On 4 August 2011 the DG Murray Trust staff and Trustees had a full-day engagement with various practitioners around key issues and emerging trends in grant-making and civil society. As part of our commitment to sharing learnings we are making podcasts of various sessions available through this blog.
The DG Murray Trust’s CEO, David Harrison, kicked off the day with a presentation that framed some of the key challenges, opportunities and thoughts around how to be an effective grant-making foundation. Some of the key questions raised were:
– Are “add-on” or “add-up” strategies going to achieve the greatest impact?
– Can we allocate our grants more efficiently? Can we get more impact out of our grants portfolio, and how?
– Can smart foundations outperform the benchmarks?
– Can our rates of social return be increased by smarter investing? (can we do better than ourselves?)
– How much risk is enough? How big should our appetite be, and how will we know when we’ve got enough?
For more insight listen to the full podcast, and accompanying slides:
[soundcloud width=”500″ height=”81″ params=”show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=073980″ url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/20958600″]
[slideshare id=8836908&doc=emergingissuesingrant-makinga-110812090212-phpapp01]
