Evaluating Chinese Philanthropy Status quo problems and improvement

Evaluating Chinese Philanthropy : Status quo, problems, and improvement Lijun He Ph. D. Candidate Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy Prepared for American Evaluation Association Oct. 19 th , 2013

The growth of private foundations Source: China Foundation Center 3403 2560 2179 1506 722 552 869 655 170 214 before 2005 1097 1082 2034 1359 1201 1369 2011 2013 Oct. 14 863 643 2008 foundations 2010 public nonpublic

The status quo of the evaluations on Chinese philanthropy

Some background about Chinese foundations • One of the three categories of Chinese nonprofit organizations, including social groups, foundations, people-run non-enterprise units. • Total number of Chinese nonprofits: about 499, 000. • Distribution; 271, 000 social groups, 225, 000 people-run nonenterprise units, and 3, 029 foundations. • Public foundation: local level and national level • Non-public foundation: local level and national level • Regulation: Regulation on Foundation Management in 2004

Self-regulatory association: China Foundation Center • Focus: transparency • Purpose: to bring transparency to philanthropic markets through access to the highest quality data, news, and analytics to enhance bigger social impact of philanthropy • Starting year: 2011 • Method: Ø rank all 2, 700 foundations with 60 indicators; Ø Criteria: quality and level of information disclosure to the public

Categories and indicators of CFC • The Index includes 60 indicators and the full score is 129. 4 composed of basic information(58. 2), financial information(28. 8), projects information(38), and donor information(4. 4). • Basic information: registration (12 indicators), contact (5 indicators), board(5 indicators), web infrastructure (3 indicators), charter and regulation(5 indicators), annual reports(1 indicator) • Financial information: reports (3 indicators), financial data (14 indicators) • Projects information: project data (7 indicators), web infrastructure (3 indicators) • Donor information: donor (1 indicator), web infrastructure (1 indicator)

Problems: • The channels of data collection are diverse but not stable. Personal relationship are at major play. An open and comprehensive data collection system is needed • Data accuracy is problematic. • Data tracking and processing is needed.

Internal Organizational evaluators • Foundation’s self-evaluation for internal improvement • Evaluators are usually CEO or program officers, occasionally invite some third-party evaluators. • Mostly at program level • Problems: - Lack of dual evaluation systems : grantor –grantees - Lack of capacity building support to the grantees - Lack of benchmark - Lack of capacity to evaluate , such as staff and database building

Constraints of philanthropy evaluation in China Ø Capacity building of evaluators: data tracking system (no scientific software), or bench mark, or expertise on indicator identification Ø Donor-led or misled (overemphasize on transparency) Ø The cap on administration cost : no more than 10%. It will allow little resources on evaluation Ø Frequent change of organizational missions for the upcoming philanthropists Ø Most foundations operate programs by themselves; this questions the self- evaluation results’ credibility

Improvement Ø Upgrade the evaluation indicators or measurement , with more focus on the impact performances. More comprehensive dimensions: Managerial, program, legitimacy, network effectiveness (Lecy, Schmits, and Swedlund, 2012). Ø More donor, project recipient interactive platforms ; their voice needs to be introduced. Different stakeholders exert different impact patterns ( donor, board, networks) (Malconedo, Barman, 2012). Ø Capacity building of the organization and evaluators Ø Balance of rigidity and flexibility : numbers create distances (Michaud, , 2013) Ø Renew the understanding on philanthropy: leadership, not management

Your advices and experiences are badly needed - What role should government play in the evaluation? - What are the better measurement for social impact performance - What are the better financial performance measurement? - How to break the power imbalance of grantorgrantee relationship in the grant-making foundations? - Whether the donors’ opinion matter in evaluation? To what degree? ……

Bibliography • China Foundation Center. (2013). http: //www. foundationcenter. org. cn/ • Lecy, J; Schmitz, H, Swedlund, H. (2012). Non-governmental and not-for-profit effectiveness: A modern synthesis. Voluntas, 23: pp 434 -457. • Lu, W. J. (2012). On problems of current foundation evaluation systems. Theory and Practices of Foundation Evaluation. . Social Philanthropy Research Institute at the School of Social Development and Public Policy at Beijing Normal University: Beijing. • Malcnedo, H & Barman, E. (2012). How organizational stakeholders shape performance measurement in nonprofits: Exploring a multidimensional measurement, 42(4), pp. 716738. • Michaud, V. (2013). Mediating the paradox of organizational governances through numbers. Organizational Studies, 0(0), pp. 1 -27. • Ministry of Civil Affairs. (2011, 2013). China Charitable Donation Report 2011 & 2013. The author: Beijing • Miller, J. L. ( 2002 ). Board as a monitor of organizational activity: The applicability of agency theory to nonprofit boards. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 12(4), pp. 429 -450 • Ostrower, F. (2006). Foundation approaches to effectiveness. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 35(3) , pp. 510 -516.