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.Eventually the teachers were reinstated, though alltransferred to other districts.The State Education Departmenttook over as the interim authority of the Ocean Hill-Brownsvilledistrict.While the movement for community control of schools was torpe-doed by this disaster, it was slowed down but did not immediately sink.Perhaps it was appropriate for the Ford Foundation to put resources intosuch an experiment, but, before doing so, it should have taken the timeto find districts in which such an experiment had a decent chance ofshowing the positive differences that community control might have.Instead, by experimenting with the most fractious of districts, Ford en-sured negative outcomes that could not possibly be helpful in advancingthe principle on which the experiment was premised.Whether com-munity control of schools would ever have prevailed is not likely to beknown; the momentum in school governance in 2009 is in the oppositedirection control of schools by city mayors.LACK OF A CREDIBLE LOGIC MODELOne of the most common characteristics of foundation failures is thelack or inadequacy of the logic model that is intended to lead from theaction taken to the result desired.An example of the failure was a FordFoundation grant to achieve organizational reform of the United Na-tions and to promote United States global engagement.The programofficer then responsible for making the grant, Anthony Romero, nowpresident of the American Civil Liberties Union, was brutally frank intaking responsibility for its shortcoming:9781568487027-text:Layout 1 6/24/09 10:13 AM Page 272272 the foundationMy program produced great reports on bringing about a moreegalitarian Security Council, but the truth is that there is notmuch to show for what we were able to accomplish towards thatend.I did not have a theory of implementing change when Irecommended the grants.I knew what we wanted to changebut I didn t think carefully about how to achieve it.I thoughtthat if we supported all the different issues we wanted to ad-dress, it would have made a difference, but most times itdidn t.12Like some of the other characteristics of foundation failures discussedhere, more often than not this failure results from the combination of astrong desire to do something about a problem and a lack of under-standing about just what to do.The foundations that act in this fashionmight be said to be operating on the imperative of,  Don t just standthere; do something, anything.Another example of a flawed logic model, or the absence of any realstrategy at all, was the Getty Trust s Discipline-Based Education in theArts program, which was aimed at adding an arts component to indi-vidual academic disciplines in colleges by developing curricular materi-als.For many years, it had been the largest single grant program of theGetty Trust.When Barry Munitz took over the presidency of the GettyTrust, he terminated that program.It was never independently evalu-ated.According to Harvard Professor Howard Gardner, the program wasnot  intellectually honest. Gardner elaborates that conclusion:  Theleaders at the Foundation did not care what you did under the label ofDBAE so long as you wrapped yourself in the label.And so, from mypoint of view, DBAE was more about spin and about public relations,than it was about quality arts education.And once the money disap-peared, so did the label and many of the programs. 13WEAK GRANTEE COMMITMENTI ve stressed the importance of strategic focus for the foundation clearlydefining goals and selecting grantees whose programs and activities willhelp in achieving those goals.At times, however, not-for-profit organiza-tions that are desperate for funds will stretch or distort their self-definition9781568487027-text:Layout 1 6/24/09 10:13 AM Page 273How Foundations Fail 273in an effort to appear suitable for a foundation grant.The result can be agrant going to a recipient that is not truly committed to the same goals asthe foundation.William Bowen, president emeritus of the Andrew Mel-lon Foundation, has witnessed this problem firsthand:When recipients of a grant are not fully committed to doingwhat the foundation intends, that can lead to serious failure.Ina couple of cases, Mellon has asked for the return of the grant.Foundations should beware of  reluctant dragons, who are fre-quently the cause of major disappointments.They read a foun-dation s annual report and then come in for grants that seem tofit [the goals of the foundation], but really don t.They are be-ing opportunistic and trying to fit what they want to do intothe framework of what the foundation wants to do.And un-fortunately, the foundation sometimes disregards the evidencethat that is the case and nonetheless makes a grant to a granteewho really isn t committed to what the foundation intends toachieve.14LACK OF RELEVANT GRANTEE EXPERIENCEA frequent mistake of foundations that have a desire to get a particularprogram done is to pick a reputable organization to run it, whether ornot that organization has any experience or special competence in car-rying out that particular kind of program.The RWJF Faith in Action program is a good example of this flawedapproach.Support was given to faith-based organizations that werethought to be capable of helping solve health problems of poor people,but the recipient organizations were not supposed to use the program toproselytize for their religion.Many of them, however, were not sophis-ticated enough to know how to use the money properly.David Morse ofRWJF comments that,  It was hard to understand what the objective ofthe grants was to be.If it was to get faith-based organizations to work to-gether to improve health services, it was clearly not a success, but thejury is still out with respect to the overall effects. 15The American Council of Learned Societies sought and obtained sup-port, from several foundations, to engage in a national program of school9781568487027-text:Layout 1 6/24/09 10:13 AM Page 274274 the foundationreform that brought college faculty members together with K 12 teach-ers.In the hindsight of the foundation officers, it was clear that this ini-tiative had little congruence with the mission or track record of ACLS,which is a confederation of college faculty professional associations.Theprogram never acquired any traction.INCOMPATIBLE GRANTEE PARTNERSFoundations sometimes choose to support a group of grantees in a jointproject to tackle a single problem or a group of closely related problems.This can be an effective approach when the grantee organizations arehighly compatible and have complementary skills.But when the indi-vidual leaders involved have strong and conflicting personalities, or theorganizations have cultures that do not blend effectively, or the organi-zations do not share the same vision for dealing with the program, theresult may be an initiative that founders.The ATLAS Project, supported by several national foundations, is anexample [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]