The great majority of Fund projects completed over the last 12 years have met or exceeded expectations-a record that reflects attention to the principles outlined here and a commitment to drawing lessons from experience.
(5)As recently summarized by health policy and management professor Stephen Shortell, a substantial body of management research demonstrates that organizational learning "is often critical for achieving high performance in other domains. It involves the organization's collective ability to incorporate new knowledge and practices."
(6) A learning organization, explains Harvard Business School professor D. A. Garvin, is "skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights."
(7)A major strength of the foundation sector is the independence and heterogeneity of the institutions that populate it. But regardless of size, mission, donor intent, history, program focus, leadership background and vision, and staff and board capacities, every foundation stands to gain from periodic assessments of its grantmaking experience and the lessons such reviews yield. Especially when operating in fields where evaluating impact is difficult and when funding work that does not easily lend itself to outcomes measurement, foundations can help ensure strong performance and accountability by installing systems and processes for drawing lessons. In the foundation sector, evidence of the presence of robust processes for institutional learning may be among the best available measures of an organization's commitment to high performance.
