The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking: How Foundations Find, Fund, and Manage Effective Programs

Choosing a Public Profile

It is essential that each foundation decide on the type of public profile that it wishes to present. This profile ranges from the spotlight-seeking to the camera-shy. Historically, for the most part foundations have been very little in the news. The work they do is complex and takes a long time to show results, and, in any case, much of their work is done through others. For example, the research supported by the Rockefeller Foundation to increase global crop yields—the “Green Revolution”—was extremely technical, took literally decades to fully mature, and was carried out largely by universities doing research, not by the foundation itself. It would be an enormous challenge to capture and hold the attention of the media ...