For Investors

The Rensselaerville Institute announces a series of webinars for foundations

When you ask a funder what business they are in, most indicate they are in the ‘grantmaking' business, distributing money over needs, geography, demographic factors, and need responders. When you ask an investor what business they are in, they tell you they are in the ‘results' business-seeking the highest possible gain from the money available. We help funders become investors. Using specific tools for foundations and the groups they invest in we offer a set of practices to define, track, and achieve impact from grants, gifts, and initiatives. Investors are in the business of human gain.

Our goal is to enable foundations to better:

• Clarify the results they are "buying" with each grant, and the likelihood those results will happen.
• Verify success from each grant with increased rigor, but without the high cost and time of formal evaluation.
• Enhance grant-making effectiveness by stronger ways to compare the front-end (grant selection) and back-end (grant performance) at individual and grant cluster levels.
• Increase the results achieved by grant recipients through a stronger conversation about results than about activities or process.

In our description of funders and investors, we speak to the difference of being in the business of making grants vs. creating the greatest possible human gain with the money available. We focus on the shift from getting and grading proposals to asking three questions of every opportunity:

1. What results or human gain would be achieved from this grant?
2. What are the chances that result will happen?
3. Given other opportunities, is this the best possible use of our money?

Our work with foundations focuses on ways to answer these investor-based questions in the interactions with new and existing applicants throughout the grant cycle. The key is to answer those questions before money goes out the door, efficiently check in on progress before time and dollars run out, and then assess performance and impact after the grant is consumed.