Sharing criteria

Sharing decision-making criteria is a practice particularly fitting for the web. Rather than trying to share best practices, case studies, pros/cons of certain philanthropic initiatives or decisions, its often helpful to know the criteria that others used in doing what they did.

Here are three examples:

The 59 Smartest Organizations contest has a list of its choices, with details on the 'smartness' of each. More important - they also posted their criteria for making these decisions - with which you can agree/disagree/fine tune. This seems like the logical starting place for anyone trying to decide how to 1) get on the list, 2) 'smarten up' their organization, 3) re-define 'smartness.'

Here's a post on when it makes sense to use simulations in learning. Three criteria - easy to apply across all kinds of learning opportunities. Again, agree/disagree/fine tune.

Finally, the whole issue of foundation's investment and/or grant decisions - each organization has the freedom to make their own criteria. These needn't be public (though that would be great) but they need to be known - and applied consistently - by internal decision makers. And again, they can be agreed with/disagreed with/fine tuned.

Tags: philanthropy, alignedinvesting