Insights & Perspectives Meeting a Family’s Growing Philanthropic Needs Over the past 10 years, TCC Group has provided the Ohrstrom Foundation with administrative and grantmaking support and has guided its governance planning, program and operations, and grant assessment. Through our day-to-day management of the foundation, we identify and address emergent issues, drawing on our years of experience working with…
Insights & Perspectives Coordinated Funding: Lessons from a Place-Based Grantmaking Collaborative Three grantmakers in Michigan, including Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, the United Way of Washtenaw County, and the Joint Office of Community and Economic Development, recently coordinated the leadership and funding of the region’s human service programs in order to maximize community impact. During TCC Group’s evaluation of the initiative,…
Resources Relational Capacity: A New Approach to Capacity Building in Philanthropy “What you see is what you get.” This phrase is often used to describe a person who is very straightforward, but it can have another meaning—what you are able to see, what you choose to notice, affects what you can accomplish. As consultants at TCC Group, where we work with…
Insights & Perspectives A New Approach to Capacity Building TCC Directors published Relational Capacity: A New Approach to Capacity Building in Philanthropy in the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy winter journal. The article outlines a new vision of the relationship between funders and nonprofits, one that is collaborative, mutual and iterative. Complex challenges require more effective collaboration within and…
Insights & Perspectives Foundation Strategies to Inform Federal Policy in the United States Commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation, our latest research examines what motivates foundations to engage in advocacy, the methods they apply, and the results they achieve. Although the study focuses on federal policy, many of factors and strategies relate directly to foundation policy reform activities at all levels of government.
Insights & Perspectives 10 Key Factors to Help Funders Thrive Drawing on our client work in the intervening decade, TCC Group professionals have identified important key factors that help foundations overcome unique challenges, provide strategic clarity, and chart a successful path forward. In our latest briefing paper, Ten Keys – Ten Years Later: Successful Strategic Planning for Foundation Leaders, we…
Resources A Framework for Successful Corporate Citizenship A Framework for Successful Corporate Citizenship highlights the critical elements and practices used by leading corporate citizens, such as IBM and Starbucks. In this complex world, many companies make large capital investments in their citizenship programs but only few achieve their social impact goals.
Resources Capacity Building 3.0: How to Strengthen the Social Ecosystem The social sector has evolved to incorporate multiple stakeholders and organizations to solve social issues, working together in a larger ecosystem to increase efficiency, effectiveness, and scale. The process of building the systems, structures, and skills necessary for success in this environment, commonly referred to as “capacity building,” has played…
Resources Ten Keys – Ten Years Later: Successful Strategic Planning for Foundation Leaders In 2004, TCC Group published a briefing paper entitled, “Ten Keys to Successful Strategic Planning for Nonprofit and Foundation Leaders.” Ten years later, the philanthropic landscape has continued to evolve, and we offer an updated set of ten keys for funders considering a strategic planning effort. While this update focuses…
Resources Unlocking the Mystery of Volunteer Retention: How Girl Scouts of Northern California is Using Advanced Predictive Analytics to Inform its Volunteer Management Practices Like many nonprofits that depend on volunteers to fulfill their mission, Girls Scouts of Northern California (GSNorCal) faces a growing challenge. As the number of girls involved in the program grows, so too does the need to retain volunteers year after year. With support from the Thrive Foundation for Youth,…
Resources Foundation Strategies to Inform Federal Policy in the United States A Study to Support the Evaluation of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Promoting Equitable and Sustainable Transportation Initiative Using philanthropy as a strategy for federal policy reform in the United States is not a new concept. Yet, little has been done to assess exactly why foundations choose to engage in federal policy…
Resources Pathways to Grow Impact: Philanthropy’s Role in the Journey This briefing paper is the result of a collaborative project with Ashoka, Social Impact Exchange, Taproot Foundation, and TCC Group that sought to answer the question: How can grantmakers best support high-performing nonprofits in their efforts to grow their impact? “Pathways to Grow Impact” is for any grantmaker who wants…
Resources Coordinated Funding: Lessons from a Place-Based Grantmaking Collaborative In the Fall of 2010, five grantmakers serving Washtenaw County, Michigan, launched a “Coordinated Funding” model which they hoped would streamline grantmaking efforts, build partnerships, and increase effectiveness of the local health and human services sector. These funders, including the United Way of Washtenaw County, the Ann Arbor Area Community…
Resources Designing Effective Foundation Program Strategy Strong grantmaking programs reflect a foundation’s values, balance internal capacities with the external environment, and address constituents’ needs. This briefing paper shares the five essential steps to creating programs with impact.
Resources Success by Design: How R&D Activates Program Innovation and Improvement in the Nonprofit Sector It’s time to bring a staple of the for-profit sector into the nonprofit community: Research and Development. An R&D approach to measurement requires adherence to distinct principles, enabling an organization to translate information into immediate action and program improvement.