Jewish Service Learning: What Is and What Could Be
Ellen Irie and Jill Blair
Published in May 2008
In the fall of 2007, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation commissioned BTW to assess the landscape of Jewish Service Learning. BTW examined the current capacity among Jewish Service Learning practitioners, the support required to expand that capacity and the relevance of secular national service and other faith-based service traditions in defining the potential and development of Jewish Service Learning. This report summarizes that research and offers a suggested action plan for growth based on their findings.

Social Capital & Capacity Building: Discussion Paper Prepared for ZCAM ODP Retreat, September 14-15, 2006
Jill Blair and Tina Cheplick
Published in September 2006
A funders collaborative in Houston, led by the Rockwell Fund, Inc., hired BTW to assist them with planning and evaluating a new initiative to build the capacity of Zip Code Assistance Ministries (ZCAMs) in the region. ZCAMs are faith-based nonprofits providing emergency social and human services. This Initiative, called the ZCAM Organizational Development Program, was modeled on OCGI, a project that BTW evaluated for three Bay Area funders several years ago. Part of BTW’s work with the Houston initiative was to develop and facilitate an annual reflection and learning session for funders, ZCAM executives and key program partners. In preparation for the reflection session in September 2006, BTW prepared a paper on social capital formation and its relevance to building organizational capacity and creating a culture of collaboration and shared learning among ZCAM leaders.
 

Coaching as a Tool for Building Leadership and Effective Organizations in the Nonprofit Sector
Kim Ammann Howard, Jill Blair, and Beth Brown
Published in January 2006
 

A Blueprint for Action: Coaching as a Tool for Building Leadership and Effective Organizations in the Nonprofit Sector
Kim Ammann Howard and Jill Blair
Published in January 2006
In 2005 the W.K. Kellogg Foundation initiated the Coaching and Philanthropy Project to assess the use of coaching within the nonprofit sector and advance its application as a strategy for cultivating strong leadership and building effective nonprofit organizations. This report summarizes the project’s research findings including the philanthropic sector’s support of coaching for nonprofit grantees, demand for coaching among nonprofits, readiness of the coaching profession to provide services to nonprofits and the added value of coaching to enhance the work of the nonprofit sector. This report, prepared for the Coaching and Philanthropy Project of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (see full report above), provides a framework around which a strategic effort can be developed to advance the application of coaching as an effective nonprofit leadership and organizational development tool.
 

The Foundation Incubator’s Theory of Change
Published in November 2004
BTW facilitated a process with the board and staff of The Foundation Incubator (TFI) to articulate TFI's Theory of Change. The purpose of the theory is to define the long-term intentions of TFI as an organization of social change and to uncover the assumptions that underlie those intentions.
 

Building Effective Organizations: An Evaluation of the Organizational Capacity Grants Initiative (OCGI)
Jill Blair, Ellen Irie, and Melinda Moore
Published in March 2002
This evaluation report tells the story of a capacity-building Initiative that transformed many of the organizations and individuals involved. The report describes the Initiative's design and how it evolved. The report also outlines the outcomes achieved and lessons learned. It concludes with suggestions for future capacity builders.
 

Building Effective Organizations: An Evaluation of the Organizational Capacity Grants Initiative (OCGI) - Executive Summary
Jill Blair, Ellen Irie, and Melinda Moore
Published in March 2002
An Executive Summary of Building Effective Organizations.

2006 Social Return Executive Summary: Expanding Reach, Increasing Social Return
Rayna Caplan, Ellen Irie and Inbar Hurvitz
Published in April 2007
Pacific Community Ventures (PCV) provides capital and resources to small, high-growth businesses that bring jobs and other economic gains to low/moderate income communities in California. BTW informing change has been working with PCV since 2000 to articulate and measure its social returns.
 

REDF Social Impact Report 2005
What a Difference a Job Makes: The Long-term Impact of Enterprise Employment
Fay Twersky and Kris Helé
Published in November 2005
In 2005, BTW informing change produced a research brief regarding the impact of REDF social enterprise employment on disadvantaged youth and adults. Based on two-year follow-up interview data collected from a sample of 991 individuals employed in REDF’s portfolio of social enterprises between 1998-2005, this report highlights findings across several outcome areas including employment, hourly wage, housing stability and criminal conviction rates. BTW informing change has prepared a series of similar reports for each of the REDF portfolio groups.
 

