The Giving Review: A conversation with the Finding Common Purpose Foundation’s Andrew Wolk (Part 2 of 2)

This article first appeared in the Giving Review

Andrew Wolk, founder and lead donor of the Finding Common Purpose Foundation, has spent more than two decades in the world of social entrepreneurship, nonprofit consulting, and philanthropy. After an earlier career in business, he started several nonprofit groups—including, in 2004, Root Cause. A Boston-based consulting group, Root Cause advised foundations, nonprofits, corporations, and government agencies on strategies for addressing social problems. It worked with George Soros’ Open Society Foundations on what became the Campaign for Black Male Achievement. Wolk also founded the Social Innovation Forum and Interise, and he has taught social entrepreneurship at Boston University, MIT, and Harvard, among other places.

Over time, Wolk became increasingly disillusioned with and critical of the field in which he had established himself—and of his own role in it. Amidst the exciting initiatives, innovative programs, and claimed social impact, he began to question whether all the considerable resources and effort were broadly producing meaningful outcomes for people. He stepped down as Root Cause’s chief executive in 2020.

His Finding Common Purpose Foundation seeks to shift the attention of philanthropy, government, and other institutions toward measurable outcomes in Americans’ lives. It supports community-based efforts to identify shared goals, track progress publicly, and coordinate resources and institutional action toward achieving them. Its approach grew out of Wolk’s examination of more than 500 place-based organizations.

In his Common Purpose: Building a Movement to Renew the American Promise earlier this year—consciously modeled on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense on the 250th anniversary of American independence—Wolk makes the case for what he calls an “Outcomes Movement.” Despite enormous public and philanthropic expenditures, he argues, too many working Americans remain unable to afford the necessities of a secure and flourishing life. “We cannot fix what we don’t measure,” he declares. He proposes judging national progress by whether more working Americans are actually thriving. He calls for a set of objectives and measurable results—particularly concerning wages, housing, child care, education, and health—to help inform that judgment.

Wolk was kind enough to join me for a recorded conversation earlier this month. In the first part of our discussion, which is here, he talks about his disillusionment with philanthropy and the nonprofit sector and his proposed “Outcomes Movement” to improve people’s lives.

The just more than 15-minute audio file below is the second part, during which he discusses the professionalization of philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, defends the work of individual charities, and looks forward to what he sees as an opportunity and an obligation for givers to reconsider their role in helping more Americans thrive.

Asked whether there’s too much professionalization in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, Wolk honestly tells me, “It’s hard for me to answer that question, to be perfectly honest.”

Of his work on measurement, he candidly says, “I think that we contributed with others to an overcomplicated set of reporting systems for a nonprofit that I regret substantially. … Seventy different grant reports, right? They all say the same thing, and nobody reads” them.

For grantmakers, Wolk agrees, “the temptations are just too high to not be humble because of the power differential” with grant applicants or grantees.

Then, asked whether nonprofits—as so many often urge—should be run more like businesses, Wolk says it depends on what one means with the question. Should a nonprofit “be financially sustainable” and “have a well-governed board? Then, yes.” But “I am not saying that they, on an individual basis, need to be held accountable for” a return on investment or anything like that, “because it’s just not possible. ..

“In some ways, you’re helping me think through my critique,” he says—which, he again cautions, “is probably not at an individual-nonprofit level. I actually think they’re doing some of the most amazing work across the country.” He distinguishes the effectiveness of groups providing direct assistance from the persistent social and economic conditions that make their assistance necessary. “Have we not recognized the enormous pressure, year after year, that grows and grows on them? That is a fundamental failure.”

Has politicization, including of philanthropy and nonprofitdom, made it more difficult to find and pursue common purpose? It’s often said, he acknowledges, that “we just need to get people to come together and talk … and then we’ll just get along better. And I just don’t agree with that.” He thinks that agreed-upon desired outcomes—on, say, more-affordable housing or child care—might provide a basis for cooperation among people who disagree about the policies needed to achieve them. “So we start on the outcomes. Let the debate begin.”

Wolk explains how any communities and potential philanthropic partners that might be interested in working with the Finding Common Purpose Foundation can easily just approach it to explore any such opportunities to do so.

More broadly, as the long-awaited and -touted intergenerational transfer of wealth gets underway, Wolk sees an opportunity and an obligation for philanthropy to reconsider its role in helping more Americans enjoy the economic opportunities from which its donors have benefited. “We are going to see a wave,” he says. “[T]he professionalization of philanthropy is going to … go on steroids here. …

“There is a unique moment for philanthropy to rethink its role,” he concludes.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-giving-review-a-conversation-with-the-finding-common-purpose-foundations-andrew-wolk-part-2-of-2/