RWJF - President’s Message

The kinds of social problems that RWJF and many other foundations tackle are the “big, hairy, audacious” ones. Typically, they are problems with significant consequences and multiple causes and contributors. If they were easy, they would have been solved already. The example that comes immediately to mind is poverty, a problem many foundations address with energy and creativity, even though its intractability was recognized 2,000 years ago (For ye have the poor always with you, Matthew 26:11).
     Increasing health insurance coverage, reducing smoking rates and improving end-of-life care are three areas where RWJF has worked extensively in the past decade, and in which we believe we have contributed to notable progress. Nevertheless, in each of these fields the problems have deep roots in many social, psychological, policy and practice domains and are far from being solved in any comprehensive or permanent way.
     Recognizing that it will be difficult to achieve the scale of social change that would completely solve problems such as these, foundations still want to know whether their efforts are relevant and successful in moving us partway. How do we know how much we have accomplished? Sometimes the choice seems to be between picking easy targets to measure and finding proxy measures for social change, neither of which may give a satisfactory status report. And, sometimes, we must decide that an avenue is worth pursuing even though our progress measures are not sensitive enough to guide us.
     Even without adequate guideposts, foundations addressing these kinds of complex problems must be prepared to take the long view. They must ask whether they can give themselves both the nourishment of optimism and a dose of realism when facing agonizingly slow progress, and whether they can sustain themselves in the face of persistent obstacles.
      My bottom line for foundations that choose to tackle problems that require social change is that we must recognize the significance of the extra burden such problems place on our staff and institution. Still, I believe that in making the attempt we fulfill one of philanthropy’s essential roles in society.