The Nonprofit Marketplace Initiative (NMI) was an initiative of the Effective Philanthropy Group of the Hewlett Foundation launched in 2006.[1][2][3][4] Its closure was announced in the Chronicle of Philanthropy in April 2014.[3]
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♫ [ Ambient Guitar] ♫ PAMELA: We partnered with the University of Baltimore and J.C. I'd say, hmm, maybe six, seven, eight, years. JC: The Open Society Institute's Baltimore office launched a program about 15 years ago called Community Fellows where they provide stipends to innovators who want to establish new nonprofits address some need in society. They've got 135 alumni in the Baltimore region, and approached us to see if we could take a select handful of those alumni and work with them to get their organizations to the next level. JILL: OSI, that relationship started quite a bit back when I received a fellowship through the organization and that's been an ongoing, amazing partnership and resource for us in the city. The University of Baltimore opportunity had this forward, innovative thinking of Social Entrepreneurship. JC: The two courses that we taught, and that the Open Society Institute participated in were the Social Enterprise course and the Design-Business Link course. OSI underwrote this and provided money for some prizes. What we've tried to focus on here at the University of Baltimore is working with these nonprofits, their executive directors and boards, to make them more efficient, more business-oriented, without compromising their mission. SHANTEL: Going through the class, it was really kind of like, you know, baring your soul. I came in with a lot of passion, but not really understanding that how I market, or how we market the organization to the community, and the message that we want them to understand, is really important. JC: What we try to do is bring a business discipline to what they're doing. ED: How do you get that message across, and how do you reinforce it, how do you make it work? That's design. That's design. SHANTEL: I had no idea how important design really was until we participated in this class. PAMELA: There's a mutual benefit because everybody learns, everybody learns. They learned maybe something new about an initiative that they didn't know existed. The initiative learns from their consulting skills that they would not otherwise have been able to take advantage of. KATIE: Normally when you get out in the real world and you have your first experience with a client, it's kind of, you know, it will make or break you. But this provides a safe environment to get input from a client. JILL: When you're in an academic environment, it is sort of like an incubator. It's this space where you get to go thorough the processes of looking into what's viable, what's realistic, but as someone who works in the nonprofit field, it's all about implementation. At the end of the day, it's can you get it done in the real world, will it work, will it be worth your bottom line? PATRICE: Both sides, us and them, came in with different assumptions, so it was always interesting to be like, "That ideas sounds great in theory, but the nuts and bolts of working with the schools are actually this." And I know that they did the same thing with us. SHANTEL: That partnership between organization and students is just phenomenal. Every organization should participate in the design class, because it gives you the opportunity to have someone look at, from the outside looking in, to give you a different perspective. ED: The Design-Business Link class has never been done before. No one else does it, there's not a university in the country that has a class like that. Not because it's not good, it's because no one else ever thought of it, I guess. JC: The winners who came in first and second won substantial prizes. The feedback on what they're doing with the money is wonderful. Watching the results, and the implementation of what occurs in these two classes where we deal with the nonprofits, actually emerge into the marketplace, you know, Vehicles for Change, you hear them on the radio, really embodies the University's tagline of Knowledge That Works. Practical, applicable education that you can put to use right away. ♫ [Ambient Guitar] ♫
Origin
The NMI was started by the Effective Philanthropy Group at the Hewlett Foundation in 2006 with the goal that "by 2015, ten percent of individual philanthropic donations in the US (or $20 billion), would be influenced by meaningful, high-quality information about nonprofit organizations’ performance."[1][2][3] Jacob Harold was the program officer responsible, and the Hewlett Foundation at the time was headed by Paul Brest.
