Research to Shape a Foundation’s Legacy

The Situation

A major international foundation asked Artemis Strategy Group to conduct research to help the organization frame the issues, opportunities and choices related to the foundation’s legacy. It was developed as a “limited life” organization, and this foundation marketing research was conducted to identify the organization’s core and most salient characteristics in the eyes of important external audiences. The objective was to help the foundation determine how to speak about itself and the goals it wished to accomplish as it finalized its future role and activities. The foundation will close in 2020.

Our Recommendation

Artemis Strategy Group developed a careful process of interviewing several dozen selected high-level individuals throughout the world who had some level of engagement with the foundation. The interviewees included grantees, leaders of NGOs, philanthropists and people influential in social change. These confidential interviews were conducted in a structured manner that facilitated aggregate analysis around the choices to be made.

The Outcome

The brand guidance from the research helped the foundation use its “voice” and reputational leverage more effectively, refine the focus of grant making and activities and enhance the collective value of the grants and activities. Importantly, it helped the foundation decide where to focus its powerful voice in its remaining years.

Our client ran the communications function of this foundation and presented the research and resulting strategies to the leaders and the board. He was so taken with the process of listening to perceptions of the foundation by people who had touched it over the years that he introduced his presentation with a poem. We wrote a short blog post about it.