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Optimizing Program Impact and Cost-Effectiveness
Philanthropic Venture Partnership Opportunities for the Non-profit Community
Charles L. Harper, Jr., D.Phil.
Executive Director/Senior Vice-President
John Templeton Foundation
Radnor, Pa
Overview
This is a brief introduction to "venture partnership," which involves introducing a
variety of entrepreneurial concepts, practices, and standards of planning and
evaluation into non-profit activity. Such concepts are new to the philanthropic
communities, and may seem unusual in the context of academic research and other
non-profit activity. This document, therefore, attempts to introduce venture
philanthropy by outlining a learning exercise in creative thinking - the core of
entrepreneurial success.
Contents
(I)
Introduction
(II)
Some Useful Quantitative Metric Components
(III) Working Examples
• Freedom Project - Academic Course Competition
• Symposium Webcasting
• Speakers Bureau
•
Academic Lecture Series
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I.
Introduction
Progress-Generating Creativity
Creative, innovative, productive, aspiring people are the key to success in nearly any
venture. Many philanthropists and grantmaking institutions now seek to foster an ambitious and
dynamic success-generating entrepreneurial ethos among program managers supported by their
grants.
The future of effective grantmaking will demonstrate foundations providing philanthropic
investments in venture partnership with outstanding people of talent and vision. Providing
capital to be utilized by such people in developing programs allows their vision to flourish.
Oftentimes the degree of success hinges on the ability of the grantee to develop and utilize new
skills as an effective entrepreneurial project creator/manager. Demonstrated skillfulness is
knowing when to seize opportunities that make a program successful..
From the point-of-view of grant applicants, a foundation may appear as an institution with
pools of money and concerns about making its IRS grantmaking requirements. This is generally
not true, and It is important to recognize that the John Templeton Foundation certainly does not
view itself this way. Our activities equate more to philanthropic venture capital investments.
Our grantmaking is directed toward changing the world over the long-term in a few wholesome
ways. In the true business sense, prudent investing focuses on sustained long-term growth where
the access to capital enables a person or organization to start something which will flourish over
time through the power of sustained and growing momentum. The John Templeton Foundation's
philanthropic investments attempt to use this business acumen.
The long-term success of a venture depends largely on the ability of grant recipients to
use resources which serve to catalyze further opportunities. Especially we are looking for
philanthropic opportunities with high 'leverage 'potential. The term "leverage" refers to the
capability of utilizing a project investment to build momentum by connecting with a much larger
resource base. The organization should demonstrate capable management and adaptive strategies
that show clear objectives in developing a fiscally healthy organization. This allows for a greater
likelihood of sustained and growing momentum.
Building vision broadly within the social order and also especially with opinion-leading
changemakers is a goal of the John Templeton Foundation. This requires a focused combination
of skills and activities which produce excellence, innovation, persuasiveness, and strategic and
effective outreach.
A key feature of "entrepreneurism" or "entrepreneurial success" is the capacity to lead
processes of creative innovation. Investment guru, Peter Drucker, has defined innovation as
"change that creates a new dimension of peiformance." The most successful program
managers are entrepreneurial men and women in that they are always eagerly looking for
opportunities to create new dimensions of performance. This requires a well-informed but also
open, dynamic, and creative mind. The entrepreneurial spirit is captivated by an eagerness and
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ability to exercise creativity. It enjoys the challenge of finding ways to accomplish goals more
effectively. It finds joy in setting and accomplishing new and challenging goals. It is this quality
of progress-generating creativeness that is what is most worthy of philanthropic investment.
Over the long-term, success of an endeavor typically will depend more on the richness of
the ideas, creativity, and motivated talent rather than the specific level offunding support.
Progress-Generating Creativity Leads To Action
To realize an ambitious vision, "perspiration equity" often is vital. "Perspiration equity"
is a way of describing the quality, tenacity, ambitiousness and investment of a person's
conviction and motivation pursuing the vision a project serves. It often has to do with
entrepreneurial abilities to accomplish goals by communicating a vision effectively and
persuasively to key change-makers.
In short, entrepreneurially creative ideas matter most when converted into action that has
long term affect. The results of a philanthropic investment can be increased by factors in excess
of a hundred or a thousand by a program manager who is creatively entrepreneurial.
Progress-Generating Creativity Can Be Measured
How can entrepreneurial creativity be fostered and encouraged in the context of non-
profit activities? This document focuses on one important method involving the discipline of
using quantitative methods to stimulate an entrepreneurial mind set where innovation and
improvement is always welcome and can be recognized and rewarded.
The most useful aspect of developing the ability to evaluate success in a quantitative
manner is the degree to which it can stimulate the initial formulation of a project by requiring a
person to think creatively and "outside of the box" over an extended period of time. Often this
discipline of extended initial planning will pay off handsomely over the long term. It has the
potential to greatly expand the horizons of possibility.
Measurement Leads To More Progress
Another positive aspect of quantitatively evaluating success or failure is that it can
provide compelling feedback. A person who is engaged in an activity that provides feedback in
quantitative methods benefits from the opportunity to continuously hone and improve skills and
performance. Feedback monitors performance and by doing so allows the components of
excellence or success to be observed and improved upon. Feedback provides a necessary and
vital basis for learning.
Quantitative performance measurement in an activity is important for dynamism and cost-
effectiveness because it provides an objective basis of feedback. It provides structured
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opportunities for creative learning and improvement based on a serious effort to understand the
sources and dynamics of possible "success factors" in a thorough and objective manner.
Success is Multi-Dimensional
Success in most complex activities will have the property of multidimensionality, which
means nothing more than that there are many dimensions of success. However, it is a vital
concept in the quantitative evaluation of success. A common temptation or trap is to reduce
success to one dimension. This can have catastrophic results because it can motivate behavior in
the direction of that one dimension only. (As an example, 1,000 people in a lecture hall does not
amount to a huge success if the targeted audience was to consist of academic professionals, and
95% of the audience were high school science students.)
Therefore a good rule of thumb is as follows:
If real success has many important dimensions, then efforts to quantify success
should be developed with subtlety and sufficient multidimensionality.
An important corollary is:
Apects of success which are relatively intangible (and therefore are difficult to measure)
should not be ignored.
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Part II. Some Useful Quantitative Metric Components
Here I offer a number of relatively simple quantitative metrics of efficiency and cost-
effectiveness in nine different categories. These may be utilized, modified, supplemented and
combined in developing multi-dimensional impact/cost-effectiveness analyses for specific
programs. They arc offered as examples of ways that relatively simple quantitative measures can
be developed. The list is not meant to be exhaustive.
Metrics are listed under three headings: (i) leverage metrics; (ii) specific success metrics;
and (iii) generic success metrics
(i). Leverage Metrics
1. Direct "financial leverage"
The ability to nourish a broad diversification of sources of project funding is a vital aspect
of the long-term health of an organization that receives philanthropic grant support. It is of
particular importance to avoid long-term dependency on one single philanthropic source. It also
represents success in widely and strategically communicating excitement and value in an
organizational mission. In any new form of philanthropic endeavor, a broad gauge of success is
the degree to which the vision can be transmitted such that others appreciate the value of the
objective to the degree of seriousness that they will back it with their resources.
