A New Approach at Altman

We are in the midst of some exciting changes at the Altman Foundation.

To assure that we are working most effectively toward fulfilling our mission, we have been collaborating with the Rensselaerville Institute over the last year to design and begin to implement a more results-based approach to our grantmaking. The Institute develops outcome tools for funders and nonprofit leaders to help shift their focus from activities to results. Knowing how fraught terms like "outcomes" and "evaluation" have become, the Institute takes a practical, straightforward approach that we have found to be a good fit for us. We have piloted these materials with our grantees, staff, and trustees and refined them based on feedback from all these stakeholders. We are now putting this new approach into operation and we consider it very much a work in progress. A series of workshops in 2008 - 2009 will help our grantees learn to work with these new materials, and we will continue to seek feedback as we move forward.

Our goals in this new approach are to clarify for grantseekers what we are trying to achieve, thereby helping them and us more easily identify the projects and organizations in which the Foundation might wish to invest; to gather information that will allow foundation staff and trustees to assess our progress toward the objectives we have set forward; and to be able to look more easily across individual grants and program areas in order to identify the barriers that keep organizations working in similar areas from getting the results they hope to achieve, so that we can determine whether or not Foundation resources might be able to help address these shared challenges. This new results-based approach has led us to develop:

• Revised guidelines, with a focus on results rather than activities;

• New application formats that also focus on results and on tracking progress toward those results (Please note that all applications submitted after June 1, 2008 must be in one of the new formats, which are available on our website, www.altmanfoundation.org.); and

• New final report forms.

These changes do not include any fundamental shifts in our areas of interest, which remain Education, Health, Strengthening Communities, Arts & Culture, and Services to Not-for-Profits. The grants listed in this 2007 annual report were awarded, and are presented, under our previous "objectives and strategies" framework.

Founded in 1913, and operating in its current structure since 1986, the Altman Foundation has been around for a long time. We have seen the results that the organizations we support achieve with help from this and other funding sources. We have seen the children you guide through your programs grow up and become doctors and lawyers, artists and teachers, social workers, computer experts—and nonprofit executives. We’ve seen adults find jobs, communities build parks, families find health care, and seniors find ways to stay safely in the homes and communities they love. Our grantees make change, and get results; they achieve human gain for the people and the communities they serve. The "pre- and post-" photographs we have included in this year’s annual report try to capture some sense of the impact that this work has on the people and communities of the amazing city to which we are all dedicated. We are blessed in being your partners in this work and grateful for all that you do.

We look forward to hearing from you.

November 2008