Inherent in everything discussed up to this point is the formidable overarching challenge of how to appropriately and effectively manage all of the moving parts of a complex initiative like the TPPI in order to maximize the potential synergies and collective impact. TCWF has a longstanding, much-appreciated institutional policy of minimal intervention in the work of its grantees once a grant has been awarded. A complicated, multiyear venture like the TPPI puts that way of working to the test.

The Foundation may have missed opportunities to increase the Initiative’s impact by not playing a more active role in orchestrating and connecting the work of its various components. The counter view is that it’s then too tempting (and perhaps inevitable) for Foundation staff to inappropriately micromanage their grantees—to no one’s benefit. Also, it’s difficult—if not impossible—for a program officer to serve as a fair and impartial monitor of grantee activities that he or she has had a direct hand in shaping on a daily basis. So, given the ambitious goals of a TPPI, what’s the appropriate balance between foundation prescriptiveness and grantee autonomy?

In the case of the TPPI, the program staff developed a structure of quarterly meetings with the key support grantees. Although the Foundation set the agenda, ample time was set aside for updates and cross-component learning. There were also routine conversations with individual grantees, as needed, between meetings.

Others argue that the sheer complexity of the task of managing an initiative like the TPPI is not a job that plays to the strengths of a typical program officer. They suggest that to really maximize the opportunity to align the activities of the multiple grantees, a separate structure is required, which the Foundation did not put in place. Other foundations, for example, have contracted with intermediary organizations to manage initiatives for them. Of course, those arrangements are not without complications. To what degree can an external partner ever really act on a foundation’s behalf in just the way that the foundation itself might? Does the foundation then relinquish total control over implementation?

It all comes back to a foundation’s core philosophy of grantmaking. Does it see its grantees as agents of the foundation’s strategy or as organizations worthy of support because they have the potential to advance their respective fields? An Initiative straddles those two approaches to grantmaking. Multiple grantees are funded simultaneously with the intent that, collectively, they are likely to have more impact than an incremental grant-by-grant approach. How far should that collectivity be pushed by the foundation?

TCWF’s approach has been to provide cross-cutting resources such as technical support, evaluation and strategic communications but to stop short of trying to engineer precise coordination among all the moving parts. The Foundation’s grantmaking experience indicates that synergy cannot be engineered. You can create an environment that fosters collaboration, but you can’t force marriages among grantees, even when they might potentially have much to gain from the connection. Whether in the context of an initiative like the TPPI the Foundation erred too much on the side of grantee autonomy is a question that can be debated but one that is ultimately unanswerable. Looking across other foundation-driven initiatives, it is difficult to point out examples where more direct foundation intervention in the work of the grantees produced demonstrably better results.

It’s also important to examine this question from the grantee perspective. By accepting a grant to participate in an initiative, an organization realizes that it is signing on for something more demanding than a typical foundation grant. But no matter how generous, the funding from the initiative is only one of many sources of revenue for the organization. An initiative may be the foundation’s top priority, but it is rarely so for most grantees. Sometimes foundations tend to forget that. That begs the question of how much initiative management is warranted—and ultimately productive.

Turnover is another manifestation of complexity in these multiyear grantmaking programs. Short tenure of line staff is a fact of life for most nonprofit organizations. Despite the incentive of multiyear funding, turnover of key staff in grantee organizations was a challenge for the TPPI as it was for all of TCWF’s initiatives. Much of that turnover is predictable and unavoidable. Young people get married, have babies, go to graduate school, and/or leave for higher paying jobs. But it certainly affects the continuity of operations in an initiative, which assumes that cumulative experience will lead to greater impact. In the case of the TPPI, there was also substantial turnover among the Foundation staff assigned to the Initiative, which caused additional complications. But, ultimately, turnover is to be expected and the likelihood increases with the length of an initiative. Consequently, it needs to be factored into a foundation’s expectations when embarking on such a venture.

A particular strength of the TPPI was that it managed to keep the same intact core of support grantees throughout the life of the Initiative. Key senior staff from the evaluation team, Cornerstone Consulting Group, Ogilvy, the California Family Health Council, and the Public Health Institute remained involved with the Initiative throughout its lifespan. The strong working relationships they created with the Foundation’s help provided an excellent platform on which the other Initiative activities could be built.

An important way in which foundations can set the stage for synergy is to convene grantees across an initiative. Annual meetings of the grantees of TCWF’s Violence Prevention Initiative became a vital ritual for connecting and sharing experiences across the disparate components of the program. In the case of the TPPI, it was decided to not convene all the grantees each year. Instead, a total of five cross-initiative conferences took place over the 10 years. It is an expensive and labor-intensive undertaking to bring everyone together, and it is also yet another demand on the time of grantees. But participants point out that the conferences had genuine value. In the later years of the TPPI, when scholarships were awarded at the grantee meetings to young people who had been involved in teen pregnancy prevention, it was particularly powerful and revitalizing for all.

Another management challenge was the timing of the rollout of the various components of the Initiative. The Foundation’s plan for the TPPI was to phase in the components over time instead of launching everything at once. Therefore, the TPPI was not fully implemented until several years into its 10-year lifespan. Some might suggest that also represented a missed opportunity for greater impact. But the practical realities of launching multiple statewide competitive RFPs are formidable. The time required to get from the initial announcement to reading and scoring proposals to multiple face-to-face site visits to actual awarding of the grants can easily be six months. Again, it is possible to imagine using an outside organization to manage that process, but giving up the selection of grantees would be difficult for most foundations to do. That said, it is clear that the phased in approach TCWF used for the TPPI resulted in missed opportunities, especially around the public policy work—the last component funded.