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Money Well Spent: A Strategic Plan for Smart Philanthropy, Second Edition
Philanthropy is a booming business, with hundreds of billions of dollars committed to the social sector each year. Money Well Spent, an award-winning guide on how to structure philanthropy so that it really makes a difference, offers a comprehensive and crucial resource for individual donors, foundations, non-profits, and scholars who focus on and teach others about this realm.
Behind every successful grant is a smart strategy. Paul Brest and Hal Harvey draw on the experiences of hundreds of foundations and non-profits to explain how to deliver on every dollar. They present the essential tools to help readers create and test effective plans for achieving demonstrable results. Brest and Harvey tackle thorny issues, such as how to choose among different forms of funding, how to measure progress, and when to abandon a project that isn't working.
The second edition accounts for a decade of progress: a rise in impact investing, the advent of pay-for-success programs, the maturation of impact evaluation, and the emergence of a new generation of mega-donors. Today, the notion of results-driven philanthropy is more important than ever. With this book, the social sector has the techniques it needs to deliver on that idea with impact.
Behind every successful grant is a smart strategy. Paul Brest and Hal Harvey draw on the experiences of hundreds of foundations and non-profits to explain how to deliver on every dollar. They present the essential tools to help readers create and test effective plans for achieving demonstrable results. Brest and Harvey tackle thorny issues, such as how to choose among different forms of funding, how to measure progress, and when to abandon a project that isn't working.
The second edition accounts for a decade of progress: a rise in impact investing, the advent of pay-for-success programs, the maturation of impact evaluation, and the emergence of a new generation of mega-donors. Today, the notion of results-driven philanthropy is more important than ever. With this book, the social sector has the techniques it needs to deliver on that idea with impact.
392 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 26, 2022
I read this as the ideological self-conception of philanthropy in contemporary America. I found this useful as an overview of the thinking behind management in the nonprofit world. It's written to be fairly agnostic towards ends and pragmatic about means. While it has a sort of liberal bourgeois do-gooder bent overall, it also works through some examples of conservative movements. The basic idea is to work out a Taylorist scientific management approach to charity, every leg subjected to cost-benefit analysis and monitoring. However it is broad enough that it is aware of some of the limitations of such an approach and puts most of the decisions into your hands. A lot of left-wing organizing overlaps with or at least interacts with the sorts of professionals that manage and staff nonprofits so I found it interesting.
January 9, 2019
Many books like this, ones who claim to distill every important bit of knowledge about a field into a few hundred pages, often overpromise and underdeliver.
To my pleasant surprise, I found this book to make no such claims. Instead, the book emphasized fundamentals when discussing what’s important, and it equipped me with the vocabulary and understanding to make distinctions between subtly different ways of organizing, goal-setting, delivering services and articulating problems such that I might be a more effective donor to and advocate for causes in which I believe.
To my pleasant surprise, I found this book to make no such claims. Instead, the book emphasized fundamentals when discussing what’s important, and it equipped me with the vocabulary and understanding to make distinctions between subtly different ways of organizing, goal-setting, delivering services and articulating problems such that I might be a more effective donor to and advocate for causes in which I believe.
July 13, 2025
So interesting to see how things were pulled together in the past in the pursuit of effective philanthropy. Very cool to see just how far things have come since then in the years shortly following this book until now, and all the good the Effective Altruism has done. Grateful to be alive in a period where it's become so relatively easy to do good!
May 31, 2012
In this book Brest and Harvey provide a guide to large scale strategic giving. The book defines strategic philanthropy and discusses various approaches to strategic giving. It covers the gamut from setting goals to evaluating grant proposals to techniques beyond grant making.
The key point of this book is that strategic giving focuses on investing for impact and social return on investment with a strong focus on evaluation. Although the authors make clear that not all initiatives can be evaluated quantitatively and social impact can rarely be perfectly predicted, doing the best you can to define the expected impact and evaluate the result will help grant makers to spend their dollars more effectively.
