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 refine our guidelines and develop new application and reporting forms to reflect 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 will be rolling out this new approach over the course of this year and looking to our grantees for more feedback as the process unfolds.

Our goals in this effort 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 broader challenges to success that the Foundation might be able to address.

These changes do not include any fundamental shifts in our areas of interest, which are Education, Health, Strengthening Communities, Arts & Culture, and Services to Not-for-Profits. We do suggest, however, that you review our revised guidelines and the results we are seeking in each program area before submitting a grant application. In addition, we ask that all proposals submitted to the Foundation after June 1, 2008 be on the new application forms, which are available on this site.

We look forward to hearing from you.

May 2008