Our Approach
Background
Created in 1913 under the will of Benjamin Altman (see History for further information), the Altman Foundation has been active in New York City for a long time. We have nearly one hundred years of tradition behind us, keeping our founder’s philanthropic interests as our touchstone while also responding to emerging needs and issues. We have a reputation as a steady partner; we strive to:
- Take chances on promising ideas without being too prescriptive;
- Stay the course with an issue and with high-performing grantees; and
- Learn alongside our grantees to drive improvement in practice.
The Results-Based Approach
We have developed and refined our grantmaking process in recent years and have begun to tackle the thorny question of impact, not just of projects and initiatives, but of our body of work as a whole.
Drawing on our work over the past few years with the Rensselaerville Institute (www.rinstitute.org), we have moved from thinking of ourselves only as distributors of resources (“grantmakers”) to seeing ourselves as “investors” in human gain for the individuals, families, and communities we serve. As investors, we ask ourselves three basic questions:
- What do we want to buy? In other words, what are the results that we want to pay for with our grant dollars?
- What are the chances that the nonprofits applying to us will achieve these results, and would these results have been achieved without the work for which our funds are requested?
- Given all the opportunities in front of us, is this the best possible use of our money?
We have moved from talking about “activities” to looking for “results”, and this shift is reflected in our guidelines, our applications and due diligence, and our reporting forms. We ask organizations seeking our support:
- How do you define success—meaning what are the results you hope to achieve for the people you serve?
- How do you know for certain when success has been achieved?
- What information are you gathering along the way that will tell you whether you are on track or that will allow you to make course corrections?
In Practice
In implementing this new approach, our goal is to gather information on our grantees’ success in achieving the results we seek in a consistent way that will allow us to:
- Assess the performance of our portfolio and make informed decisions about the allocation of our resources; and
- Look more easily across individual grants and program areas and identify the common barriers that keep organizations from achieving their desired results, so that we can determine if our resources can help address these shared challenges.
So far, the response from our grantees has been overwhelmingly positive. Comments from grantees have included:
- “We liked the section about results…it is most helpful and interesting for us to think about how our programs impact the lives of our constituents and how we can develop accurate systems of measurement that will help us serve them even better.”
- “The emphasis on ‘tangible human gains’ and ‘changes in behavior not activities or level of satisfaction’ was great. We appreciate the emphasis on impact over effort. These ideas refocused our thinking in a very positive way…The guidance and examples shifted our thinking about what we do, why we do it, and how we will be accountable for our results.”
The overall goal of course is to maximize the benefit that the people and communities we serve derive from our grant dollars. As you look through our website, we hope that you will recognize organizations and programs that are applying this approach in their work. We thank you for your interest in the Altman Foundation.