Giving Compass' Take:

• In this Stanford Social Innovation Review post, Bush Foundation president Jen Ford Reedy discusses the organization's methodical approach to finding the right people and providing them with the resources they need. 

• The four-question framework described here could apply to work in many different areas. How much thought are we putting into the way we engage with community leaders?

• Here's more on how we can create more honest conversations between nonprofits and funders.

In philanthropy, you may have money and influence, but you generally have no direct control over the people actually putting the change in place. The philanthropic approach, therefore, requires that you convince and support other people and organizations to make changes happen.

Most philanthropic interventions involve a bunch of people working to make a change with and through a bunch of other people, such as funding an education organization to convince school district leaders to direct principals to coach teachers to engage with students in some new way. It is a chain of human interactions that requires the right motivations, capacities, and coordination at every link.

This is the hardest part of philanthropy, and I have come to believe that our best-odds approach is to develop a strategy with this hardest part front and center: How can we inspire, equip, and connect people to make the change we hope to see in the world?

We now frame our work through these four questions:

  1. What is the goal?
  2. Who is required for success?
  3. What do those people need to be inspired, equipped, and connected for success?
  4. What ecosystem conditions are required for success?

Every action we take changes the ecosystem. We must, therefore, continuously learn and adjust our strategy. We must operate inclusively and with humility, to truly understand the disruptions we cause, whether they are good or bad, intentional or unintentional. This is essential to ensure that whatever we do — even if we are wrong and fail — will enrich and not deplete communities.

Read the full article about changing the system and the people by Jen Ford Reedy from the Stanford Social Innovation Review.