As the hectic holiday season and year-end activities draw to a close, many of us start planning for the coming year. If your plans include scheduling to attend any of our excellent Capacity Building Programs for Nonprofits, the online catalog is available. It can be viewed or downloaded for printing. https://www.healthfoundation.org/about/events.html The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati in cooperation with SC Ministry Foundation will continue to offer workshops particularly targeted to staff, volunteers and boards of small to medium size nonprofits. There are some new workshops as well as a few that have been core over the years. Our goals are to provide affordable workshops and to build expertise in business development, communication, evaluation and data, and fundraising. We anticipate adding some additional board development webinars. I invite you to share this blog or forward the information to any regional nonprofits. To register for a workshop, visit http://regisater.healthfoundation.org or call 513-458-6680.

At the opening of the 2011 American Public Health Association (APHA) Conference in Washington, D.C., last week, a collection of very provocative opening presentations challenged all 12,000-plus attendees to work harder for the health of those most in need. To view a few of the presentations, including one from former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, visit APHA's YouTube Page .

During that same opening session, attendees were encouraged to visit the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. I did that and found the monument very thought-provoking. Below is a quote and picture from the memorial. If you've been there, what did you think?

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. - Martin Luther King

The APHA Conference featured more than 1,000 scientific presentations, including one based on our work with the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky on the Kentucky Health Issues Poll (KHIP). Take a quick look at our slides:

This presentation reviewed how the addition of surveys with the cell phone-only population can affect the results of traditional landline surveys, and considered the costs and benefits of adding this hard-to-reach, but growing, population of telephone users.

KHIP is a random-digit-dialing telephone health opinion survey of more than 1,500 adults that has been conducted annually since 2008. Landline-only samples fell short of U.S. Census estimates of young and non-white people living in Kentucky. Therefore, a sample of more than 200 cell phone-only households was included in the 2009 and 2010 KHIP. In both years, the unweighted cell phone-only sample was significantly more likely than the unweighted landline sample to be non-white and to be younger than 35 years old.

Combining landline-only and cell phone-only surveys resulted in improved sample coverage, but did this improved coverage affect results? The answer is yes. The cell-phone sample included considerably more uninsured Kentuckians than would have otherwise been possible with a landline-only sample.

Last year, we partnered with the Center for Effective Philanthropy to conduct our second Grantee Perception Survey. Ninety six of our grantees participated in the survey, which asks questions about our grantmaking and reporting processes, our work in the community, and grantees' interactions with our staff and associates.

These survey results were really important to me. If you haven't noticed, we've experienced quite a bit of change at the Health Foundation in the past year. I think those changes are good, and I hope you agree. But one thing I don't want to see change is the Health Foundation's commitment to doing the best work possible with and for our grantee partners. The Health Foundation has a longstanding commitment to learning, and the Grantee Perception Survey results are a critical piece of information in our feedback loop.

You can download the full report here. But for those of you who'd rather just have the highlights, I've made a quick list:

• Data are the little black dresses of the 21st century – invest in a couple of good data points, and you'll be prepared for any occasion.
• Data sharing is the new norm and we need to get all sectors in the game. Government, nonprofit and corporate partnerships around data will drive innovation.
• We've only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the power of social networking in health care. Technology offers a new connectedness that can change and save lives, but we need to be willing to rethink some of our assumptions and practices in order to fully benefit from it.
• There really are some cool things happening in Cincinnati. Our region is poised to be a leader in data, technology and health improvement. That should make us very proud.

I want to thank the more than 300 health data enthusiasts, non-profits, entrepreneurs, hospitals, health departments, community planners, researchers, students, and funders who participated in our Data! Fostering Health Innovation in Kentucky and Ohio event last week. We had a rich set of presentations on how health data is being liberated and used in Ohio and Kentucky. We are lucky to be in a region so rich in health data innovation. This innovation was recognized in the opening video message from Todd Park, Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and one of the national leaders of the health data liberation movement, when he said, "The Cincinnati region is one of the shining stars in the health data and innovation sky." To view the video Click here.

