October 2015

Head-Scratching, or Head-Nodding? 5 Tips for Communicating the Complex

The other day, my five-year-old twins were explaining a playground game to me. They were confident, they were patient with me, and they went into great detail, but there was no question that the rules of the game were far too complex for me – an outsider – to grasp. I felt that given enough […]

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An Underutilized Tool For Foundations—Policy Change

In philanthropy, we are driven by the causes that matter to us and bolstered by the opportunity to generate meaningful change. For years, when I was out in the community or talking with my colleagues about the work of Blue Shield of California Foundation, I would rarely start by describing us as a “policy funder.”

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Let’s Take a Sledgehammer to Philanthropic Bureaucracy

We often hear about streamlining philanthropy – mostly with regards to efforts at simplifying grant applications, approval processes and reporting requirements. Programs such as Project Streamline (complements of the Grants Managers Network) help foundations to do this. Streamlining is great. But sometimes what we really need is a sledgehammer.  Some bureaucratic processes are so ridiculous,

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What Do You Know About Streamlining the Grantmaking Process?

We can all probably agree that grantmaking is not the most efficient process in the world – either for grantseekers or grantmakers. Thankfully, there are efforts underway like the Grants Managers Network (GMN) Project Streamline to help add simplicity and sense to the complex work of investing philanthropic dollars. More specifically, Project Streamline helps grantmakers

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