Diversification of support may apply to a single project or to a portfolio of projects. A
metric defined as "direct financial leverage", (DFL), represents the degree of up-front financial
"buy-in" on a project (or, alternately, on a portfolio of multiple projects) from other financial
donors. It can be metricated as a ratio expressing the degree to which the finding of a project
(or set of projects) is supported (or will be supported) by funds from sources other than provided
by the main or `catalytic' fonder. Thus:
DFL = [directly leveraged funds] / [total project expense]
Example:
Total Project expense:
$100,000
Core / Catalyst Funder:
$ 60,000
Other Donors:
$ 40,000
DFL = [$ 40,000] / [$100,000]
= 0.40
= 40 % direct financial leverage on the project
Alternately, DFL may be defined differently as an investment multiplier:
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DFL = [directly leveraged funds] / [Core funds]
Example:
(Same numbers as previous example)
(DFL)th
= [S 40,000] / [$ 60,000]
= 0.67
= 67% direct financial leverage on the investment
2. Indirect "financial leverage"
Indirect financial leverage, IFL, represents the degree of downstream capitalization of
new projects which have been catalyzed by an initial project. It can be metricated as a ratio
expressing the degree to which an initial project capitalization has been utilized (or is planned to
be utilized) to raise new project funds in the future. Thus:
IFL
= [ downstream funding from other donors] / [initial project support]
Example:
Initial project expense:
$100,000 from a core / catalyst funder
Downstream target project expense: $ I million from other donors
IFL
= [ $1,000,000] / [ $100,000]
= 10
= tenfold financial multiplication of the initial investment
3. Program multiplication in competitions and by imitation
There are a number of immediate parameters which broadly can gauge the quality and
impact of a program based on an open competitive selection process:
The "selectivity ratio," SR, measures the acuity of a competition in terms of the ratio of
winners to total applicants:
SR = [number of total applicants ] / [number of winners ]
Example: $100,000 research prizes for book proposals to explore the constructive
engagement between science and religion. (Program managed by Billy Grassie / PCRS)
Total applicants:
—350
Prizes awarded:
7
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SR = 50 = a selectivity of one winner out of fifty applicants.
(This is hyperselective and confers a very considerable honor on the winners)
As a rough rule of thumb, a healthy competition should have selectivity of at least four.
A second gauge of impact in a competition-based program is the degree to which the
competition generates productivity amongst non-winners. For example, in the book proposals
competition noted above, it likely will be the case that a substantial number of the proposed
books will be written by non-winners in the competition. Thus a second factor is the "project
multiplication ratio," PMR, may be defined as the ratio of unfunded projects completed with
respect to the number of funded projects:
PMR = [ti of unfunded projects completed (or projected)] / [# funded projects]
Thus, for example, if 14 books were to be written by non-prizewinners based on the
initial stimulus of the competition, then we would have:
PMR = [14] / [7]
=2
Variants of this kind of metric may be developed as appropriate.
Another form of success may be generated by the stimulation of imitation due to the
involvement of distinguished opinion leaders in a project. This aspect of the impact of a program
is difficult to objectivize. However, as we have seen, it can be quite useful in strategic thinking
to treat a difficult or impossible-to-measure variable as if it were in fact quantitatively tangible.
As an example, consider the book prize program mentioned previously. If successful, this project
will generate one or more highly outstanding books by distinguished thinkers of sufficient
significance to provide a recognizable stimulus to future intellectual activity. Future books may
be generated based on this stimulus. Consequently, a factor definable as the "downstream
imitative multiplication ratio," DIMR, can be defined as a rough gauge of success:
DIMR = [# of downstream imitative projects inspired] / VI funded projects]
If, for example, two out of seven of the best books generated out of the books prize
project were to stimulate a total of seven additional imitative or responsive books, then:
DIMR = [7] / [7]
=1
= 100% imitative multiplication
4. Vision leverage involving other donors / philanthropic trend-setting
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To make a long-term difference in the world, a vision requires rationality, innovativeness,
boldness, conviction, persuasiveness, moral force, and dogged "perspiration equity." These are
required to take hold and begin to flourish widely to the degree that other "agents of change" take
on the vision to further it. Therefore an extremely important form of downstream success in
developing new programs is "philanthropic trend setting." If a program is highly successful and
if its effects disseminate widely into the social order to the degree that a positive recognition of
their value is widely appreciated, then other philanthropic organizations may develop similar
programs. Again, this aspect of success is difficult to objectivize but can be very helpful in
shaping strategic thinking even if the variables are quantitatively intangible. Thus, consider
another productivity-factoring ratio, a "philanthropic trend setting yield ratio," PTSYR, which
might be defined as:
PTSYR = [downstream capitalization by philanthropic trend setting] /
[initial set of projects capitalization]
This, by definition, is going to be a long-term measure of success and will be causally
"entangled." (That is, it will formally not be possible accurately to trace programmatic possible
"effects" to one or more programmatic "causes.") However, difficulties of measurement should
never be allowed to deter the formation of realistic strategy. Therefore, to provide an example,
consider a one-time expenditure of $4 million on a novel program. Were this program to be
sufficiently successful to set a trend that generates $8 million in downstream support for similar
programs by other philanthropies, then:
PTSYR = [$ 8 million] / [$4 million]
=2
= 200% yield leverage by philanthropic trend setting
(Note, that this ratio, in principle, could be tracked as a growth parameter.)
(ii) Success Metrics (Impact Measures Denominated by Cost)
To engage task of developing ways to evaluating the cost-effectiveness of specific
programs, it is necessary to consider the degree to which causes and effects can be traced. If a
program changes the world by generating impact or influence in a cause-effect relationship, then
a basic question to ask is arc the effects causally separable. An aspect of the impact of a specific
program, A, is causally separable if and only if it effects can be seen to be clearly identifiable and
distinct from the impacts of other programs B, C, etc.. Some forms of program impact arc
causally separable while others are not. For example, it is clear that causal separability holds if
the awarding of a research grant for work on a certain topic generates published work on that
topic by the winner of the grant. Similarly, if a prize is awarded to a certain person, and articles
describing the award appear thereafter in the media, then this "publicity" is traceable directly to
the prize program, -- it is causally traceable.
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On the other hand, some of the most significant impacts of a program clearly are not
causally separable, often because they feed into the general "reservoir" of opinion. Consider for
example a question such as:
Is it prudent for high-level scientific organizations to invest resources to engage in
thoughtful proactive dialog with religious leaders ?
To address opinion on such a question, one might, for example poll a random sampling of
the membership of an elite scientific body, say, of the National Academy of Sciences as a time
series with some periodicity over a decade. Let us suppose that during that time many programs
may have been active which may in variously diverse ways have demonstrated in varying degrees
that important aspects of useful and tangible progress can in fact be made when senior scientific
leaders engage in thoughtful proactive dialog with religious leaders. Reflecting upon this
example, it is quite clear that this measure could represent a very important and significant gauge
of impact. However, it also is quite clear that this measure would not be causally separable in
terms of the possibility of disentangling the respective individual components of impact
generated by individual programs. Therefore it is obvious that many highly important aspects of
program success are fundamentally diffuse. Often the most significant effects of programs can be
hidden within the broad and complex entanglement of the world, within which many
programmatic "causes" merge together into a broad generic "effect." However, the fact that it
may not be possible to measure something significant should never be excused to pretend that it
is not significant.
In following, "specific" success measures with causal traceability are described first
whereas "cumulate" success measures (which measure the accumulated contribution of many
programmatic sources) are described second.
(iii). Specific Success Metrics (with causal traceability)
5. Monitoring research fields based on publication statistics
Perhaps the most common form of rough evaluation of productivity in academic research
is to make a simple count of the number of research publications which a grant or program has
produced. This method is admittedly very crude. It does not distinguish differences in the
significance, comprehensiveness, quality, or impact of a research publication. (And, as many
academics realize, publications counting tends to motivate researchers to publish more, smaller,
and often ultimately not very significant papers than they otherwise might were the numerics of
publication not so widely used as an index of productivity.) However, it can provide at least a
crude mapping of the cost-effectiveness of a project.
The simplest metric gauging productivity in generating published research results is cost
per (peer-reviewed) paper:
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CPP = [total cost of project] / [number of published (or projected) papers ]
Example: [$150,000] / [5 papers] = $30,000 / paper
It is useful to consider how more substantial measures of real impact can be devised.
