Fast Forward

Susan Voigt is program manager at the Medica Foundation. Before joining Medica, she was employed by several nonprofits, start-ups and IBM. As someone who has been on the grantee end of incorporating evaluation into the work and is now on the funder side, Voigt has real insights about how evaluation tools can and should be used as tools for learning rather than just accountability. In this episode, she also talks about common shared metrics as a big picture idea and explains the idea of field of practice evaluation.

"We're trying to get the funding closest to the people who are most impacted by these social and economic issues," says Carolyn Link, executive director of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation. In her role, Link oversees all operations and strategic direction for the foundation. On this episode, she talks about changes to a grant application process and how it can alter who you're welcoming in, and how funder/fundee collaborations are perceived. 

With decades of experience in the civic sector, Marcia Ballinger and Lars Leafblad work with foundations, nonprofits and institutions of higher education to help them make important decisions about leadership hires. In this episode of the podcast, Ballinger and Leafblad talk about what organizations must think about when recruiting new leadership and how they can include stakeholders.

"One of the best signs of a financially healthy nonprofit is a nonprofit that ends its operating year with a surplus," says Kate Barr, executive director of Nonprofits Assistance Fund. Barr has been making meaning out of financial information and strategies for decades, with stints as an arts administrator and a bank executive. Her goal is "to help people connect the dots between mission and business model." In this episode, Barr talks about how funders consider which organizations they elect to collaborate with or support. She also explains the challenges of a one-size-fits-all approach to evaluating whether an organization qualifies for funding, and she breaks down the idea of core mission support.

Bush Foundation communications director Dominick Washington joins us to explain what he calls "Whole Pig" philanthropy, a way of trying to have an impact at every level and part of an organization. He also talks about how his political and nonprofit background informs his philanthropic work and the ways he thinks about partnerships and cross-sector relationships. He also covers the use of budgetary systems as models for other operations and how to encourage a culture of collaboration within an organization.