As part of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation's desire to increase the knowledge of the field and promote increased adoption of best practices, the Foundation is committed to sharing the successes, failures, and lessons learned from its work. The EMCF Reading Room is the online repository for reports and publications related to its grantmaking strategy, including evaluation guides, case studies on the Foundation, and essays written by the Foundation's leadership.

Online Columns and Articles

The Foundation regularly commissions articles, essays, and reports sharing the lessons that emerge from the work of the Foundation and its grantees.

• Creating Stronger Staffs from Within: An interview with Geoffrey Canada, CEO of Harlem Children's Zone
• Investing In Effective Leadership: A talk With Roxanne Spillett, President of Boys & Girls Clubs of America
• Navigating the Chutes and Ladders of Growth at MY TURN: An interview with Barbara Duffy, Executive Director of MY TURN
• The Importance of Youth Development: The case for investing in youth-serving organizations
• Mastering Effective Leadership: Notes from Thomas Tierney, founder of the Bridgespan Group
• Building Stronger Staffs From Within: Lessons from the Private Sector: A Q&A with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and the Center for Employment Opportunities
• Expansion and Growth: Reaching Greater Scale: A conversation with Youth Villages and Citizen Schools on taking your organization to the next stage

Tools and Guides

The following resources are available to assist nonprofit organizations improve their own practices and programming.

• Assessing Your Organizational Capacity: McKinsey & Co.'s Self-Assessment Grid
• What Works: Tools To Help Improve Youth Outcomes: Child Trends has compiled an online database for service providers to learn how to improve their programs' effectiveness for young people.

Evaluation

• Mainstreaming Evaluation: Evaluation as a Core Element of Institution Building at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation: Delivered at the 2001 meeting of the American Evaluation Association, this paper described how the role of evaluation evolved at the Foundation during the development and refinement of its grantmaking strategy.
• A Question of Quality: How Do We Know What Works in After-School? Large-Scale, External Evaluations of Program Impacts vs. Reliance on Program-Based Evaluation Capacity to Assess Participant Outcomes: This presentation, given In September 2003, discussed how well-designed evaluations can be used to improve the quality of after-school programs, and how the Foundation is assisting grantees in the area.
  

About the Foundation's Transition to Today

Information about the Foundation's experience transforming the organization and its grantmaking approach to the one currently used today can be found here. (This includes essays by former Foundation President Michael Bailin.)

Go to Transition at the Foundation: Adopting a New Grantmaking Strategy, 2000-2004

External Reports and Publications of Interest

• Imagine, Involve, Implement. This report released by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations analyzes the experiences of various funders who have transformed their practices to become more effective organizations. (This project was funded, in part, by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.)