We are featuring the voices of "knowledge sharing champions" from across the field, exploring new tools, practices, and examples showing how foundations are opening up about what they are learning and sharing that knowledge for the benefit of the philanthropic sector, and for the greater good.

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  Janet Camarena

  What Will You #OpenForGood?

  Foundation Center has launched our new #OpenForGood campaign, designed to encourage better knowledge sharing practices among foundations.Three Foundation Center services—Glasspockets, IssueLab, and GrantCraft are leveraging their platforms to advance the idea that philanthropy can best live up to its promise of serving the public good by openly and consistently sharing what it’s learning from its work.
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  Mandy Flores-Witte

  Transparency and the Art of Storytelling

  Foundations are uniquely poised to support higher-risk projects, and as a result, failures can happen. Kenneth Rainin Foundation's senior communications officer, Mandy Flores-Witte, describes how the foundation, to evaluate lessons learned and accelerate change, has embraced openness in its communications.
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  Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

  Bringing Knowledge Full Circle: Giving Circles Shape Accessible and Meaningful Philanthropy

  Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen Foundation’s Giving Circles Fund initiative allows individuals to pool their resources, knowledge and ideas to develop their philanthropic strategy and scale their impact. Founder of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, Arrillaga-Andreessen argues philanthropists have an imperative to share what they've learned for the greater good.
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  Rebekah Levin

  Why Evaluations Are Worth Reading – Or Not

  Robert R. McCormick Foundation’s evaluation initiatives changed the way that the foundation understands and does its work. Rebekah Levin, McCormick's director of evaluation and learning, shows how effective evaluations can inform, guide, and assess programs, strategies, initiatives, organizations and movements.
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  Aaron Lester

  The Real World Is Messy. How Do You Know Your Foundation Is Making an Impact?

  In a perfect world, foundations could learn from every mistake, build on every new piece of knowledge, and know with certainty what impact every effort has made. As Aaron Lester, content marketing manager at Fluxx, tells us, it turns out knowledge sharing is a tough nut to crack.
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  Janet Camarena

  Because What You Know Shouldn’t Just Be About Who You Know

  In this first post in our Open For Good blog series, Janet Camarena, Foundation Center's director of transparency initiatives makes the case for how philanthropy can be improved through greater knowledge sharing. Each year foundations make $5 billion in grants towards knowledge production. Yet only a small fraction share what they learn, and far fewer do so using open licenses or open repositories. This is our campaign to change all that.