Money Well Spent: A Strategic Plan for Smart Philanthropy

Paul Brest, Hal Harvey

John Wiley and Sons, May 18, 2010 - Business & Economics - 304 pages

Winner of the 2009 Skystone Ryan Prize for Research, Association of Fundraising Professionals Research Council

“All outstanding philanthropic successes have one thing in common: They started with a smart strategic plan,” say authors Paul Brest, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Hal Harvey, president of ClimateWorks.

Money Well Spent explains how to create and implement a strategy that ensures meaningful results. Components of a smart strategy include:

• Achieving great clarity about one’s philanthropic goals
• Specifying indicators of success before beginning a project
• Designing and implementing a plan commensurate with available resources
• Evidence-based understanding of the world in which the plan will operate
• Paying careful attention to milestones to determine if you are on the path to success or if midcourse corrections are necessary

Drawing on examples from over 100 foundations and non-profits, Money Well Spent gives readers the framework they need to design a smart strategy, addressing such key issues as:

• Effective use of tools—education, science, direct services, advocacy—that can achieve your objectives.
• How to choose the forms of funding to achieve stated goals
• How to measure the impact of grants or programs
• When to be patient and stick with a winning strategy and when to abandon a strategy that isn’t working

This is a book for everyone who wants to get the most from a philanthropic dollar: donors, foundations, and non-profits.

Contents

• Part I: 1
• Chapter 1: 3
• Chapter 2: 21
• Chapter 3: 37
• Chapter 4: 59
• Chapter 5: 71
• Chapter 6: 87
• Chapter 7: 103
• Chapter 8: 117
• Chapter 9: 135
• Chapter 10: 149
• Part II: 165
• Chapter 11: 167
• Chapter 12: 185
• Chapter 13: 205
• Chapter 14: 229
• Part III: 241
• Chapter 15: 243
• Chapter 16: 259
• Afterword: 269
• Index: 281
• About The Authors: 289
• About Bloomberg: 290

About the author

Paul Brest is the president of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Before joining the Hewlett Foundation, he was a professor at Stanford Law School, serving as dean from 1987 to 1999. He teaches a course on judgment and decision-making in the Public Policy Program at Stanford University and is coauthor of the forthcoming book Problem Solving, Decision Making, and Professional Judgment.

Hal Harvey, a former director of The Hewlett Foundation’s Environment Program, is now the president of ClimateWorks. He is also the president of the New-Land Foundation and has held positions at several different not-for-profit foundations, including the Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, and the Ploughshares Fund. He served on the energy panel of the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and chairs the MB Financial Corporation in Chicago.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Money Well Spent: A Strategic Plan for Smart Philanthropy
• Authors: Paul Brest, Hal Harvey
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons, 2010
• ISBN: 0470885343, 9780470885345
• Length: 304 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Accounting / General; Business & Economics / Investments & Securities / General; Law / Banking