GGCI Social Impact Report 2005
Fay Twersky and Kris Helé
Published in November 2005
 

CVE, Inc. Social Impact Report 2005
Fay Twersky and Kris Helé
Published in November 2005
 

Juma Ventures Social Impact Report 2005
Fay Twersky and Kris Helé
Published in November 2005
 

Rubicon Social Impact Report 2005
Fay Twersky and Kris Helé
Published in November 2005
 

Self-Sufficiency: Definitions and Pathways
Eileen Foley and Fay Twersky
Published in November 2004
BTW prepared this paper for Pacific Community Ventures (PCV), summarizing the recent literature related to economic self-sufficiency and how it can be advanced.
 

Employment Counts
Fay Twersky
Published in November 2002
In November, 2002, as part of a REDF Community Celebration, Fay Twersky presented key findings from REDF's ongoing tracking and measurement. The presentation summarized four years of data collection among REDF enterprise employees. It contained demographic and employment information for REDF enterprise employees including a look at how these results compare to other employment initiatives.

Tackling Vision Care Disparities: How One Nonprofit Uses an NFL Team's Celebrity To Improve Poor Children's Eyesight - and Life Chances
Melinda Tuan and Fay Twersky
Published in December 2005
This case study, published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review about the Philadelphia Eagles Youth Partnership's Eye Mobile program was based on a larger study of the Eye Mobile conducted by Melinda Tuan and BTW. The case tells the compelling story of the Eye Mobile and the children whose eyesight is improved. It highlights the power of leveraging sports celebrity and the complexity of successful multi-sector partnerships.
 

BTW prepared case studies that are serving as learning tools for social change movement building in work with the Marguerite Casey Foundation.
 

Breakthrough Urban Ministries Organizational Profile
Kim Ammann Howard
Published in January 2005
 

Institute for Democratic Renewal/Project Change Organizational Profile
Bruce Occena
Published in May 2005
 

Interfaith Worker Justice Organizational Profile
Beth Brown
Published in May 2005
 

Labor/Community Strategy Center Organizational Profile
Bruce Occena
Published in May 2005
 

Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy Organizational Profile
Kim Ammann Howard
Published in May 2005
 

Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches
Beth Brown
Published in January 2005
 

Radio Bilingüe Organizational Profile
Bruce Occena
Published in January 2005
 

South Carolina Association of Community Development Corporations Organizational Profile
Beth Brown
Published in January 2005

A Logic Model for Reducing the Educational Achievement Gap
Published in July 2004
BTW completed a research review for Karen Jensen showing the link between improved cognitive testing, enhanced instruction, and learning outcomes. Accompanying the report was a logic model which depicted the promise of educational interventions designed according to students’ profiles of abilities and strengths.
 

Getting Smart About Testing and Achievement
Eileen Foley
Published in April 2004
Closing the achievement gap rests on the promise of educational interventions designed according to students’ profiles of abilities and strengths. BTW completed a briefing paper for Karen Jensen, a donor who funds interventions designed to close the achievement gap. The paper concluded that the promise of optimum learning cannot be achieved as long as cognitive testing and understandings of cognitive processes are relegated to the periphery of educational discourse and practice.
 

Building a Professional Development Laboratory: An Overview of Opportunities & Challenges
Eileen Foley and Jill Blair
Published in February 2004
BTW informing change completed a background paper on Professional Development Laboratory Schools for the IBM Corporate Community Relations and the San Jose Unified School District (SJUSD). The seven-page paper highlights standards that have been set for professional development laboratories, describes various PDL models, identifies challenges the models commonly face, and lists steps one might take to launch a PDL effectively.

The Cost of a Volunteer
Jill Blair, Tina Cheplick, and Sharon Jones
Published in April 2003
This publication summarizes the findings from an examination of 21 volunteer programs nationwide. The study attempted to ascertain the true financial cost of organizing a high quality volunteer program and to better understand the implications for the nonprofit sector of the President's call to service. Read the results of the review and find out what it really takes to provide high quality volunteer experience.
 

Volunteers in the 21st Century
Jill Blair
Published in February 2003
In December 2002, the Grantmaker Forum on Community and National Service in partnership with the Independent Sector, Northern California Grantmakers, Southern California Association for Philanthropy, and the California Association of Nonprofits sponsored two California forums on volunteerism and service. This brief summarizes the conversation and general themes that arose during the conversations on the value and future of service and volunteering.
 

The Grantmaker Forum on Community and National Service - Leadership and Service in Times of National Crisis
Jill Blair
Published in April 2002
On April 29, 2002, the Grantmaker Forum on Community & National Service sponsored a discussion as a pre-conference session at the Council on Foundations Annual Conference to explore the roles service and leadership play in times of national crisis. The conversation was moderated by Ms. Dot Ridings, President and CEO of the Council on Foundations. The panel included Mr. Paul Glastris, Editor in Chief of the Washington Monthly, and Dr. Leslie Lenkowsky, President and CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. This document offers highlights from their conversation.
 

