Effort to increase impact

This paper is part of the Hewlett Foundation's effort to increase the impact of its grantmaking.

Outcome-focused grantmaking

OFG takes program officers from planning to implementation to evaluation.

Philanthropy resides at a chaotic crossroads between science, art, and moral intuition.

Navigating this intersection requires creativity and a unique mode of decision-making. Hanging in the balance, of course, is the ability to do good in the world. By stepping back and taking a moment to think about how to achieve the highest possible impact, philanthropy can do good today, and learn how to do better tomorrow. This paper is part of the Hewlett Foundation’s effort to increase the impact of its grantmaking. Over the last year, several programs at the Foundation have worked with Redstone Strategy Group to implement a new decision-making process called outcome-focused grantmaking (OFG). This step-by-step process (described more fully in Appendix 1) takes program officers from planning to implementation to evaluation, and back again, and provides a guide for identifying the highest impact portfolio of grants. This paper – the third in a series documenting the OFG experiences of Hewlett’s programs – has three chapters that discuss where OFG has been so far, recent innovations that have improved the process, and where it will need to go in the future.