The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking: How Foundations Find, Fund, and Manage Effective Programs

Strategic Communications

Many of the concepts surrounding initiative management, such as evaluation, social marketing, cluster evaluation, and bringing projects to scale, have already been discussed. The concept of strategic communications, however, requires more explanation. As previously mentioned, foundations vary widely in their approach to communications. Some prefer to toil in anonymity; a few seek the klieg lights. Most staffed foundations have some sort of communications capacity, although often the professionals assigned to do the work are pretty much limited to writing an annual report and responding to criticisms appearing from time to time in the press. Many foundation leaders fear that communicating more aggressively than this could ...