Judgment Calls

11

The Wallace Foundation

How Can We Focus a Strategy for More Mission Impact?

SINCE ITS ORIGINS (in the multimillion-dollar family philanthropies of DeWitt and Lila Wallace, founders of Reader's Digest), the New York–based Wallace Foundation had always funded a wide range of cultural and educational programs. During the 1990s, however, its president, Christine DeVita, was increasingly bothered that its charitable giving wasn't making a real difference in society: “We were making a lot of grants to a lot of organizations, but it just wasn't creating any long-term change. We were dealing more with symptoms than root causes.” After presiding over hundreds of grants totaling nearly $1 billion, she found that her concerns continued to grow. She ...