Increasing Resources to Address Disparities and Gaps

• The Challenge
• Promising Practices
• Benchmarks

BENCHMARKS OF PROGRESS

One challenge facing philanthropy is to evaluate its effects or benefits. There is great demand for techniques that assess impact, measure results, or mark progress. An approach that fits the theory of action in this project is to gather evidence that shows progress on the different pathways.

Each of the benchmarks below is linked to Challenges that need to be addressed, using Promising Practices. Making progress on this pathway, along with the other pathways, is thought to be connected to the overall goal of “improving the bottom line” of disparities reduction.

You can give your philanthropy high marks for progress achieved on this pathway when you see signs that…

• There is greater understanding among a broader base of people of what “philanthropy” means and what it can do.
• There is greater awareness, especially among the stewards of “old money,” of the various tools they can legitimately use to pursue goals of equity and justice is legitimate, fruitful, and consistent with their current missions.
• More money, especially in relation to total giving, is targeted to issues of social justice and racial equity.
• More philanthropic activity and resources is devoted to fixing the systems and addressing the root causes of poverty, inequity, or injustice.
• A greater slice of the philanthropic assets is invested in ways that advance the philanthropy’s mission, or at least don’t conflict with it.

This page updated 19 August 08