CEP often has a front row view of communications challenges faced by foundations. One issue foundations grapple with on an ongoing basis is getting all staff members to communicate the same messages about a foundation’s work, and specifically its goals, strategies, and grantmaking guidelines.
In light of this, I was not surprised by the following finding from the report The Communications Supercharge: How Foundations Use Communications to Advance Their Public Policy Work, recently released by USC’s Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy (bolded emphases are my own):
The interviews suggest widespread agreement that the thorniest challenge faced by these leaders is how to best integrate communications into program planning and execution. In the respondents’ views, communications is a horizontal function in a vertical world. Its place and points of intersection with other foundation activity are still somewhat ambiguous, in spite of growing levels of activity and support from top leadership levels. The challenge stems from the basic facts of foundation culture. ‘Program is king’ in foundations: grantmaking programs are vertically organized silos, presided over by program directors, initiative directors, and program officers. Communications is not seen as programs, at least not yet, in all but a very few foundations.
This is a great summary of a challenge we see frequently at CEP. The USC report is part of a heartening trend of foundations paying more attention to their communications challenges. Also worth reading is a new report from California Healthcare Foundation (CHCF) on communicating with grantees. Spitfire Strategies will be releasing a report on the same topic at the Communications Network conference this month.
This focus on communications by foundations will be welcome news to grantees. In CEP’s surveys of tens of thousands of grantees of more than 200 foundations over recent years, clarity of communication of goals and strategy is among the areas where grantees give foundations lower marks. Hopefully, thoughtful engagement with the new resources that exist for foundations, like this study, will start to change that.
In USC’s report, foundation leaders talk about their struggle to make communications more “integral to the program planning process”—something the authors suggest is highly connected to getting all program staff communicating on message. In a recent Communications Network blog post discussing The Communications Supercharge, Marcia Sharp writes “that when we look at the sum total of a foundation’s communications efforts, we should be looking at both the efforts of the communications department itself and the communications efforts supported through grantmaking programs.”
While it may be tempting for foundation leaders to lay all the responsibility for communications at the feet of communication professionals, both the USC report and CHCF piece make clear that this won’t lead to the desired results. Getting clear and consistent about communication is tough, painstaking work that involves everyone from program assistants to the CEO, as CEP’s case study on the Wallace Foundation makes clear. But, by looking across the foundation, and involving all the right players — as Wallace did — improvement is possible.
Improvement matters, because better communication leads to better understanding about important philanthropic goals and the strategies to achieve them. With this understanding comes alignment, as foundations and their stakeholders work together to accomplish their shared goals.