There is a vast difference between publishing a paper that few people will read and none will be
influenced by and publishing an influential paper which many will read and be influenced by. In
academic hiring, research productivity is often gauged by volume of citations available from the
science citation index (or from the index medicus or other cumulate indices of reference citations
in the scientific literature). Anyone who has worked within a research community knows that
this form of gauge of productivity is far from an objective measure. (It also evolves in time and
therefore can only appropriately be expressed as a temporal variable.) However, it does allow a
second relatively simple gauge of performance in terms of cost per citation:
CPC = [total cost of project] / [number of citations (or projected) citations]
*(at some specified interval after the initiation of the project or publication of the results.)
Example: [$150,000] / [300 citations (10 years after the initiation of the project)]
CPC le
= $500 / citation
It should be obvious that use of such statistics in evaluating the potential cost-
effectiveness of a project is problematic due to the extended interval required for the variable to
evolve to a measure which represents its impact over any roughly appropriate timescale in which
research results are published, considered, and cited within a research community. (In fact, some
of the most profoundly important ideas may lay dormantly unnoticed in the research literature for
a decade or more before being recognized an important `launching pad' for creative scientific
thinking.) However, it should again be stressed that the value of going through a formal
discipline of cost-effectiveness evaluation is not necessary to provide an evaluative basis for
grantmaking. Rather, the primary virtue of engaging in this process is to encourage rigorous
entrepreneurial strategic thinking.
Another way that citations are sometimes used is to demonstrate the significance of the
past performance of a researcher. A scientist who has been active in research for a decade or
more may take the opportunity to be evaluated in terms of citation volume ranking. This can be
done either by lifetime cumulate or in some more recent interval, (for example over the past three
years). Such measures provide a rough basis for evaluating academic distinction and can be
utilized accordingly.
The output of important interdisciplinary work in science and religion often is published
in book form rather than as research papers. A book is essentially a vehicle of communication.
Therefore the simplest way to track the effectiveness of a book in its role a vehicle of
communication is through the volume of its sales. (To be more accurate, one may also add-in
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factors which can take into consideration sales of a highly technical book to a small but
influential audience. Metrics covering "amplified" audiences will be described in the following
section.)
One of the virtues of quantifying impact in terms of volume of sales is that it can focus
the mind on the huge difference that can be made by working with agents, presses and editors
who can make a major success of a book. The vast majority of academic books are published
with press runs of less than 1,000 copies. However, some books in the broadly "academic"
market can be edited, packaged and marketed for outreach in the ballpark of 50,000 copies and
above. It is clear that the best science and religion books can compete in this upper echelon
market. It can be very illuminating to think through the huge difference in impact that can be
made by scaling-up the size of a book project's audience by two orders of magnitude.
A simple gauge of the cost-effectiveness of a book project is the cost per book sold:
CPBS = [project expense] / [number of books sold]
Example: $100,000 project; 25,000 books sold
CPBS = $4 philanthropic subsidy / book sold
It is obvious that the CPBS will represent a rather unattractive $100 subsidy per book if
the sales are at a sales volume for a typical academic book of only 1,000 books. Therefore using
this metric, the cost-effectiveness of a philanthropic investment in a book project has much to do
with whether or not the book is widely promoted and sells well or not. Often, academics are
motivated more by the fact of having the opportunity simply to publish a book, rather than by the
volume of published book sales. However, it can be a tremendous career (and income) booster
to author a hot selling book. It also will assist the field (of science & religion) greatly if a
number of authors in the field are able to become well-known through high volume books sales.
This should be possible in a similar manner as is observed in sales of the many excellent books
on science which sell widely in the high end popular market. The key is to link with prominent
editors who have the strong backing of their marketing departments. A careful study of the
various components and connections to make for a big seller can be illuminating for an aspiring
writer with an entrepreneurial spirit.
6. Public communication effectiveness measures:
In this section we extend our metricated measures of outreach to an audience in terms of
"minutes of attention" and "media impressions." These measures are commonly used for
quantifying projections in the advenizing industry. They do not gauge impact or quality so much
as simply the domain or extent of the communicative outreach using various forms of media.
They also allow linkage with media demographics which filter for certain targeted sub-
populations within the total audience. For advertisers, the especially sought after sub-populations
may be consumers of various types (for example, expectant or new parents in the case of diaper
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advertising). In the case of most of the types of projects the John Templeton Foundation
supports, the preferred audiences are composed of various types of persons who are influential in
some way and may be described as "opinion leaders."
6.(i) "Media impressions"
The advertizing industry has developed a relatively scientific approach to the analysis of
cost-benefit in making decisions about advertizing investments. For example, it has the ability to
provide detailed quantitative estimates for advertizers of the number of media-to-media-viewer
interactions that on average are likely to occur if advertizing is placed in a certain location within
a certain publication or show. These interactions are known as "impressions." Advertizing only
has the opportunity to motivate a response in a person if that person is exposed to it, and the
measure of "impressions" allows estimates of the number of individual impressions which on
average will occur for a given placement venue. Based upon knowledge of the scale of
impressions, it is then possible to metricate the quality of attractiveness or persuasiveness of an
advertiz,ement. This is done in terms of its fraction of conversion of the populations of people
subject to impressions into a sub-population of purchasers of the product itself.
Thus, for example, if we consider media coverage of an event (such as an academic
conference), then we can define a cost-effectiveness metric based on cost per impression:
CPI = [cost of the project] / [ sum total of media impressions generated by coverage]
Example: $1.5 million project. 60 million media impressions generated
CPI = [$1.5 million ] / [60 million]
= $0.025 / impression
Another way to quantify media coverage using advertizing industry information is in
terms of equivalent value of advertizing:
EVA = [sum total of media impressions] x [ average cost of equivalent advertizing]
For example, in the previous example, we had 60 million media impressions generated by
a program expenditure of $1.5 million. If the average cost of advertizing to generate an
equivalent volume of media impressions was $0.25 / impression, then:
EVA = $15 million, or a 1000% return on the initial program investment.
6.(ii) "Opinion leader" outreach
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In the process of seeking to transform well educated opinion on a topic, it is prudent to be
sure to communicate in a focused and effective manner to a demographic subset of the population
whose opinions are broadly leveraged with others due to their various and diverse roles as
"opinion leaders."
Consider the following diverse set of media 'vehicles': Sports Illustrated, the Harvard
Business Review, People, The Atlantic, Red Herring, The Nation, Christianity Today, The New
Republic, MTV, Scientific American, Tikkun, Foreign Affairs, NPR, The Wall Street Journal,
The American Prospect, Esquire, the New York Review of Books, PBS, Mother Jones,
Newsweek, Wired, the New York Times, and the Economist. All of these different forms of
delivery of information not only have vastly differing audiences. They also have vastly different
types of readerships / listenerships / viewerships.
An audience's composition is broken down in terms of some kind of "demographic
portfolio." Typically the advertizing industry obtains data on household income and
consumption patterns through the kinds of polling instruments that we see frequently such as, for
example, the fill-in forms which accompany new product warranty information. Though these
measures are exceedingly rough, they do allow a form of impact filtering for the diverse subset in
the audience composed on "opinion leaders." Also, it is not necessary to utilize advertizing
industry data, but rather to make educated "guestimates." For example, one may guess that a
reasonably large fraction (say 50% ?) of the readerships of Science and the Harvard Business
Review will be composed of people who either have been trained, or are in the process of
becoming trained, at some postgraduate level in science and in business respectively. Such
publications have highly focused readerships which are different from those of Time or
Newsweek or US News & World Report. Where the generic proportion of "opinion leaders" will
be much lower (say 2% ?).
It also is possible to consider the typical or average time interval of attention that a media
intraction generates. An article in The Atlantic Monthly may typically occupy fifteen minutes of
reader attention, whereas an article in the Science Times may take two minutes. Factoring in both
dimensionalities of "opinion leaders" and also of time, we may define a cost-effectiveness
measure defined as " cost per minute of opinion leader attention":
MOOLA = [total cost of project] /
{(audience scale] [opinion leader fraction] [average minutes of attention])
(Note that the denominator typically will be a sum over all the media "hits" generated by the
project.)
Example:
$100,000 project
Media hit: Article in the Atlantic Monthly
Circulation: 750,000
Opinion leader fraction: ? 33%
Average minutes of attention: 20
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MOOLA = [$100,000] / f[750,000] [0.33] [20]}
= [$100,000] / [5 million minutes of opinion leader attention]
= $0.02 / minute of opinion leader attention
An important phenomenon to consider in strategic thinking is impact amplification via
the so-called "media food chain effect." Media people often obtain ideas for stories in their
outlets by reading in higher-level sources of information. For example, an article in the New
England Journal of Medicine may be followed by an article in The New Republic which in turn
may be followed by one or more articles in the New York Times which may provide ideas for
television coverage by the major channels. Therefore developing media "hits" in high-level,
small circulation, "opinion-leading" journals of research and opinion can have a strong
amplification-leverage effect through the media food chain. For different forms of information,
there will be corresponding high-level, high-leverage outlets. (For example, in biology, technical
articles appearing in Science or Nature can have highly leveraged impact.) Media information
tracking services such as the "NEXIS" database can be used to track the coverage of a news item
in the in-print media. Other sources are available to track coverage on radio and television.
7. Monitoring transformation of opinion via polling
Monitoring impressions or minutes of attention is a representation of activity on the
"transmission" side of a communication effort. The vital compliment to success on the
transmission side in any communicative enterprise is the "reception" side. Has the message been
heard ? Has it been clearly and convincingly represented ? Has it been persuasive ? Has it
influenced people's thinking ? Has it generated a decisive shift in the thinking of a majority of
"opinion leaders" ? Such questions can only be answered by checking the reception side of the
communicative process.
The typical methodology for accessing opinion is by opinion sampling by means of
polling. Consider a university-based project which involves a series of public lectures on basic
aspects of the field of science and religion. One way to access the reception of the series would
be to do a "before & after" poll of opinion in certain sectors of the audience. For example, let us
consider the science faculty as the target group. An interesting simple poll might in part be
expressed in terms of Ian Barbour's fourfold typology, asking faculty members to place
themselves within one of the four opinion groups on the following thesis:
The proper or natural relationship between science and religion is:
(Answer with one or more selections, marked 1", 2"°, etc., in order
of intensity of agreement.)
A. Fundamental conflict
B. Separation into non-conflicting, non-overlapping domains
C. A fusion based on determining truth / reality
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D. Mutual two-way dialog leading to:
(i) Better mutual understanding with widespread but respectful disagreement
(ii) Better mutual understanding with resolution of some conflict issues
(iii) Better mutual understanding with resolution of many conflict issues
(iv) Better mutual understanding with resolution of most conflict issues
(v) Better mutual understanding leading to separation into
non-conflicting, non-overlapping domains.
(vi) Better mutual understanding leading to complementarity / symbiosis
(vii) Better mutual understanding leading to convergence & synthesis
Another interesting question might be one such as:
As a prospective interdisciplinary field of discourse, "science & religion" :
(Answer with one or more selections, marked l a, 2nd, etc., in order
of intensity of agreement.)
A. is not to be taken seriously
B. is improper for consideration as a coherent academic field
C. has a long way to go to demonstrate its value and coherence
D. is an interesting concept and potentially promising
E. shows the signs of a quite promising new development
F. has impressed me substantially so that I an very interested
G. addresses a fundamental need and is absolutely vital for the
future of intellectual life
To determine success in communicating a message, one could use these and many other
carefully crafted polling questions to track transformation of opinion in sectors of a university
community in order to measure the impact of a program. It is also possible to track attention
through questions such as:
"Has the special series of lectures caused you to read any books related to it ?"
"How much time would you estimate that you have invested in this reading ?"
" Do you consider this investment of your time to have been:
- wasted ?
- roughly average relative to other activities ?
- moderately exciting and worthwhile relative to other activities ?
- highly worthwhile relative to other activities ?
- vital and transformative relative to other activities ?
8. Prizes and other honors
Philanthropic initiatives which confer honors in open and objective processes pursue an
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indirect strategy which seeks to promote progress in a field by offering broad public recognition
of some aspect of excellence. This may be of an important publication such as a book or an essay
or research paper or it may cover the accomplishment of a particularly gifted person over the
work of a lifetime. It is often generically difficult to measure the impact and cost-effectiveness of
prizes and other honors because their long-term effects are generically diffuse and intangible. It
is also mostly a mistaken notion to imagine that highly gifted scientists and scholars can be
motivated by external incentives such as prizes. Motivation for such people typically is deeply
internalized. Specific objectives that honors can accomplish, however, may include:
(i) contributing towards the legitimization of a new and controversial field
(ii) massively stimulate book sales and influence opinion accordingly
(iii) contribute significant momentum to propel a young career forward
(iv) open up public platforms for strategic communication
(v) stimulate new philanthropic support
Here we will consider the second example (book sales) in terms of a strategically
formulated prize program to recognize outstanding books. If a prize is utilized strategically in
conjunction with a Press's marketing campaign, the prize program can be evaluated for cost-
effectiveness by linking its expenditure to an enhancement in book sales generated by the
utilization of the prize in the marketing effort for the book. Because academic book sales are
typically not very substantial (< 2000 copies), we can ignore the "baseline" and define the "book
prize cost-effectiveness" as follows. For simplicity we will consider a program which confers a
single prize. Slightly more complicated formulii can be devised for multi-prize programs.
BPE = [cost of program] / ([book sales] [opinion leader readership fraction]
[estimated average reading time invested by the average buyer])
Example:
Program cost:
Book sales:
Opinion leader readership fraction: 0.5
Estimated average reading time:
200 minutes
[Minutes of opinion leader attention: 5 million]
BPE = $0.03 / minute of opinion leader attention
$150,000
50,000
Another way to leverage both book sales and influence opinion would be if a
prepublication article (a summary or a reworked chapter) were placed in a widely read high-end
journal of opinion such as The Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker. Similarly, major reviews
will impact sales as well as generate substantial scoring in terms of minutes of opinion leader
attention. For example, consider a case with the same numbers as in the previous example, but
with a chapter placement in The Atlantic Monthly generating, say:
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Readership:
500,000
Opinion leader fraction:
0.5
Estimated average reading time:
10
This addition will generate an additional 2.5 million minutes of opinion leader attention
and increase the cost-effectiveness of the project by 50% to an efficiency of better than $0.02 /
minute.
Conclusion:
The most important aspect of making such calculations is that it focuses strategic thinking
on ways to make a program very highly successful. For example, in the case of this book prize
program, key strategic success factors would be:
(i) identify strategic approaches which are fruitful/highly leveraged and those which are
not. Focus all activity and resources only on the fruitful / highly leveraged
approaches and perfect them.
(ii) develop the program in close linkage with interested and favorable editors
who have the ability to catalyze a highly effective marketing effort utilizing the prize.
(iii) advise the authors on how to work closely with such "entrepreneurial" editors.
(iv) help the authors to link with dynamo literary agents (e.g., John Brockman in the
sciences)
(v) develop a program ethos which encourages entrepreneurial success and transmits key
aspects of knowledge in terms of networking and connections to help promising authors
to have the opportunity to compete in the literary public square.
(iv). Generic Success Metrics (without causal traceability)
The impacts of specific programs are causally separable in terms of their outcomes in the
world if the effects, A*, B*, and C*, etc., of programs A, B, C, etc., could be observed in the
world as being identifiably distinctive and independent of each other. It is clear that the
assumption of causal separability cannot be sustained in many of the most important aspects of
transformation of opinion where an "isolated laboratory" condition preserving cause and effect
relationships for a specific program cannot hold. This raises a very interesting issue. It has been
stated several times previously that the most important outcome of a process of detailed
quantitative cost-effectiveness analysis is not to develop exact and practically realizable
measurement strategies, but rather to stimulate entrepreneurial strategic thinking. How can this
kind of stimulation best be encouraged ? Being successful within the terms we are considering
means developing strengths and learning how to communicate a message or vision based on
those strengths persuasively into an expanding and influential community of discourse. To
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envision success in these terms requires habits of thinking which are both ambitious and large-
scale. Therefore it is vital not to limit one's view in strategic thinking only to situations where
cause and effect are closely and locally connected. A vital "big picture" aspect of strategic
thinking in this regard is "vision mainstreaming."
