The Challenges of Foundation Management

Transcript Now Available! Click here (PDF format, 28 pages, 204 KB)

A complete, edited transcript is now available of our panel discussion held at Hudson Institute on February 28 entitled

The Challenges of Foundation Management

February 28, 2008 - 12:00 to 2:00 p.m.

The Betsy and Walter Stern Conference Center

Hudson Institute

    Orosz, Schambra, Buchanan, and Frumkin

At the core of foundation management is a tragic dilemma: "The choices are all so good that eliminating any one of them feels bad, and yet leaders cannot live in the no man's land between the choices." A grantmaker must "choose… to do one good thing at the expense of another equally good thing," JOEL OROSZ observes in his most recent book, Effective Foundation Management: 14 Challenges of Philanthropic Leadership—And How to Outfox Them. Or, as he also writes, "there are prices to pay, people to hurt, and causes to forsake." And that's even before the RFP goes out.

The recent appearance of a handful of groundbreaking books on foundation effectiveness and strategy by Orosz and University of Texas at Austin Professor PETER FRUMKIN, among others, shows a willingness to grapple with such management dilemmas at the level of academic scholarship and in the context of an emerging profession. But are foundations learning effectively from the growing body of literature on foundation history? Is it enough to guide the field through the management fads of the present? And as Center for Effective Philanthropy President PHIL BUCHANAN pointed out in a February 2007 Chronicle of Philanthropy piece, how can foundations be effective in their grant making if they don't pay attention to how their work affects grantees?  

On Thursday, February 28, Hudson Institute's Bradley Center hosted a discussion of these and other questions with Orosz, Frumkin, and Buchanan. The Bradley Center's WILLIAM SCHAMBRA moderated the discussion.

Program and Panel

11:45 a.m.
Registration, lunch buffet

12:00 p.m.
Welcome by Hudson Institute's WILLIAM SCHAMBRA

12:10
Panel discussion
JOEL OROSZ, Grand Valley State University
PETER FRUMKIN, University of Texas at Austin
PHIL BUCHANAN, Center for Effective Philanthropy

1:10
Question-and-answer session

2:00
Adjournment

Further Information

To request further information on this event, the transcript, or the Bradley Center, please contact Hudson Institute at (202) 974-2424 or e-mail Kristen at kmcintyre@hudson.org.