In 2007, the Walter and Elise Haas Fund inaugurated The West Wall Project to recognize and support some of the talented artists who have received Creative Work Fund grants. Every 18 months, an artist is commissioned to create an original work for display in the Fund’s offices at One Lombard Street in San Francisco. The Fund then returns the work to the artist who contributes it to a nonprofit organization of his or her choosing, giving the work an additional life and benefiting an agency and its clients.

Walter Kitundu's West Wall project

Walter Kitundu has created the fourth West Wall project, We Are Everything We Are Not, a kinetic sculpture in the form of a rowboat. When viewers interact with the piece, it responds with light patterns and sounds suggesting the movement of a boat through water. Kitundu’s piece is on view during office hours from January 2012 through June 2013.

<Read the Artist’s Statement after the break>

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I recently read a highly recommended article by Fay Twersky in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, titled “Keep Charity Evaluation Tests Relevant to the Needs of the People Served“.

Fay, a senior advisor to the Hewlett Foundation, is one of the smartest people in the nonprofit sector. She has tremendous experience in small and large scale evaluation. We learned a lot from her and her partner, Jill Blair, when they did some consulting with us here at the Fund several years ago.

In this op-ed piece in the most recent issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Fay cuts thru some polarizing rhetoric about how to approach assessing nonprofit effectiveness. As Fay sees it,

“Evaluation is fundamentally about finding the best ways to help nonprofits do their jobs better. And to do that well, evaluators need to listen carefully to the people working on the ground, understand their ambitions and values, and provide data to answer their most pressing questions.”

I agree completely.

It’s not always relevant or feasible to reduce program effectiveness to a number (e.g., return on investment), as can be done in the for-profit sector. But, the flip side is not to dismiss the need to have high quality data to determine program and organizational effectiveness.

As I told Fay after I read this piece, she brings “perfect pitch” to this important discussion. Subscribers can read the entire piece here.

Walter & Elise Haas Fund executive director Pam David has been named a “Local Hero” by Bank of America’s Neighborhood Excellence Initiative. The bank recognizes Pam for her over 30 years of community activism on behalf of civil rights and social justice.

As part of the Initiative, the bank also is giving $200,000 grants to LYRIC and to the Booker T. Washington Community Service Center.

LYRIC, a San Francisco organization that works with LGBT youth, nominated Pam for her Local Hero award. In 1991, while at the Mayor’s Office of Community Development, Pam was instrumental in helping LYRIC secure a home in the Castro. Continue reading