9. Vision mainstreaming
The successful evolution of a vision which generates a "philanthropic trend" is to mature
by a process of "mainstreaming." Mainstreaming is a term to describe a process of
transformation in perception whereby an issue or a movement is transformed from what seems
an odd, novel and controversial notion to one which is broadly appreciated as having clear merit
either in the society as a whole, or at least amongst key influential sectors of intellectual
commentators and decision-making 'elites.' For a movement to be successful in mainstreaming
its general vision, the creative leaders who are developing the movement must think with
strategic care and seriousness about how to be successful in accomplishing such a transformation
in a practical and realistic manner. (And in any new academic field, the core of the success must
be due to the significance and significance of the research and in the innovativenness, quality,
quantity, diversity and persuasiveness of its creative productivity, ---but this is far from the whole
story !) Towards this end, it can be helpful to think through what kinds of "markers" might be
available to gauge progress in the direction of mainstreaming.
In following, we have suggested four distinct perspectives defined in terms of three
different "sampling success ratios" focused respectively on three facets of transformation:
(a) "Marker group opinion"
(b) "Institutionalization"
(c) "Financial support diversification"
Simple sampling success ratio metrics for each of these three facets might be defined as
follows:
(a) MGO = fraction of a marker group responding positively to a question
addressing a basic point
Example:
Marker Group: Deans of departments of biology at major
research universities in the United States
Question: Can a biologist be an intellectually honest and be a
philosophical theist while simultaneously possessing a clear
understanding of evolutionary biology ?
Hypothetical time series result:
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Year 2000: 25% responding yes
Year 2005: 50% responding yes
Year 2010: 80% responding yes
(This is provided as an example only and NOT to imply that the answer to this question
is a matter of clear agreement in the field of science and religion.)
(b) There are various factors which could be considered as measures of success in
institutionalizing a vision. In the case of the nascent field of "science and religion" we might
consider the following ten items:
(i) Are one or more courses offered in the subject are ?
(ii) Are there one or more active local discussion groups or societies ?
(iii) Are there one or more professorial appointments in the field broadly ?
(iv) Are appropriate periodicals on display in appropriate libraries ?
(v) Do institutional library holdings include important books in the field ?
(vi) Does the intellectual ethos of the institution incorporate the field broadly?
(vii) Is the development office aware of the field and active in recruiting alumni
donations to support it ?
(viii) Do external experts recognize strength in the institution in the field ?
(ix) Have institutional publications covered events / advances in the field ?
(x) Is the institutional leadership (administration, trustees, academic deans, etc)
aware of the field and any local activity / interest / strength in it.
By developing instruments to evaluate these and other questions, it will be possible to
develop measures of "institutionalization" by means of some form of institutional success score,
ISS, which can be tracked over time.
(c) The final factor to be considered is financial support diversification. Overall, this
financial aspect of mainstreaming can be monitored by two simple variables:
(i) NP = "number of players" is the number of active significant philanthropic
participants in support for the field.
(ii) FDR = "financial diversification ratio"
= [sum of total philanthropic activity] / [Lead donor activity]
Both variables should be monitored in time series.
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Part III.
A Few Working Examples
Example #1: A heuristic comparison in a maximal simple case for a single lecture
First we consider a simple illustrative example to communicate the idea of the power of
creative thinking and action. For heuristic purposes, a simple `success equation' with four
independent variables can be imagined as:
SUCCESS OUTCOMES — (Money) (Talent) (Motivation)P
where the exponential power factor, "P", represents the open opportunity for multiplying
outcomes drastically based on the power of creative ideas to utilize money, talent and motivation
in innovative productive ways. (Note that the concept of productivity here is generalized as
success outcomes. This is not specifically a financial measure. In an intellectual or broadly
cultural endeavor, success may be denominated more in terms of cultural impact than in any
specific financial measure such as new funds raised for the continuation of a project.) In fact, it
is easily possible for the third factor, [ (Motivation)P ], to be as large as a thousand. For want of
a better term, let us refer to this factor as "motivated creativity." (Essentially, it is a measure of
what we mean by "entrepreneurism.") In plain English the equation means that the success or
effectiveness of an expenditure [ (Money)], provided to a talented person or team [ (Talent) ], can
be multiplied by as much as a thousand times by strategically utilized motivated creativity [
(Motivation)P ]. Thus, if it were necessary to rank the relative importance of the three factors
involved in the success equation, then the most powerful one by far is the last one: motivated
creativity
George Gilder once described the computer as the combination of sand (silicon-based
hardware circuitry) plus evanescent ideas (programming software), generating tremendous utility
and wealth. The basic idea in the present context is similar: creative ideas are free and can have
immense power to leverage the impact of the combination of talented leadership, intense
motivation, and financial resources. Therefore what makes a philanthropic investment most
worthwhile, both for the philanthropist as well as for the recipient, is the quality and vigor of the
motivated creativity which goes into the development and execution of a project.
Consider a very simple example to illustrate his point. For simplicity we describe impact
in terms of one dimension of success. This will be quantified specifically as leverage of
additional new financial resources. It will demonstrate the quantitative aspect of the power of
ideas in specifically financial terms. Other "dimensions" of success will not be considered. It is
left to the reader to add them.
Consider a very simple 'program' consisting of a single distinguished university lecture
in the area of science and theology and costing $2,000. The lecture has the usual purpose. It will
bring a distinguished speaker to the campus to speak to an audience about the relationship
between science and religion. The immediate aim will be to encourage and enlighten interested
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people to realize that a rather more promising perspective exists. The money will be spent to
cover the speaker's honorarium, plus travel and upkeep costs, as well as the expenses of
advertizing, and a hospitality dinner to link the speaker with a few specially selected guests.
In the typical mode, (case "A"), the event would be advertized and occur broadly as
planned. The message would be heard by an assembled group of interested persons who would
have responded to the advertizing by choosing to attend the lecture. Then the speaker would
return home. This could be considered quite "successful" in various dimensions of success. But
as an example let us consider that dimension which is the most vital one strategically. This, in
my view, is long-term institutionalization.
Consider an alternate scenario, (case "B"), involving additional ideas and no extra money.
In this case the lecture planner acts boldly as a strategic entrepreneur. The situation evolves as
follows:
1. He or she prepares a two page memo which outlines the new state of affairs in the field
of science and religion. The memo clearly and succinctly summarizes the growth of the field, its
interdisciplinary value, its future possibilities, its research potential, and the way that it addresses
very strong interests and needs of students, and generally would help the college or university to
exhibit distinctive leadership.
2. He or she arranges to have lunch with one or more deans to discuss the memo and
open up conversation on the key issues raised in it.
3. He or she arranges to have lunch with the director of the development office of the
College in order to discuss the memo and possibilities for new fund-raising strategies for the
institution. Considerable attention is given to the fact that many religious donors lack enthusiasm
for giving to the College because they feel alienated by the rather strong anti-religious bias
amongst the Faculty.
4. He or she primes the speaker carefully that the lecture will be used as a first gambit to
raise resources to endow a new program at the college focused on science and religion.
5. As a result of these contacts, when the lecture occurs, several deans attend along with
two interested trustees and three potential alumni donors who have been identified and invited by
the development office. The president of the college is unable to attend the lecture. However, at
the special dinner hosted by the development office for the VIP's, the president meets the speaker
and is much impressed. Two of the possible donors clearly are quite enthusiastic.