As former a member of a grant committee, I found the most useful chapters to be those on goal setting and grant application evaluation. Other chapters were interesting but less relevant to me. Some chapters, such as the chapter on using advocacy to meet philanthropic goals, were not at all relevant to my grant making work. And, perhaps not surprisingly, if you are not doing large scale grant making, you will likely find the book uninteresting.
One concept discussed which has applicability beyond philanthropy is the idea of a sound theory of change. A strategy for change should be backed by a well supported theory of change. A theory of change connects what you are doing with what you want to accomplish. Without a well established theory of change, your actions are likely to be ineffective or even harmful.
Defining a theory of change also provides a departure point when examining failure: if a program did not have an intended effect, it could be because the program was not implemented properly or it could be because the theory of change which connected the two was faulty.
Since I learned about this concept, I have been trying to apply it in my evaluation of proposals for things like fixing the economy. Instead of evaluating the idea directly, I first try to assess what the theory of change behind it is. Although I have not had many chances to use this approach, it seems promising for increasing my understanding and encouraging more fruitful discussion.
The key point of this book is that strategic giving focuses on investing for impact and social return on investment with a strong focus on evaluation. Although the authors make clear that not all initiatives can be evaluated quantitatively and social impact can rarely be perfectly predicted, doing the best you can to define the expected impact and evaluate the result will help grant makers to spend their dollars more effectively.
As former a member of a grant committee, I found the most useful chapters to be those on goal setting and grant application evaluation. Other chapters were interesting but less relevant to me. Some chapters, such as the chapter on using advocacy to meet philanthropic goals, were not at all relevant to my grant making work. And, perhaps not surprisingly, if you are not doing large scale grant making, you will likely find the book uninteresting.
One concept discussed which has applicability beyond philanthropy is the idea of a sound theory of change. A strategy for change should be backed by a well supported theory of change. A theory of change connects what you are doing with what you want to accomplish. Without a well established theory of change, your actions are likely to be ineffective or even harmful.
Defining a theory of change also provides a departure point when examining failure: if a program did not have an intended effect, it could be because the program was not implemented properly or it could be because the theory of change which connected the two was faulty.
Since I learned about this concept, I have been trying to apply it in my evaluation of proposals for things like fixing the economy. Instead of evaluating the idea directly, I first try to assess what the theory of change behind it is. Although I have not had many chances to use this approach, it seems promising for increasing my understanding and encouraging more fruitful discussion.
October 26, 2009
Practical guide to making philanthropy count
Nonprofit enterprises make up a multibillion-dollar sector of the U.S. economy, yet their funding decisions are often shots in the dark. They make a lot of mistakes. Investments that initially seemed inspired do not produce positive, measurable results. Paul Brest and Hal Harvey aim to change all that. Their “strategic philanthropy” process aligns goals, strategy and implementation, and includes accountability and measurements. Their book is full of pertinent, real-world examples that help to bring their points home. Although the guide is theoretical and abstract in parts, getAbstract recommends it to foundation directors and program officers who are tired of wasting their organizations’ money.
Nonprofit enterprises make up a multibillion-dollar sector of the U.S. economy, yet their funding decisions are often shots in the dark. They make a lot of mistakes. Investments that initially seemed inspired do not produce positive, measurable results. Paul Brest and Hal Harvey aim to change all that. Their “strategic philanthropy” process aligns goals, strategy and implementation, and includes accountability and measurements. Their book is full of pertinent, real-world examples that help to bring their points home. Although the guide is theoretical and abstract in parts, getAbstract recommends it to foundation directors and program officers who are tired of wasting their organizations’ money.
June 23, 2015
Too dry for me, basically repeated the same things over and over. The main message was the build a plan once you have found your passion. Take the time to discover the root causes, come up with very specific goals, build in check points and follow through. Don't plan on saving the world. I did build a respect for overhead and it's importance.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews