of people living without access also has increased due to slow progress and population growth. In 2008, 2.6 billion people had still no access to improved sanitation facilities.
• The Millennium Development Goal drinking water and sanitation (WASH) target is to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015.

Earlier this year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has committed $200 million to global WASH initiatives over the past five years, announced grants totaling $42 million as part of a new strategy to bring safe, clean sanitation services to millions of poor people in the developing world. As Sylvia Mathhews Burwell, head of the foundation's global development program, said at the time: "No innovation in the past two hundred years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet. But it...only reached one-third of the world. What we need are new approaches. New ideas. In short, we need to reinvent the toilet...."

To learn more about the global sanitation crisis and what funders are doing to address it, visit WASHfunders.org, a new Web site developed by the Foundation Center, with support from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, that aims to facilitate better collaboration and more strategic decision-making among WASH funders.

-- Mitch Nauffts

Introducing WASHfunders.org

Exciting news from the Foundation Center, which today launched WASHfunders.org.

Designed with philanthropic donors in mind, WASHfunders.org gives funders -- and others interested in WASH-related issues -- a "one-stop shop" for the data and information they need to improve water access, sanitation, and hygiene around the world.

The site's central feature is an interactive mapping application that shows where foundation grants are going, to which organizations, and for what purpose. WASHfunders.org is the first and only site with this critical data. What's more, foundation funding flows are shown within the context of international aid funding and key development indicators, providing a robust picture of the WASH landscape in any given country or region.

WASHfunders.org also provides free access to a broad set of knowledge resources, including:

• funder profiles documenting the WASH strategies of leading foundations;
• case studies that illustrate the successes and challenges of WASH projects around the world;
• tools and resources for assessing project outcomes; and
• a searchable archive of research reports recommended by sector leaders.

The Inside View section of the site is the place to go for updates on new content and features, and/or to share newsworthy events in the WASH sector. Go to the home page and you can register to get Inside View posts delivered to your e-mailbox.

Take a few minutes to look around the site. Then tell your friends and colleagues.

And let us know what you think of WASHfunders.org and how we can make it as useful and user-friendly as possible.