From Article to Action: Using Insights from The Foundation Review to Make Change

Explore how we can reflect and learn together as a field.

The Foundation Review offers models and tools, evaluation results, reflections, and big ideas for building and sharing knowledge in philanthropy and empowering one another to transform practice. True change is a process that begins with this reflection — with writing, reading, and sharing articles and information — then moves forward into learning and action.

In this webinar celebrating the 15th anniversary of The Foundation Review — proudly published by the Johnson Center for Philanthropy since 2009 — and featuring top authors from our celebratory special issues this year, we’ll explore how we can reflect and learn together as a field, as well as share innovations, examples, and tools for taking concrete steps toward change.

Authors Jane Wei-Skillern, Jewlya Lynn, and Julia Coffman will join The Foundation Review’s Editor-in-Chief of Special Issues and Executive Director of the Center for Evaluation Innovation Hanh Cao Yu to share key points and themes from their work and discuss how we move from article to action.

Registration: Free!

Featured Speakers

Julia Coffman, M.S., (she/her) is a senior advisor at the Center for Evaluation Innovation. She has spent the last 30 years working with foundations on their approaches to strategy, evaluation, and learning, leading dozens of evaluations designed to support and help advance social change. She has expertise in evaluating complex systems change and has been a leader in building the policy and advocacy evaluation field, supporting field collaboration, developing new methods and approaches, and supporting other evaluators in sharing their unique contributions.

Jewlya Lynn, Ph.D., is a facilitator, advisor, and researcher focused on helping leaders around the world tackle wicked problems using a systems change approach. Her current work includes exploring the mental models we bring to systems change, how to integrate a futures/foresight approach, making causal pathways visible amid complexity, and using AI as a systems change thought partner. She works across a wide range of issue areas, from slavery in the seafood industry to liberatory education to nuclear weapons threat reduction.

Jane Wei-Skillern, Ph.D., is a senior fellow for social sector leadership at the Haas School of Business at the University of California. She previously served on the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School (HBS), and London Business School. She has studied and published extensively on nonprofit networks for more than two decades. She has also taught courses on social entrepreneurship, nonprofit strategy, and network leadership to M.B.A.s and executives. She is the author and co-author of dozens of publications, including journal articles and HBS and Haas UC Berkeley case studies. For the past several years, Jane has taken a leave from teaching in the MBA classroom to focus on supporting social impact leaders in the field to grow their impact through networks. She is frequently invited to present keynote speeches, webinars, and workshops to share her research on network leadership and to facilitate the development of trust-based collaborations within organizations and communities.

Hanh Cao Yu, Ph.D., is the editor-in-chief of special issues for The Foundation Review and the executive director of the Center for Evaluation Innovation. Dr. Yu’s career spans the research, evaluation, and philanthropic sectors. She has more than 25 years of experience in qualitative and quantitative research in the areas of health and racial equity social change philanthropy, leadership development, organizational effectiveness, policy advocacy evaluation, community organizing, and vulnerable populations. Dr. Yu previously served as chief learning officer at the California Endowment and as vice president at Social Policy Research Associates.

Featured Articles

Four Network Principles for Collaboration Success (2013)
Jane Wei-Skillern, Ph.D., and Nora Silver, Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley

Most leaders in philanthropy are eager to engage in partnerships and collaborative initiatives — we’re eager for the opportunity to do more together. But too often these efforts stall or dissolve in the face of competing priorities, limited resources, and other roadblocks. Authors Jane Wei-Skillern and Nora Silver assure us that effective collaboration is a skill that can be learned and practiced.

Wei-Skillern and Silver spent a decade researching and developing case studies on a range of successful networks. Over time, four key aspects of effective networking rose to the top: focus on mission before organization; manage through trust, not control; promote others, not yourself; and build constellations, not stars.

Passing in the Dark: Making Visible Philanthropy’s Hidden and Conflicting Mental Models for Systems Change (2024)
Jewlya Lynn, Ph.D., PolicySolve; and Julia Coffman, M.S., Center for Evaluation Innovation

Philanthropy is already convinced of the need to focus on systems change as a way to build and sustain impact for the long term. But the sector often fails to recognize that there are different mental models for how we go about changing those systems. Sometimes these approaches can compete with or impede one another — ultimately slowing and limiting our impact.

In this article, authors Jewlya Lynn and Julia Coffman describe two mental models for systems change: systems dynamics and systems emergence.

• The systems dynamics approach focuses on finding key areas in a system where targeted actions can create big changes and predicts what those changes will be.
• The systems emergence approach identifies parts of the system that lack resources and experiments with ways to either disrupt or support those areas.

This article explores both models, provides examples of foundation strategies that use each approach and offers tools for aligning your mental model with the change you hope to make.

More About The Foundation Review

The nation’s first peer-reviewed journal of philanthropy, written by and for foundation staff, boards, and those who work with them, The Foundation Review was launched as a publication of the Johnson Center for Philanthropy in 2009. The journal has served as a platform for authors to share expertise and insights and contribute to the collective knowledge base in philanthropy ever since.

Celebrating 15 Years of Knowledge Building for Transformation: Explore the first of two special anniversary issues, published in June 2024. The second special anniversary issue will publish in late October.