AVI CHAI Releases Latest Spenddown Report

The AVI CHAI Foundation has released the latest report by Professor Joel Fleishman documenting the Foundation’s spend down.

An excerpt:

“With little more than five years remaining in its intended life, The AVI CHAI Foundation devoted much of its attention and energy in 2014 to improving the likelihood that its grantees and their most significant projects and programs will survive the Foundation’s sunset. Although some latitude remained for starting new initiatives in North America and Israel, the budgets for the two geographic programs had largely been set for the remaining years, so that new efforts would have to fit within those limits… Any new efforts must also take root relatively quickly, given that they, too, will soon face the challenge of carrying on without AVI CHAI support. The twin responsibilities of reinforcing longstanding projects and carefully introducing new ones have created what Eli Silver, Executive Director of the Israel program, described as “a stimulating kind of combination”: In these final years, program staff have had to master the techniques of organizational durability – helping grantees shore up essentials like fundraising, governance, leadership development, and strategic adaptability – while also nurturing a few new ideas that can be launched in the short time left.

“This is a huge change from the past,” a program officer observed, “when we could first experiment and not have the time pressure to place only the right bets.” Now, having re-oriented all of its effort, among Board and staff members alike, toward reaching a responsible conclusion with lasting benefits, AVI CHAI finds itself calculating not only the cost of each remaining activity, but the amount of time that activity will take to prove its worth at least tentatively, and where the results will stand on December 31, 2019.”

The complete year 6 report, “New Uncertainties – and Opportunities – as the End Approaches” is available here.