Northern California Grantmakers

The Center on Philanthropy & Public Policy has just released a first of its kind report showing how foundations are using Communications as part of their Public Policy strategies.

“How Foundations Use Communications to Advance their Public Policy Work,” conducted by James M. Ferris, Marcia Sharp, and Hilary Harmssen, focuses on the role of communications and the implications for foundation practice. Based on an exploration of the experience of senior communications officers in 18 of the country’s largest foundations, it provides a set of findings rich with implications for current communications practice.

According to the report, foundations use 10 different strategies to support their public policy goals:

1. building communications support into grant budgets for larger programs

2. giving grants or contracts specifically for communications

3. providing expert consulting support to grantees

4. offering communications capacity-building to grantees

5. training program officers on communications so they can work better with their grantees

6. reaching out directly to the media

7. co-branding and promoting research studies and other products

8. speaking out directly

9. acting as conveners

10. consciously building brands to help support policy goals

We at NCG have already noticed this trend within our own membership. For example, The Women’s Foundation of California uses their blog to discuss the effects of public policy on women and girls throughout the state; the California HealthCare Foundation uses Twitter to raise awareness around healthcare reform; and most recently the Tides Foundation launched its Civil Discourse Fund to “foster civil discourse and dialogue among those who may disagree about public matters.”

According to the report, the days are of foundations speaking through their grantees are over. Foundations are developing their own voices and adding them to the public dialogue.

Download a copy of The Center for Philanthropy & Public Policy’s “How Foundations Use Communications to Advance Their Public Policy Work” online.

Read the Philanthropy Journal article “Funders Tie Communications to Policy Work” that inspired this post online.

(h/t Philanthropy Journal)

Looking for guides on how to use social media?

Looking for blogs about social media and nonprofits?

Interested in finding out which nonprofits and foundations are using social media?

Want tips on how to draft your own social media policy?

Eager for research on how nonprofits are using social media?

If you answered affirmative to any of those questions above, I’d like to refer you the very informative and resource-rich Philanthropy411 blog post “20 Social Media Resources for Nonprofits.”

I’m definitely combing through all the links provided and I’m sure you’ll find some very useful information.

h/t to Philanthropy 411 for all the leg work they did to compile these resources.

The Social Media & Grantmaking blog post series will cover a wide range of topics. Check out the introduction post outlining the series.

To see all the posts in this series, simply type “social media series” into the search box located upper right of this web page.

I’m putting the final touches on our Corporate Contributions Roundtable Newsletter (CCR), which is why I wasn’t on the blog first thing this morning finishing up one of the other posts I have in my drafts folder.

And since I can’t share the CCR newsletter with the blog audience (sorry, it’s a members only privilege), I figured you could at least share some of the articles and research on Corporate Social Responsibility that I found thanks to the #csr convo on twitter.

And here they are:

• Best Current Practices in Purchasing: The Apparel Industry. As You Sow report based on interviews with Gap Inc., Jones Apparel, Levi Strauss & Co., Nike, Nordstrom, Phillips-Van Heusen and Timberland.
• “Creative Ways to Do Well By Doing Good.” SustainGenuity blog post featuring Pepsi, Tropicana, IBM, Shell, Ford, Terracycle, GE, Walker Crisps, Better Place and GM.
• “Does CSR Require Generic Business Skills or an MBA in Sustainability?” Blog post by Aman Singh Das on Forbes.com’s The CSR Blog.
• Employee Perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility: The Implications for Your Organization. New study on corporate citizenship by the Center for Creative Leadership.
• “Four Examples of Corporate Social Responsibility Done Right.” Socialbrite article takes a look at Molson Coors, Tyson, Haagen-Dazs and Greenopolis.

Happy reading!