He mentioned some great regional examples of health data innovation, including:

The co-hosts of the conference -The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky and The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati

Dave Heilman and SparkPeople and his "spectacular work"

Mark Carrozza from HealthLandscape and Andrew Bazemore from The Robert Graham Center for Primary Care for their development of HealthLandscape and their "incredible work, which was also featured at a national HHS conference."

Keith Hepp and HealthBridge and their work on Health IT: "We've been in absolute awe of the work."

Matt Rhodes at The Louisville Health Department: "massive kudos."

As promised, we've posted all 17 of the wonderful presentations online. Click here to access them. Thanks also to the 24 tweeters who helped share some of the most exciting moments with those who were not at the event. To read a transcript of #dataforum tweets, please see the attached file.

And finally, congratulations to HealthLandscape the winner of the People's Choice Innovation Award. Click here to see a photo.

This was an exciting week at the Foundation. We hosted our 10th annual Distinguished Evaluator workship, where we honored Dr. Ann McCracken and her vision of building capacity for evaluation within nonprofit organizations. Ann shared some of her favorite evaluation "lessons learned," and talked about how and why she developed a capacity building approach to evaluation (If you missed it, her presentation is below). We also enjoyed a screening of Saving Philanthropy, a documentary that explores the role of outcomes-driven decision making in nonprofit organizations. After lunch, we enjoyed an afternoon of discussion about how we can work together to strengthen evaluation and a culture of outcomes in our community.

I want to say a special thank you to the panel participants who were willing to share their insights, challenges and ideas with the group:

Diane Wright, Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health

Mary Carol Melton, Cincinnati Union Bethel

Shiloh Turner, The Greater Cincinnati Foundation

Ann Barnum, The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati

Kate Robinson, Saving Philanthropy

During the workshop, we mentioned a number of resources for folks who are interested in learning more about the topic. This isn't a comprehensive list, but I hope it will offer good starting point for those of you who want to know more. If you have resources to share, feel free to post them in the comments.

Health Foundation Events:

Organizations profiled in Saving Philanthropy:
ROCA
Nurse Family Partnership

Tools & Reports
Learning for Social Impact Learning Driven Assessment Workbook

Tools and Resources for Assessing Social Impact (TRASI) More than 150 assessment tools and resources collected by the Foundation Center

Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) a group of funders and investors who are working to create a common language for reporting social and environmental impact

Charting Impact The Independent Sector's framework for strategic thinking and sharing impact

Other Information:

Pew Research Center Pew data on national and international trends

American Evaluation Associaton's Tip of the Day Short, practical tips related to evaluation and measurement

Venture Philanthropy Partners Free download of A Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity

Stanford Social Innovation Review: Social Return on Investment Articles on evaluation, impact and nonprofits

Blog: PhilanTopic from Philanthropy News Digest If you only have time for one blog, read PhilanTopic's weekly news roundup (posted on Sundays)

If you could have one superhuman power, what would it be? If I could pick one super power, I'd want the ability to quantify anything. Instantly. Stop for a minute and think about how useful the power of quantification would be in your real life:

• You go to the car dealership and say, "Bottom line: this purchase will only improve my quality of life if I can get it for less than $14,000. Can you do that or not?" You walk away with a great deal.
• After trying three different brands of laundry detergent, you can immediately tell which one is the most effective.
• You always precisely calculate the number of jelly beans in the giant jar.

Let me give you a glimpse into the mind of a foundation evaluator. When we funders start asking for "impact" and "outcomes" and "measurable results," we're not just looking to put our grantees through the exercise of doing evaluation. We're not even looking for grantees to prove that they're superheroes. We already know that our grantees are superheroes. They save lives day in and day out. Funders ask for outcomes because we want to see our grantees tap into the power of quantification – to put on their capes and show the world what they can do.

Clearly, none of us have superhuman powers of quantification. In real life, evaluation isn't so easy. It takes time, energy, and resources to collect and analyze data. Sometimes I see people who put so much energy into getting the outcomes that they don't have much left over to look at them. That's when quantification becomes more like kryptonite than a super power – it drains rather than energizes. And that worries me because the power of quantification doesn't come from calculating outcomes. It comes from using them.