Organizations funded
The NMI funded a number of charity evaluators including:[2]
- GiveWell, that was focused on finding the very best charities to donate to[2]
- Charity Navigator[5] and Guidestar, that were focused more on rating large numbers of charities using clearly defined metrics
- Philanthropedia, a platform for experts to rate charities
- GreatNonprofits, a platform for people to share information about great charities
Holden Karnofsky, co-founder and co-executive director of GiveWell, expressed gratitude to the NMI, saying that NMI's support of the organization was crucial in its first few years, when it was relatively unknown and the subject of unfavorable controversies. He also praised the NMI for their support despite differences in strategy and approach, and said that while the NMI often encouraged them to spread a wider net and collaborate more with other NMI grantees, they were never inappropriately pressured.[2]
Ken Berger, President of Charity Navigator, wrote a letter upon the closure of the NMI thanking the Hewlett Foundation for their generous support of Charity Navigator through their transition to version 3.0 of their product. Berger identified the Hewlett Foundation as the single biggest overall supporter of Charity Navigator.[5]
Closure
In April 2014, an article the Chronicle of Philanthropy announced that the Hewlett Foundation was ending the Nonprofit Marketplace Initiative.[3] The Hewlett Foundation's decision was based on an internal re-evaluation of the project, motivated by two external pieces of information:[3]
- The Money For Good study conducted by Hope Consulting (paid for by the Hewlett Foundation) whose headline result was "few donors do research before they give, and those that do look to the nonprofit itself to provide simple information about efficiency and effectiveness."[6][7]
- An external evaluation from Arabella Advisors whose results further convinced the Hewlett Foundation that their strategy was not working anywhere near as well as they hoped.[8]
The Hewlett Foundation also had some significant personnel changes over the time period: Jacob Harold left the Hewlett Foundation for GuideStar and was replaced by Lindsay Louise, while Paul Brest was replaced by Larry Kramer as President of the Hewlett Foundation. They said that these changes made it more logical for them to re-evaluate the strategy, but was not the reason for ending the program, since the external studies and evaluations that would lead to the program's closure had been initiated under the previous staff.[8][9][10]
The Hewlett Foundation also clarified that even though they had failed to meet their own goals with the NMI, the organizations they funded, such as GiveWell, Charity Navigator, and GuideStar, had done a great job at meeting those organization's goals.[8]
Responding to the closure decision, Holden Karnofsky of GiveWell wrote that while the decision to shut down the program may have been the right one, GiveWell did not agree with the stated reasons for closure. Karnofsky argued that GiveWell's money moved in the years to come would alone more than justify the grand total of 12 million dollars spent on the NMI.[2] This would be validated in the years to come: in 2014, GiveWell moved $13.0 million to its top charities from donors excluding Good Ventures, a multi-billion dollar foundation it works closely with.[11]
Jacob Harold, the program officer formerly responsible for NMI, who had since left for GuideStar, responded to Karnofsky's post, noting that the NMI's goals of reaching a large population were still worthwhile, and that its main problem may have been that it was too early for its time. Harold noted that he hoped to make the vision the NMI sought a reality through his work for GuideStar. He emphasized the importance of both quality and quantity, noting that GiveWell and the effective altruism movement it was part of might be too neglectful of the quantity goals that the NMI had.[1]
References
- ^ a b c Harold, Jacob (August 5, 2014). "Dialogue about the Hewlett Foundation's Nonprofit Marketplace Initiative". Retrieved December 6, 2015.
- ^ a b c d e f Karnofsky, Holden (August 5, 2014). "Thoughts on the End of Hewlett's Nonprofit Marketplace Initiative". GiveWell. Retrieved December 5, 2015.
- ^ a b c d e "Hewlett Ends Effort to Get Donors to Make Dispassionate Choices on Giving". Chronicle of Philanthropy. April 3, 2014. Retrieved December 5, 2015.
- ^ Twersky, Fay (April 4, 2014). "Follow-up on Our Decision to End the Nonprofit Marketplace Initiative". Hewlett Foundation. Archived from the original on February 19, 2016. Retrieved December 5, 2015.
- ^ a b "President and CEO's Report for May 2014". May 6, 2014. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved December 5, 2015.
- ^ "Money for Good". Hope Consulting. Archived from the original on November 4, 2015. Retrieved December 5, 2015.
- ^ Hassenfeld, Elie (July 20, 2010). "The Money for Good study". GiveWell. Retrieved December 5, 2015.
- ^ a b c Wickline, Heath (May 12, 2014). "More on Our Decision to End the Nonprofit Marketplace Initiative". Hewlett Foundation. Archived from the original on February 19, 2016. Retrieved December 6, 2015.
- ^ Schambra, William (May 12, 2014). "Hewlett Foundation Should Be More Open About Shuttered Program". Chronicle of Philanthropy. Retrieved December 6, 2015.
- ^ Hartnell, Caroline (July 4, 2014). "Interview: Fay Twersky, Hewlett Foundation (£)". Alliance magazine. Retrieved December 6, 2015.
- ^ "Evaluating GiveWell's impact". GiveWell. April 1, 2015. Retrieved December 6, 2015.
This page was last edited on 18 February 2021, at 11:59