From Inspiration to Participation: A Review of Perspectives on Youth Civic Engagement
Produced in cooperation with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Grantmaker Forum on Community and National Service.
Published in November 2001
The heart of a healthy democracy is a citizenry actively engaged in civic life-taking responsibility for building communities, solving community problems, and participating in the electoral and political processes. This ethos has permeated American society since the founding of the nation. In recent decades there has been concern that increasing numbers of Americans are less involved in the institutions of our democratic society. This trend is particularly evident, some say, among our nation's youth. The shifts in participation have stimulated a debate among academic leaders across disciplines about whether there is, in fact, a problem with civic engagement in America and, if so, where the solutions lie. This paper summarizes the different perspectives on the issue of youth civic engagement, including a review of the proposed solutions. The paper concludes with a proposal to pursue a melded approach that combines the best of what each discipline has to offer.

Creating Currents of Influence: Success Factors for a Multifaceted Social Change Initiative
Kim Ammann Howard
Published February 2008
This evaluation brief outlines how the Community Clinics Intiative (CCI), a joint project of Tides and The California Endowment, has been successful in affecting broad and deep social change within the community clinics field in California. In addition to a description of CCI's impacts and the evaluation design, the brief discusses the critical factors that emerged for achieving deep, systems-level changes and offers some summary reflections. These factors and reflections can inform the design and implementation of other philanthropic initiatives and grantmaking efforts.
 

Wired for Change: Investing in Collaborative Technology
Kim Ammann Howard and Ellen Irie
Published May 2007
Since 2003, BTW has partnered with the Community Clinics Initiative (CCI) to evaluate its Strategic Investments Program, an ambitious program that funded collaborative information technology (IT) to support networks of clinics and health centers and enhance patient health care in underserved communities. Wired for Change: Investing in Collaborative Technology summarizes the evaluation findings, and provides funders, nonprofit leaders and technical assistance providers with success criteria for designing or implementing similar collaborative IT efforts. The report includes specific considerations for funders. CCI is a joint project of The California Endowment and Tides Foundation.
 

Enhancing Community Clinic Capacity Brick by Brick: The Impact of the Community Clinics Initiative’s Major Capital Campaign Gifts Program
Kim Ammann Howard, Inbar Hurvitz, Regina Sheridan, Tina Cheplick and Ruth Brousseau
Published January 2007
In November 2005, BTW informing change began working with the Community Clinics Initiative’s (CCI), a project of Tides Foundation and The California Endowment, to evaluate their Capital Investments Program. This program supports clinics that are undertaking capital campaigns to improve their facilities and enhance their fund development capacity. “Enhancing Clinic Capacity Brick by Brick” is intended for community clinic and grantmaking audiences. The report contains important lessons to help clinics target their efforts during a capital project and includes strategies for enhancing organizations’ fund development infrastructure. BTW analyzes specific grantmaking approaches and offers suggestions about how funders can support grantees in accomplishing their capital campaign and project goals. Three case studies provide real stories of clinics and their experiences that ground this approach to improving health in concrete examples. The full set of appendices referenced in this report is also available.
 

Reach All, Teach All, Respect for All: A Three Year Evaluation of Women’s Educational Media’s Outreach Campaign - Executive Summary
Rayna Caplan and Fay Twersky
Published in February 2005
The Respect for All Project (RFAP), a program of Women’s Educational Media, develops award winning documentary films and printed curriculum guides that aim to create safe, hate-free schools and communities by giving youth and the adults who guide their development the tools they need to talk openly about diversity and prejudice prevention in all its forms. BTW’s report, Reach All, Teach All, Respect for All: A Three Year Evaluation of Women’s Educational Media’s Outreach Campaign measures and evaluates the outcomes of RFAP’s outreach and training efforts.
 

Evaluating Social Change: Meeting Summary
Jill Blair and Fay Twersky
Published in June 2004
On May 17, 2004, the Marguerite Casey Foundation (MCF) sponsored a one-day conversation among foundation staff to learn from each other about approaches to evaluating social change investments. The invitation list included individuals known to have experience making social change grants, some of whom had explicitly expressed interest in this topic (the list of attendees can be found in Appendix A). This conversation was conceived by MCF to be the launch of a potential ongoing dialogue about innovative and effective approaches to evaluating social change. MCF was also interested in exploring opportunities for building effective collaboration both among funders and between funders and grantees to advance positive social change efforts. MCF engaged BTW informing change, an independent research and consulting group, to help plan for and facilitate the meeting. As part of the planning, BTW staff conducted brief pre-meeting interviews with most of the invited participants, seeking to understand their experience with evaluation and their hopes and expectations for the May meeting.
 