All of this begs the question: how can we better support the use of outcomes in our community? On June 14th, our 2011 Distinguished Evaluator, Dr. Ann McCracken, is going to help us tackle that question and give us some hints on how we can tap into the power of evaluation. Then, we'll get a sneak peek at Saving Philanthropy, a PBS documentary that explores how some nonprofits developed and use their powers of quantification. Finally, we'll spend the afternoon talking about how our community can work together to build evaluation capacity so that we all walk away with some ideas for making our own work more powerful. It's going to be an exciting day, and I hope you can make it.

To find out more about the workshop (or to register), check out the Health Foundation's website. If you'd like to know more about Saving Philanthropy, you can go to www.savingphilanthropy.org.

Have you ever wondered why running a nonprofit never seems to get easier? Do you find that you keeping adding to your workload, but rarely evaluate when to discontinue projects or eliminate programs? In November at the closing luncheon for the annual Ohio Grantmakers Forum conference, many Ohio funders and a few nonprofit executives had the opportunity to hear Allen Proctor discuss thought-provoking ideas for nonprofit and foundation leaders to consider.

We wanted more people to hear him, so we collaborated with Greater Cincinnati Foundation and the Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation to offer a program in Cincinnati on Wednesday, May 18, from 2:00-4:00 p.m. The program will provide nonprofit leaders, executives, and board members tools to use to increase sustainability.

Each participant will receive a copy of Allen Proctor's newly published Linking Mission to Money, Second Edition. This book contains practical steps and provocative advice on how to evaluate and realign spending with mission to attain stronger nonprofit finances, management, and organizational governance. Space will be limited. If you are interested in this program, you can register on our website: www.healthfoundation.org/events . The registration fee is $20, and includes afternoon refreshments and a copy of Dr. Proctor's most recent book Linking Mission to Money ($25 value).

The first week of March, I attended the annual meeting of Grantmakers in Health (GIH), a national affinity group for foundations that fund health-related activities. Although I don't attend every year, I always come back from meetings with information that I can incorporate into my work. I thought that I would share what I learned this year with you.
• Many foundations approach prevention from an advocacy point of view: converting vacant lots to vegetable gardens, making sure a park is a safe place for walking and other activities, lobbying for better fluoridation of water, or smoke-free environments, etc. Here at the Health Foundation, we have developed the Assistance for Substance Abuse Prevention (ASAP) Center which approaches prevention from a different perspective. The ASAP Center is less about advocacy and more about teaching individuals and groups to use specific prevention practices. It was interesting for me to contemplate how we might use the other approach. One foundation shared a readiness assessment they use when working with communities that are trying to change their community environment or social norms. I wonder how this might be helpful for communities in the Health Foundation's region.
• One session was a breakfast meeting for the Behavioral Health Funders Network, a group of about 70 funders within GIH. John O'Brien, senior advisor on healthcare financing at the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), shared the SAMHSA strategic plan for 2011-2014. As a group, we discussed ways that the federal government might partner with foundations in behavioral health. Even though I had heard the SAMHSA strategic initiatives before, I recognized nuances of the SAMHSA strategic plan I had not seen before. This will hopefully turn into an improved ability to coach grantees attempting to get SAMHSA funds.
• In a session about "what keeps you up at night," I learned that many foundations are in the midst of transitions in leadership. Since we have just gone through a transition in leadership here, it was good to listen to others and offer some guidance from our experience. I was reminded of some transition practices that might be helpful for our grantees that are or soon will be going through transitions. These included developing a succession plan before the time for new leadership emerges, using both board and staff involvement in the search process for new leadership, and forming a transition team from all parts and levels of the organization to help guide the new leader in the first few months of the job. For new leaders, those present recommended taking at least a year to get situated before making major changes.
• In many of the sessions, I was reminded that as grantmakers it is important to start where our communities are. What works in Los Angeles or New York or a small rural community in Nebraska might not necessarily work here in Greater Cincinnati. It might sound great, but I can't push it on people here. I can share, but forcing people to do something "my way" rarely works.

Does any of this raise questions for you? What did you learn at your last conference that you want to share?