6. Two years later, the host of the lecture (now tenured) publicly thanks both donors in
the opening ceremonies for the new endowed professorial chair in the newly created Center for
Research in Science and Religion which is jointly hosted by the school of religion and the faculty
of sciences. He or she assists various journalists with their articles describing the significance of
this new $2 million initiative and the visionary generosity of the two donors. Credit also is given
to the visiting lecturer whose initial lecture (cost: $2,000) provided he stimulus which helped to
get the vision rolling towards this very pleasant day. The President makes inspiring remarks.
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The chief development officer is beaming. The donors are thrilled. The development officer
asks if it might be possible to have lunch next Wednesday. Well, life is busy and exciting these
days, but yes, that might be all right.
7. The lecture host posts a letter to the Templeton Foundation. It notes with well-
deserved pride that the initial investment of $2,000 has been multiplied by a factor of 1,000. It
includes a description of the new Center. The letter concludes by wondering, ---might the
Foundation be interested to consider supporting a new research project at the new Center ? The
host will be passing through Philadelphia the following month. Lunch ?
Formally, we now have the ability to use our simple heuristic success equation:
SUCCESS OUTCOMES — (Money) (Talent) (Motivation?
to measure the power of motivated creativity by the method of comparison, i.e., by comparing
cases "A" and "B". The example has been chosen to demonstrate a x1000 effect. However, real
metrication is somewhat for complicated than the prima fade case, so it will be useful to follow
the details. In both cases, the input capital ($2,000) is identical. For the sake of argument, let us
also consider that the intrinsic "talent" or ability of the manager is also identical. To make this
clear, we might even assume that the manager is both cases is the same person. However, in case
"B" this person has decided to strive for extraordinary goals and to take unfamiliar steps and
invest time in pursuing them. We have assumed, therefore, that the key difference between cases
"A" and "B" is due to the difference solely in motivated creativity, [ (Motivation? ].
Mathematically, we have a small but not uninteresting challenge which has to do with
what can be called the "metrication of a baseline." Because case "B" has an easy-to-measure
large-scale success outcome ($2,000,000), we will evaluate the equation in terms of dollars on
both sides of the equation. However, case "A" does not generate any new donated monies at all,
so the performance ratio is formally infinite. How then can the value of case "A" be evaluated in
terms of dollars in order to allow a comparison with case "B" ? It of course would be inaccurate
to say that case "A" accomplishes nothing, or that we should account its success outcome as zero
because it has not leveraged new donor dollars. For simplicity, what we can do is to apply what
is called a "normalization." By normalization we assign the cost-effectiveness value in dollars
in terms of an assumption of "cost-based baseline value." In other words, we will link or assign a
"normal baseline" value of unity to the non-financial product, (Talent) (Motivation) . By doing
so for case "A" we then have:
[ SUCCESS OUTCOMES]. A
(Money) (1) = $2000
Once we have made this assumption, then we can see that, as an approximation, the factor we
have identified as motivated creativity in case "B" is equal to an effectiveness multiplier of one
thousand:
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I (Motivation)P Lose
( $2,000,000 / $2,000) = 1000
In this way we can begin to see formally how the power of the motivated creativity of the
program manager can massively leverage an initial investment in financial terms.
Summary: The simple lecture example given above of course describes an extraordinary
success story in case "B". Nonetheless, the success of case "B" does not seem in any way to be
fundamentally unrealistic. Success can and does work in such ways. The difference between the
"typical" situation and the untypical situation directed by the strategic entrepreneur is due to an
added combination of creative ideas and motivation in the actions of that person. That
combination requires vision as well as what could be called "hussle and hassle," but it adds
essentially no extra cost. As we have seen, vision-driven motivated creativity can multiply the
financial cost-effectiveness of the project by a factor of one thousand. It also multiplies the
benefit to the lecture host in ways that may not be specifically quantifiable. Nonetheless they are
real and substantial and surely amount at the very least to very strong satisfaction. The main
point has been to stress the intrinsic value of vision and creative thinking. The creative
entrepreneurial mind has power which is far greater than the intrinsic power of money by itseff.
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FREEDOM PROJECT - ACADEMIC COURSE COMPETITION
PROGRAM AND COST-EFFECTIVENESS EVALUATION
Six basic measurable factors will be utilized to provide metrics to quantify and encourage
progress and cost-effectiveness:
1) Audience Impact Scale
2) Intrinsic quality.
3) Long-term impact.
4) Partnership cost leverage
5) Long-Term Institutional
Cost Leverage
6) Factored Influence Cost
An estimate of the cost per hour of reaching the
project's audience. Scaled for each course and
cumulated for the program as a whole.
A rated measure of the quality of the courses funded
by the Freedom Project.
An empirical measure of the longevity of the catalyst
effect of Freedom Project funding.
A cumulative ratio of the ability of the Project to
attract partner "leverage" funding.
Ratio of donor dollars institutionalized on the
basis of JTF venture capital "seed" investment.
The sum of the weighted subscore of the preceding
three factors.
1) "Audience Impact Scale" is a time-factored cost-effectiveness metric based on the concept
of program success linked to outreach to an audience. Here the basic challenge is to
utilize entrepreneurial opportunities to expand the (time-factored) audience for the project
by means of special events such as university-wide lectures, debates and special seminars.
The metric is defined for a single course as a cost-per-hour: (program expense)/(total
audience impact hours). The denominator is defined as the sum of the following factors:
i. # of students times hour of involvement
ii. Additional # of extra audience hours for special events with amplification
factors for opinion leaders
iii. Additional number of media impact hours based on major media coverage
in newsprint, magazines, TV and radio.
2) In order to determine that the quality of applications is not declining from year to year,
grant-winning proposals will undergo outside review by an independent distinguished
panel of referees who will rank on a scale of one to five in order to quantify the following:
the caliber and distinction of the faculty in terms of teaching and research capabilities; the
quality of the reading list of each proposal; the innovativeness of the course and its
materials and pedagogy. The cumulative score for each proposal will be calculated and
comparisons made at the culmination of each year's cycle via the following formula:
Where:
A= Faculty Rank scaled from 1 to 5
B= Quality Rank scaled from I to 5
C= Innovativeness Rank scaled from 1 to 5
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D= Number of students enrolled per course scaled from I to 5
E= Level of students enrolled scaled from I to 5
S= Average Score
S =
(A)+031+(O+(D)+(E)
5
The base line will be (Q) as calculated for the first year of the program. It is reasonable to
expect that (Q) will improve by a minimum of 12% after in its second year, and 15% in
following years.
3) One measure of success can be easily measured by determining if Freedom Project funded
courses remain in a part of an institution's curriculum after Freedom Project funding
ceases, and for how long. Ideally, the mission of the Freedom Project will be met when
institutions choose to teach these courses without Freedom Project funding. Staff will
monitor the continuation of Freedom Project courses each year, and adopt the following
evaluative tool to determine success in this area:
Where:
f= Amount of Freedom Project Funds per individual course
i = Amount of internal institutional funds in real cash per
individual course
E = Expenditure success "buy-in"ratio
Then:
E= i
f+i
It is fully expected that (E) will improve by 10% after the first year of the program and
25% within three years.
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4) Another measure of success of the Freedom Project will be the ratio, R, of outside
partner funding to the level of John Templeton Foundation support.
Where:
p = Partner funds
t = Templeton funds
x100 =R%
p+t
The program will be successful if (R) increases by 10% each year for the first
three years, and 15% each following year until John Templeton funds are no
longer necessary to maintain the program.
5) "Long-Term Institutional Cost Leverage" is defined as the ratio of long-term
monies
invested by donors for their host institutions (D: ) over the amount of JTF venture
seed capital (V: ). Success factors can be determined for each prize awarded.
These then can be cumulated for the program as a whole and sub-defined by the
year of the initial prize award.
