RWJF - President’s Message

When I came to the Foundation in 1990, I told our staff that my aspirations were simple: “Best possible programs, best possible place to work.” Implicit in that formulation was the hope that these two goals would reinforce each other.
     In a small philanthropy it may be possible for a single leader to drive program development, leaving to the staff the back-end functions of execution and monitoring. A foundation of our size, however, relies on the creativity and passion of its staff to design programs and oversee their implementation. We must recruit and retain the best possible people for this complex job and establish working conditions that allow them to flourish. Because it is almost as hard to assess individual accomplishment as it is to measure foundation performance overall, subtle incentives and institutional rewards take on heightened importance.
     The combination of ambitious goals and ambiguous performance measures can create a permanent undertow of anxiety among a foundation’s staff, who worry that they are not “doing enough.” Staff also may feel a bit guilty when they compare their own relative economic security with the turbulence faced by friends and colleagues working in industry, government and nonprofit organizations.
     The key is to build a culture that will reinforce mission, stimulate and reward performance, and help with recruitment and retention. It remains important, as well, to give staff opportunities to help make the foundation a better place to work. At RWJF, we have instituted a multidirectional performance feedback system for managers, who are now assessed by people above, below and alongside themselves on the organizational chart. We encourage formal and informal staff development through mentoring, leadership development and individual coaching. And we are preparing for our second survey, in which staff can anonymously assess the foundation’s culture and management. The previous survey revealed some significant opportunities for management improvement that we moved quickly to address.
     To accomplish all of this requires holding certain principles dear: treating staff with respect and dignity and making sure they know they are expected to treat grantees and applicants the same way; maintaining integrity of purpose and conduct; avoiding ostentation; undertaking a relentless internal quality improvement program for staff and for organizational processes; and instituting regular feedback about organizational and individual performance and goals, involving both internal colleagues and external constituencies. I would also recommend sprinkling in a little humor; philanthropy sometimes takes itself too seriously, and its ambassadors can appear self-important.