Duke Sanford School of Public Policy

For the past two years, the Center has been documenting the process of spend-down at two major foundations. Joel Fleishman has been following events at AVI CHAI and Tony Proscio those at The Atlantic Philanthropies.

The Foundation Center’s 2009 report Perpetuity or Limited Lifespan found that, of the 1,074 family foundations responding to a survey of the 20,000 top foundations, approximately 12 percent plan to spend down while another 25 percent are undecided. If those number hold roughly true for all of the approximately 70,000 family foundations in the United States, we’re talking about there being potentially more than 8,000 foundations that have positively decided to spend down.

Even under normal circumstances, it can be tricky for foundations to change a grantmaking strategy once it’s launched (hence all the learned writing on “mid-course correction” and “exit strategies,” which has provided a generation of consulting fees for people like me). Yet strategic changes become even harder when a foundation’s life expectancy comes down to single digits. At that point, the time for making adjustments is short, and the risk of a rushed or haphazard course-correction rises steeply. It becomes all too easy, in the course of trying to renovate a program in its final years, to discover that you’ve accidentally dismembered it.

This is Part II of a speech delivered by Gara LaMarche before participants at the second annual Conference on Scaling Impact, hosted by the Social Impact Exchange. You can read Part I here.

On June 15, 2011, Gara LaMarche, President and CEO of the Atlantic Philanthropies, delivered a speech before the participants of the second annual Conference on Scaling Impact, hosted by the Social Impact Exchange in New York City. Over the next three days, the Intrepid Philanthropist will run the text of Gara's speech. Here is Part I.

Center Faculty Chair Joel Feishman, with his coauthor Tom Tierney of the Bridgespan Group, has an article in today's Fortune magazine online, titled "The New American Philanthropists: Will Their Billions Get Results?"

In today's Chronicle of Philanthropy, Thomas Tierney and the Center's Faculty Chair, Joel Fleishman, discuss the recent announcement that 40 very wealthy individuals and families, at the encouragement of Bill and Melinda Gates, have taken the Giving Pledge, promising to donate half their wealth to good causes.

And over at the Center for Effective Philanthropy's blog, Phil Buchanan has written a heartfelt and moving thank-you to Joel Orosz, who recently announced his retirement from Grand Valley State University.

It has never been easy to explain the practice of philanthropy to the uninitiated. Confusing philanthropy with charity, many people tend to wonder what can be so hard about giving money away.

In my first post I mentioned that both Joan Spero and Stephen Heintz, speaking at the Foundation Center session in New York on Monday, had expressed disap

It is a pleasure and honor to join the conversation on this new blog.

We've just posted a paper, "Foundations and Government: Social Innovation, Policy Advocacy