Article at a glance:

Knowledge management comes to philanthropy

Dwindling endowments and increasing public scrutiny place philanthropic foundations under pressure to do more with less. Such pressure has an upside, however: it highlights the fact that the true cornerstone of effective philanthropy is a foundation's knowledge, not its money.

The take-away

Foundations must develop a systematic approach to creating and tapping their intellectual capital. Specifically, they should link their overall strategy with their knowledge strategy while building the architecture and processes to collect knowledge and to disseminate it within and beyond the organization.