Joel Fleishman
2019
This is the eighth and final installment in a series of reports on how The Avi Chai Foundation is going about completing its grantmaking by December 31, 2019. The eighth annual report, titled “Against Strong Headwinds” is now available.
If foundation successes were measured by the success rates of for-profit start-ups, the Avi Chai Foundation would now likely be regarded, as it approaches its end as a grantmaking institution, as having achieved an enviable all-time record. Admittedly, there are many ways to define “success” in a philanthropic program — including by the program’s overall impact on society, the value of its achievements (however measured) relative to the costs, the durability or spread of those achievements over time, the number of people affected by them, or the degree to which the achievements correspond to the tenets of the foundation’s mission. Avi Chai has used several of these criteria over time to judge the value of its projects — most memorably when, in 2009, it winnowed its list of grantees so as to focus in its last ten years only on those that were most critical to its mission.
The report is also available on the website of the AVI CHAI Foundation Blog.