6) Finally, the factors as outlined in above equations I, 2, and 3 will be weighted and
summed to calculate the overall score for the program's cost-effectiveness as
follows:
S = Awi, + Bwa + Cw,.._
Additionally, the Freedom Project will monitor its progress by evaluating the impact of
the program on students, academic leaders, business people, public policy leaders, and
others. In order to do this, program staff will calculate the minutes of attention paid to
the program's core mission by members of these various groups.
AUDIENCE IMPACT COST-EFFECTIVENESS
In addition to the measurable variables of cost-effectiveness for the Freedom Project,
there are unmeasurable factors that will expand the influence of the program without
increasing program costs. The following scenarios demonstrate how this program might
be used effectively to leverage funding dollars and expand their impact.
I. This scenario is based on the actual Boston University course that ran from September
1998 through May of 1999:
The Freedom Project gave two professors at Boston University $48,000 to teach a year-
long course to 25 students. On its surface, these numbers represent a very high cost-per-
student ratio. However, the program's influence and message did not just remain in the
classroom. The professors brought in distinguished, nationally-known speakers,
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including Gary Becker, John Grey, and Eugene Rivers. These speakers drew an average
audience of approximately 800 people per lecture for six lectures. Further, two of the
speakers gave radio interviews in conjunction with their lectures on Boston's public radio
station, reaching approximately 30,000 listeners. The chancellor of the University, John
Silber, attended three of the lectures and communicated his pleasure with the course and
its impact on the University community to Freedom Project staff and to the University's
Board of Trustees. Therefore, in the case of Boston University, the Freedom Project's
initial investment of $48,000 over the course of one year had an actual audience impact
far greater than the immediate impact on the 25 students in the course.
$48,000 Initial Investment =$890 per student
4
AUDIENCE EXPANSION
6 lectures = 4800 attendees
4
Two radio interviews based on lectures = 60,000 listeners
4
$48,000 Initial Investment
$0.74 cost per audience member
II. The following scenario is hypothetical based on a course proposal to be submitted in
the next competition:
Professor Robert Barro submits a proposal to receive funding for a Freedom Project
course at Harvard University for the spring semester of 2001. He competes successfully,
and receives $30,000. He teaches a very successful course, which receives notice from
the Harvard board of Trustees and many Harvard alumni as a result of an article about the
program in the Harvard University newspaper, a story in the Boston Globe, and an op-ed
placed by Professor Barro in the Wall Street Journal. A wealthy Harvard alumnus learns
of Professors Barro's work in the Freedom Project, and decides to give a substantial gift
of $3,000,000 to Professor Barro to found a new center to quantitatively study the effects
of freedom and free markets on human progress.
$30,000 Initial Investment
$3,000,000 Funding for New Center
Increase in funding impact by a factor of 100.
The Freedom Project will encourage all faculty competitors to seek to find innovative
ways to increase the audience for the Project's message without increasing funding
dollars. These scenarios represent only two possibilities; many more exist.
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Symposium Webcasting
First, we need to recognize the dramatic realignment of media delivery going on today.
There are 250 million Internet users worldwide, up from 50 million in 1996. The Internet
has created a renaissance for reading and writing. It is displacing and exceeding
television viewing hours for many targeted groups, particularly in education and business
audiences. College students are more likely to use the Internet to conduct research than
the campus library and are more likely to download music from the Internet than to
purchase CDs in stores. The most dramatic example of this revolution in the media was
when America Online, a ten-year old Internet start-up company, bought Time-Warner,
the world's largest media conglomerate.
There is a convergence of television, radio, print, library, bookstore, newsstand, postal
service, fax and telephone in a single digital media which is increasingly available on
demand, anywhere and anytime. The trend is towards the seamless interaction of text,
illustration, audio, and video content with multiple avenues for consumer interaction.
The webcast of the "Extended Life, Eternal Life" Symposium is an important experiment
for the Foundation and Meta.
The question is how many viewers can we reach and what is the cost-effectiveness.
We will be broadcasting in the format with the largest-user base, RealPlayer. There are
100 million potential viewers who have downloaded the RealPlayer software. That
number is growing by 200,000 per day. The question is how do we reach our target
audience to let them know about this opportunity.
The Meta Lists can immediately reach an audience of 3000 potential viewers with a
high-level of interest in the field of science and religion. There are similar listservers in
the field of bioethics, biology, religious studies, and related disciplines to which
announcements can be sent. The press release on email will be circulated and re-
circulated on the Internet in the two weeks prior to the broadcast and later again when
the conference proceedings come online.
The target audiences are:
•
Physicians, Nurses, and Other Health Care Professionals;
•
Theologians, Philosophers, and Ethicists;
•
Biologists, Microbiologists, Geneticists, and Chemists;
•
Professionals within the Science and Technology Industry;
•
Clergy and Religious Leaders; and
•
News Media and Opinion Leaders.
Editors at Read Guide, the "TV Guide" for Internet broadcasts, have already agreed to
list this webcast event on the SciTech and Spirituality pages with 400 to 1000 visits each
day. If click through builds in advance of the broadcast, the event will be promoted,
perhaps even on to the main page, which is one of the top ten sites on the Internet.
Similarly featured listings in advance on the home pages of the Templeton Foundation
and the Center for Bioethics will help promote the event with visibility measured in tens
of thousands per week.
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It is difficult to make estimates about the number of people who might log on for the
debate during the live broadcast, but we can conservatively project 2000 and ambitiously
hope for ten times that number. Over twelve months after the event the archives might
duplicate those numbers for both the debate and the rest of the conference.
The live webcast of the debate and archived webcast of the entire conference is
estimated to cost $12,800. We may actually come in under this budget, but as a first
time experiment we need some flexibility.
In the first chart, we estimate conservatively that we can reach another 4000 people with
the webcast and are assuming that each person would spend an average of two hours
viewing the program. The cost effectiveness comes out at $3.20 per person or $0.027
per minute (see chart below).
Expanded
Cost per
120 minute
Audience
person
estimate of
average
viewing time
Cost per
person
per minute
Webcast
Live debate on 315
On Demand tat Year
TOTAL
$12,800
2,000
2,000
4,000
240,000
240,000
480,000
$3.20
$0.027
In the second scenario, which is more ambitious, we estimate an audience of 20,000
people for the webcast and assume that each person would spend an average of two
hours viewing the program. The cost effectiveness comes out to $0.64 per person or
$0.005 per minute (see chart below).
Expanded
Audience
Cost per
person
120 minute
estimate of
average
viewing time
Cost per
person
per
minute
Webcast
Live debate on 3/5
On Demand 1s1 Year
TOTAL
$12,800
10,000
10,000
20,000
1,200,000
1,200,000
2,400,000
$0.64
$0.005
In the final scenario, in which we assume wild but obtainable potentials, we estimate an
audience of 100,000 people for the webcast and assume again that each person would
spend an average of two hours viewing the program. The cost effectiveness comes out
to $0.13 per person or $0.001 per minute (see chart below).
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Expanded
Audience
Cost per
120 minute
person
estimate of
average
viewing time
Cost per
person
per
minute
Webcast
Live debate on 3/5
On Demand 1" Year
TOTAL
$12,800
50,000
50,000
100,000
6,000,000
6,000,000
$0.13
12,000,000
$0.001
In all of these scenarios — conservative, ambitious, and potential — it is important to
remember that we are leveraging a quality event already planned and are multiplying the
intellectual and spiritual impact of the conference.
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Speaker Bureau
In the most recent Speakers Bureau program (11/1/97 — 2/29/00), ABC CORP. reached
a combined audience of at least 28,700 people through the presentation of 307 lectures.
