The desire to achieve impact is taking yet another step. First, there was great talk about foundations moving beyond writing checks to figuring out how to change the systems that may have created the need for the check-writing in the first place.
This has led to more and more foundations putting their resources – money, knowledge and connections – toward public policy engagement and impacting public policy. We highlighted the work of several Minnesota foundations in this arena in our Summer issue of Giving Forum.
Now, a first-of-its-kind report from the Center on Philanthropy & Public Policy at the University of Southern California focuses on the question of how foundations that wish to engage in public policy are using communications to expand the reach and impact of their work even more.
The study, released in May and aptly titled “How Foundations Use Communications to Advance Their Public Policy Work,” compiles interviews with senior communications officers at 18 of the country’s largest foundations, including MCF member W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Three structural models for communications staff at these foundations emerged:
- The advisory model, in which the communications team advises program staff both formally and informally.
- The embedded model, where communications staff are embedded in the foundation’s major program teams.
- The communications department model, an approach where a separate communications department produces independent products and programs, in addition to serving as advisers.
While the communications staff sizes are small, communications work extends beyond core staff and encompasses what consultants, partners and grantees do as well.
Study authors James M. Ferris, Marcia Sharp and Hilary J. Harmssen identified 10 distinct strategies foundations use to boost their public policy engagement through communications. Five are within a foundation’s grantmaking work, and five go beyond it:
Five Strategies Within the Grants Program
- Build communications support into the budget for a larger program – includes funding communications components of larger project grants related to public policy engagement.
- Give grants or contracts specifically for communications – includes stand-alone communications grants for strategy development, implementation, or messaging, as well as companion grants to projects or research studies with significant policy implications.
- Provide expert consulting support to grantees – includes expertise provided by consultants or networks or directly by foundation staff to further an organization’s skills and expertise in strategy development, messaging, social media, polling, and other general communications tools.
- Offer communications capacity building to grantees – includes programs to build grantee skills and knowledge in organizational development, advocacy, strategy, and social media.
- Train program officers – includes programs on funding advocacy and communications, the role of communications in policy engagement, basic communications strategies and tactics, and legal issues related to advocacy and policy engagement.
Five Strategies Beyond the Grants Program
- Sponsor convenings – includes community forums and other forms of gatherings that bring together key actors and influences on an issue.
- Do direct media outreach – includes activities conducted in the name of the foundation, as well as on specific policy issues such as op eds, press releases, blogs, etc.
- Use the CEO’s bully pulpit – includes speaking, writing, or blogging on particular policy issues or topics, and calling meetings and conducting relationship building with important stakeholders.
- Establish communications departments within the foundation – includes publishing, creating news services, producing public education campaigns, creating media partnerships, and running awards programs.
- Build a cause brand – includes creating favorable/trusted name recognition for the foundation, as well as consciously developing a cause brand around a particular public problem or issue.
While communications can play a vital part in a foundation’s public policy work, interviewees stressed that the greatest challenges are: to manage the complexity of relationships involved for a core communications staff what works on daily basis with individual grantees, coalitions and collaborations, program officers, contractors and consultants; and content experts, and to integrate communications into the program work, especially at an early and strategic level.
- Chris Murakami Noonan, MCF communications associate