The Foundation Incubator: Learning from Experience
Jill Blair and Elizabeth Bremner
Published in January 2004
Conceived in 2000 and offcially opening in 2001, the Foundation Incubator (TFI) can be seen as an alternative to traditional donor education. Based largely on the business incubation model, TFI assumes that emerging philanthropic organizations will benefit from shared resources, common meeting space and opportunities for shared learning. Its primary value is continuous learning – using information to build better practice. From the start, TFI entered into a partnership with BTW informing change to continually assess its development. What has TFI learned from this and how has it changed its way of operating?
 

Building an Organization to Last: Reflections and Lessons Learned from SeaChange
Published in July 2003
Reflective practice sounds good, but who actually does it? The W.K. Kellogg Foundation enlisted the help of BTW informing change to do just that. In the fall of 2000, WKKF, along with several other significant investors, financed the start-up of SeaChange, an entrepreneurial effort to use technology to deepen and broaden the connections between social investors and social entrepreneurs. Launched with fanfare, SeaChange confronted many challenges. By the spring of 2003, SeaChange ceased to exist as an independent entity, and instead entered into a merger with another nonprofit organization to form a new effort: Social Enterprise Alliance. This report summarizes some reflections on the lessons that were learned along the way by the funders, as well as the organization’s leaders and key observers.
 

An Information OASIS: The Design and Implementation of Comprehensive and Customized Client Information and Tracking Systems
Fay Twersky
Published in 2002
Despite increasing demands for outcome measurement, nonprofit organizations typically do not have the capacity to collect, analyze and use outcome information. In this paper, Fay Twersky, a Principal of BTW informing change describes the process of planning and developing customized client tracking systems for nonprofit organizations. The system is called OASIS (the Ongoing Assessment of Social Impacts) and was supported by The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund and a collaboration of other funding partners.
 

Performance Information That Really Performs
Fay Twersky and Jill Blair
Published in December 2001
In "Performance Information That Really Performs," a chapter from Strategic Tools for Social Entrepreneurs: Enhancing the Performance of Your Enterprising Nonprofit, Fay Twersky and Jill Blair discuss avenues that nonprofits can use to deliver effective and efficient quality services. Topics include a discussion of value in the nonprofit marketplace and ways of measuring it, steps for designing and implementing measurement systems, and utilizing performance information to achieve a social mission.

HIV Prevention for Positives in the Tenderloin: Lessons from Working with Recently Incarcerated People of Color
Anna Martin, Fay Twersky and Rayna Caplan
Published in February 2004
BTW informing change recently completed a study for Continuum, a nonprofit multi-service organization serving those most devastated by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The study, "HIV Prevention for Positives in the Tenderloin" includes a literature review and key informant interviews with local thought leaders and service providers. The study synthesized the literature on promising practices related to prevention with people who are HIV positive, with an emphasis on recently incarcerated people of color. We then summarized and compared local practices with those from the literature and identified a series of challenges and opportunities for action. The study process culminated in a planning session facilitated by BTW with all of the key local leaders on this issue, who generated the key elements of a new vision of services for HIV positive people in the Tenderloin. Funding for the study and the planning effort was provided by AIDS Partnership California.
 

The Best of BEST (Building Effective Substance Abuse Treatment Initiative)
Sylvia Pertzborn and Beth Brown
Published in October 2003
BTW informing change writes and edits a quarterly newsletter for the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation's BEST Initiative. The newsletter is intended as a means to share learnings from the BEST Learning Community. BEST participants are using the newsletter to inform their staff, board and other funders of the work they are doing under the BEST Initiative. The newsletter is also featured on the Schwab Foundation's Web site.
 

Voices From the Field: Remobilizing HIV/AIDS Philanthropy for the 21st Century
Paul Wisotzky and Ellen Irie
Published in June 2001
FCAA embarked on additional qualitative research involving HIV/AIDS funders. This study, called the Funder Remobilization Project (FRP), was designed to gather information that will enable FCAA to better understand and further philanthropic response to HIV/AIDS well into the 21st century. The research involved conducting in-depth interviews with 35 of the nation's leading HIV/AIDS funders to answer several primary research questions.