Giving Compass' Take:

· Putnam Consulting Group explains the importance of investing time for evaluating, learning, and improving new strategies at your organization before it's too late.

· Why is it important to evaluate progress before a project ends? How does this create more successful work? 

· Learn how to think differently about assessing work.

Most philanthropies seek to be strategic and have an impact. Yet few build their own internal capacity to be strategic grantmakers. In particular, most funders forget to intentionally learn from their initial piloting and testing of strategies so that they can make early modifications and course corrections.

Of course, learning often requires that you ask the right questions. Below are six that will get you started, but based on your own focus and curiosity, I’m sure you can develop even more that you can regularly ask yourselves and your partners.

  1. What are the top three things we have learned about our strategy thus far?
  2. If we could do it all over again, what would we do differently?
  3. What progress are we making on our strategy overall?
  4. What are some of the early accomplishments/wins?
  5. What has been the most challenging?
  6. If we were board members, what would we want to know about what has been learned/accomplished?

Read the full article about learning and improving in philanthropy at Putnam Consulting Group.