Increasing Impact While the Project Is Active

After a project has been funded, many opportunities unfold to multiply the impact it can achieve. The most effective of these revolve around the power of networking, both internal and external, using both evaluation and strategic coummunications vehicles.

Internal Networking

There are two major methods of internal networking: project networking and cluster evaluation. Project networking is the more straightforward of the two. It is simply a convening of projects, usually similar projects in a cluster or program, but sometimes dissimilar projects from different clusters that have things to teach each other. The foundation provides a venue for representatives of the funded projects to meet and learn together.

These networking meetings can be facilitated by you, by an outside consultant, or even by one of the grantees in the network. Generally speaking, an outside facilitator is preferable, for a program officer facilitating often defeats the purpose of developing leadership among the grantees, and if one of the grantees facilitates, she or he will not be able to fully participate in the meeting. It is important that whoever handles the facilitation does so with a light touch.

Program officers universally report that the most valuable aspect of networking meetings is not the formal program but rather the mutual learning that occurs between and among the grantees. Grantees share problems they have encountered, solutions they have devised, and opportunities they have seized. They form lasting attachments, and the network created at the meeting usually survives and develops afterwards, as the individual activities evolve into an informal mutual aid society.

The second method of internal networking is more formal and more expensive; it uses evaluation as its vehicle. When a cluster of similar projects has been funded, and each has its own project-level evaluation attached to it, there is a need to compare progress and outcomes of the individual projects. An excellent way to do this is to hire a cluster evaluator and to organize one or more cluster evaluation conferences. As in project networking, the cluster evaluator will convene project representatives (including, of course, the project evaluator) at a venue to share learnings. The difference is that the main focus of these convenings is to compare evaluation learning results, with only a secondary emphasis on programmatic dialogue. By networking project-level evaluators, it is possible both to improve their individual work and to create a team that can perform a first-rate evaluation of the lessons and outcomes of the cluster of projects itself. If finances permit, it would be ideal to hold a project networking meeting first, followed by a cluster evaluation conference afterwards, so that both the project staff and the evaluators are well networked and have their specific needs met. The W. K. Kellogg Foundation has been a leading exponent of cluster evaluation and has produced an excellent primer on the subject (Millett, 1998).

With both types of internal networking, it is possible to leverage considerable additional impact with the investment of relatively few additional dollars. This is particularly true of project networking, the costs of which are mainly limited to those of the meeting itself. In the case of cluster evaluation, more expense is added due to the cost of evaluating each of the individual projects in the cluster. The additional lessons garnered and the human capital that is leveraged, however, usually amply justify the additional investment required.

External Networking

Through its ongoing work, every foundation becomes a member of many networks and is acquainted with or has access to others. You can introduce grantees to these networks in order to magnify program outcomes. An obvious way to do this is to introduce the grantees to other funders. Another example: if a foundation has funded a museum to preserve the history of community development efforts in a particular city, it can network the museum with its community development grantees so that the museum can get access to sources of artifacts and information. You can play the role of matchmaker in external networking, and usually with excellent results.

Strategic Communications

Strategic communications can multiply impact by sharing lessons with influential audiences. If, for example, a project is demonstrating that the use of nurse practitioners can ease physician shortages in rural communities, a strategic communications program can be crafted to share this message with health professions educators, rural community leaders, and federal health policymakers. The communications program may not, in itself, result in more nurse practitioners being placed in rural areas, but it lays the groundwork for social marketing programs that can have this outcome.