F.B. Heron's Clara Miller on Changing Operating Models to Expand Effectiveness and Impact
When we set out on Heron’s current journey, we did so with the idea of building incentives into our own operating model that would propel us outside our terrarium—to become not only open to but forcibly engaged with the entire economy. As noted above, we realized that the strict segregation of “giving grants” (program side) and “extracting maximum profits” (investment side) as embodied in most foundations is mirrored in society: poverty is made more searing by economic segregation and the isolation of poor people and of antipoverty work from the economy as a whole. Modeling and replicating that separation within the business model of the foundation might actually be undermining our goals. In Gandhi’s words, a better path was to “be the change” to which we aspired. And we thought that approach should be applied more generally to foundation philanthropy.
With that in mind, we set about to build and test a foundation that might better suit the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. We asked ourselves, “What kind of operating model might we build if we focus all of our resources on achieving our mission, assuming that we will continue to operate under the regulatory rubric of the private foundation?”...