This audience number is a conservative estimate, as audience totals were not reported
by some of our speakers for some of their lectures and thus could not be included in the
final total. On a quantitative basis, this outreach resulted in a cost of $1,675 per lecture,
and $17.92 per audience member (Total grant of $514,364 / 307 lectures = $1,675.45;
Total grant of $514,364 / 28,700 total audience = $17.92.20). It is ABC CORP.'s goal to
reduce its per-person cost to less than $12.00 by the end of this two-year renewal
program by expanding outreach to more audience members through Internet lectures
and media attention, as well as increasing the qualitative impact of the program.
Quantitative Impact
As stated above, the previous cost of the Speakers Bureau program for the last two
years was $17.92 per audience member. Again, it is ABC CORP.'s goal to reduce this
cost to less than $12.00 per person by the end of this program. ABC CORP. hopes to
reach a similar number of people during the course of this program as it did in the last
two years (28,700), although it should be emphasized that depending on the number of
national meetings at which presentations are made, where attendance may be less but
impact is usually greater, these totals may be a challenge to achieve. With a significant
reduction in costs in this renewal, if ABC CORP.'s speakers only reach the same total of
28,700 people during the next two years, the cost per audience member would be
reduced to $14.56 (total grant of $417,817 / 28,700 people - $14.46 per person).
However, with the addition of virtual lectures of ABC CORP.'s website and the addition
of those reached via media outreach, the cost could be reduced even more.
As described previously, our estimate of ABC CORP.'s Internet audience could
approach 2,400 people during the course of two years. However, this number may be
considerably higher.
Two-Year Estimate: 280 lectures x 100 attendees
28,000
Virtual Lectures
2,400
Total
30, 400
Thus, with the addition of Internet audio and video streams, as well as media outreach,
the quantitative measure of cost-effectiveness would be reduced even further, to $13.74
per person (i.e. total grant of $417,817 / 30,400 people = $13.74 per person). ABC
CORP.'s speakers are encouraged to present multiple lectures at each venue whenever
possible, and host organizations are encouraged to create additional opportunities for
our speakers to present. For example, at a recent venue, the lecturer presented two
lectures, conducted two discussion periods, and met with selected leaders for two meals
and discussion. Because the speaker is already on site, adding additional lectures does
not increase cost but does increase audience size and impact, thus increasing cost-
effectiveness of the program.
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Media attention can greatly increase the number of people who are exposed to research
findings on spirituality and health, reaching the community and quite probably reaching
many who are learning about this information for the first time. We have previously
mentioned a goal of 70 media hits per year, and can reasonably estimate that 25-50% of
the circulation total for a particular media outlet will be reached by these mentions in
newspapers, magazines, and television/radio programs, as not everyone who
subscribes to a newspaper reads every story. ABC CORP. plans to report the results of
its media outreach efforts related to the Speakers Bureau program, and will report the
circulation for each outlet that carries a story on spirituality and health featuring one of
our speakers.
Qualitative Impact
Using the audience size information as discussed above, ABC CORP. will then analyze
and report to the Foundation the qualitative impact of the program. Using a simple,
three-point rating scale for lecture audiences will allow ABC CORP. to determine the
level of qualitative impact the Speakers Bureau is having. This formula is an initial step
to assessing qualitative impact, whereas in future programs we will build upon this
formula based on what is leaned from it. The following rating scale will be used to
determine qualitative impact:
Audience Type
National professional meetings, national conferences, public policy
institutes, federal govemment agencies
Hospitals/medical centers, universities/medical schools, foundations
3
Regional meetings, churches/religious organizations, local meetings, other
presentations
2
1
In order to calculate the qualitative impact, the audience size for each type of contact will
be weighted based on these ratings. For example, an audience of 100 professionals
attending a conference at a medical center (with a weight of 2) would be calculated as
an audience of 200 (100 people x rating of 2), according to this formula. Ratings of live
lectures will be based on the type of lecture rather than the actual audience makeup, as
actual audience demographics can be difficult, and in some cases, impossible to obtain.
Audience measures for virtual lectures and media attention will still be based solely on
the quantitative measures as previously discussed.
For example, in the most recent Speakers Bureau program, ABC CORP. speakers
delivered 307 lectures at 177 sites, reaching over 28,700 people. The quantitative
breakdown of these lectures is as follows:
r i
Types of meetings
Audlen
3
12,585
National Professional Meetings
4,195
National Conferences
11,305
3
33,915
Public Policy/Federal Government Institute
1,446
3
4,338
Hospitals/Medical Centers
2,975
2
5,950
Universities/Medical Schools
3,991
2
7,982
Foundations
569
2
1,138
Regional Meetings
2,459
1
2,459
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Churches/Religious Organizations
260
1
260
Local Meetings
1,575
1
1,575
TOTAL WEIGHTED AUDIENCE FOR 11/1/97-2/29/00 SPEAKERS
BUREAU
70, 202
The weighted audience total for these presentations equals 70,202. When this total is
divided into the previous total grant amount of $514,364, the qualitative measure of cost-
effectiveness for the most recent Speakers Bureau program results in a cost of $7.33
per person, as compared to a quantitative assessment of $17.92 per person. For
comparison, when the total weighted audience of 70,202 is divided in the current
proposed grant amount of $417,817, the qualitative measure of cost-effectiveness would
become $5.95.
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Academic Lecture Series
Formula #1 (Quantitative Impact)
Our policy will be to ask each campus host to plan for a total audience of 350 persons.
The total figure may be a composite of attendance at the main lecture along with
participation in the book discussion group, special seminars, classroom presentations
and other connected occasions. We encourage each host institution to utilize the guest
lecturer for many venues.
Our quantitative goal is to reach a total of 55,350 persons with the lecture program. We
can reasonably expect each campus lecture event to be attended by 350 persons, in
some cases more. Lectures available through book sales will add 6,750
lecture/audience connections. Video and audio streaming on the worldwide web will add
27,600.
60 lectures x 350 attendees
21,000
Book sales
6,750
Worldwide Web
27,600
Total
55,350
Our raw quantitative cost effective measure would be $7.33 per lecture attendee
($405,617.17 / 55,350 = $7.33).
Formula #2 (Qualitative Impact)
The data gathered by the above mentioned checklist will help determine the level of
qualitative impact on opinion leaders — that is, those most likely to lead in future
influence. Here is our rating calculus of program attendees:
Students:
1
undergraduates
2
masters (M.S., M.A., etc)
3
professional (M.D., M.Div., etc)
4
doctoral
Faculty:
3
natural science
3
religious studies/theology
3
other fields
Opinion leaders:
2
trustees
4
presidents, deans, chancellors, development officers
3
journalists, reporters, media people
2
community leaders
2
clergy
1
local alumnae
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2
significant donors
We will also gather data on radio and TV interviews, newspaper or magazine coverage,
videotape and audiotape distribution, web availability and interactive media, etc. All of
this raw data will be fed into a site total to measure relative qualitative impact.
Increased Productivity
Two approaches to cost-effectiveness are available to us. One approach would be to
assume a fixed or static product; then we would try to reduce production costs. This
approach is reflected above. The other approach would be to accelerate and expand
productivity within an existing budget. Our product — university lecture events — is not
static. It is dynamic. The lectures are aimed at pioneering new programs by enlisting
energy and creativity and by inspiring new intellectual leadership. Cost-effectiveness
here comes in the form of expanding productivity.
With regard to programming, this approach searches out existing opportunities and
when possible, creates opportunities. The watchwords are "flexibility and "adaptability"
within the purview of our long-range vision; namely long range curricular and cultural
impact. "Progress requires changes" (week 19: Law 4). This means, among other
things, we will attempt to enlist as many campus sites as possible within the existing
budget. Cost-effectiveness will increase with every extra program above 60.
With regard to budgetary watch dogging, we use the flexibility and adaptability principles
to look for savings opportunities when they arise. When one speaker can cover two or
more events on a single airfare, we take a savings. When a speakers turns down an
honorarium, we take a savings. When a host institution covers hospitality and other
expenses, we take a savings. These various savings are combined to create a budget
for an additional lecture site. This prudent procedure leads to increased program
productivity.
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