Five Case Studies Documenting Aspects of the Trump Foundation’s Work

The Trump Foundation opened its doors at the end of 2011 with a promise for Israel’s education which relied on a hypothesis: if strategic philanthropy is executed wisely, it can help the education system expand the circle of excellence in mathematics and science studies. By nurturing advanced teaching capacity and focusing on student learning, the foundation’s strategy aims to catalyze a sustainable transformation, which would move the needle and reverse the negative national trajectories in these areas.To do so, we work both as an ‘engineer’ – building structured processes, and as a well-mannered ‘pyromaniac’ – sparking innovation and catalyzing momentum. Our lines of work involve various types of grant-making, including the seeding of unique teacher residency training programs, and developing pedagogic tools and practices to advance the level of teaching. We also engage in partnerships with municipalities, school networks and districts to integrate and showcase how elements of clinical teaching are intertwined to achieve sustainable improvement in student performance. The foundation convenes networks of learning and implementation to facilitate knowledge-sharing and collaboration. The media is harnessed in order to inform and engage the public and to attract attention and demand for the whole endeavor.

The jury is still out as to whether the foundation’s approach is achieving its ultimate goals and as to how all elements are aligned to complement one another. However, the foundation’s strategic roadmap states that we will not wait until the completion of implementation to figure it out, but we will conduct a mid-term end-to-end review of our work in 2016. The roadmap explains that this methodology will allow the foundation to fine-tune its efforts, while providing itself and the professional community with valuable documentation and analysis.

In the discussion of the foundation’s Advisory Council in 2014, it was recommended that the review utilize diverse tools of evaluation, based on both data and analysis, exploring different aspects of our work, and using different genres and narratives for a varied audience. Professor Lee Shulman stressed that what we do is of interest to mathematics and science experts, to education reform specialists, to philanthropy professionals and to the general public in Israel. He, therefore, emphasized that we must document our work in a manner that would address the interests of these different target audiences.

Our 2014 and 2015 management objectives include a number of activities which address this challenge, such as the collection of baseline data; executing initial evaluation of clusters of projects; and creating a set of case studies. In this grant proposal we recommend creating an initial set of five such cases, which will examine several aspects of the foundation’s work, collect data and provide insight. The five topics proposed are:

1. The foundation’s strategy in practice.  In the foundation’s strategic roadmap of 2011 we laid out a theory of change that focused on teachers and instruction as a means to improving academic success. How has that theory of change been implemented over the last four years? Which obstacles has it met with in reality, and how has it evolved and been adapted as a result?
2. Relationship with grantees and partners. We have taken special care from the outset to pursue a high standard of professional relationship with our grantees and partners. As a grant-making foundation which strives to catalyze system-wide sustainable improvements, these relationships are crucial to our success. Based on the Grantee Perception Report (GPR) executed in 2014 and a second to be performed in 2016, the case study will examine how grantees perceive their relationship with the foundation, the extent to which we might be affecting their organizations, and processes we have undertaken to maintain and improve these relationships to achieve greater impact.
3. ‘Higiya Zman Chinuch’ – The social media story. This case would document the foundation’s efforts to attract talent into the teaching of high school mathematics and science by targeting the potential pool of candidates and engaging them in an authentic grass roots social media community, entitled: ‘Higiya Zman Chinuch’. Launched via Facebook in 2013, today it also has a digital magazine which reaches 25,000 members, and involves some participants in activities outside of Facebook.
4. Field-philanthropy partnerships: How has the foundation pursued its strategy of partnerships with municipalities, schools networks, districts and the Ministry of Education? What have we learned from initial pilot programs? To what extent have these partnerships and our interactions to date informed our developing policy and strategy concerning partnerships, and are they indeed achieving the desired scale and sustainability?
5. National impact: While it is premature to draw conclusions at this stage, it would be wise to start gathering information on the way in which the foundation has attempted to affect national goals and policy-making and whether this has led to new national programs, systemic change and the raising of national indicators in this field.

Each case study will be commissioned to an expert in the field, who over several months will be asked to gather data, conduct interviews and prepare a 25-30 page narrative and analysis, which will be available in both Hebrew and English. In a later stage we intend to recommend appropriate ways to adapt each report to potential target audiences in a range of possible formats including blog pieces, short documentary films, articles and infographics.

* The text  above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation’s Board of Directors / Grant 157