How a US Healthcare Foundation Aims to Stop Drowning in Special Projects

Given the dynamics of healthcare legislative shifts in the United States, a mid-western healthcare foundation was launching a new strategic plan. With so many projects already in process, combined with the need to launch initiatives to enable the new strategy for their communities, the foundation wanted to answer:

  • Which projects should we invest in first?
  • Which staff have capacity to work on current and new projects?
  • How do we prevent staff stress, burnout or turnover?
  • Which projects can be done in parallel?
  • How do we develop a roll-out plan for these many moving parts, strategically, to best enable activation of the new strategy?
Illustration of persona working late, worrying about multiple personal projects.
“It’s so hard to focus and finish when everything seems like it takes first priority!"

Enter Project Portfolio Management

The team at Grantbook offered the approach to consider all foundation projects like a portfolio of stocks.  In fact, each project is an investment of people and money.  Most people with investment portfolios, manage their investments to maximize profit (or hire someone to manage it for them). Thus, a foundation can do the same with its projects by implementing Portfolio Management, a process by which financial and human resources are optimized to maximize value for positive impact to the foundation (internally and/or externally).

So, the portfolio of projects was looked at holistically and analyzed in terms of meeting the 5 goals of Portfolio Management which are:

  1. Impact - allocate resources to maximize the impact of the portfolio (impact to community and long-term strategy)
  2. Balance - achieve a desired balance of projects across impact areas or goals
  3. Strategy - link project effort to strategy, top down and bottom up
  4. Number - balance availability of staff and the volume of work to be completed
  5. Sufficiency - pick the right number and combination of projects to meet goals

Grantbook sliced and diced some of the foundation’s project portfolio data. One of several interesting findings was that the foundation had not allocated an equal level of effort or investment across its three strategic goals.

How Grantbook helped dissect the healthcare foundation's project portfolio.

As shown in this chart, there was over-investment in Governance and Organizational projects and under-investment in Partnerships and Leadership. Seeing this big picture enabled the foundation to bring its project portfolio into balance.

If you and your staff are experiencing the feeling of drowning in projects, consider portfolio management.

Contact us for an introductory knowledge share at hey@grantbook.org.

View our one-pager for more details.

Michelle Moore

Board Member

Strategy, Transformation, Process Optimization

Transformation work is my passion. I have helped former Soviet enterprises transition to a market economy, consulted companies on innovation performance, optimized business processes and implemented new technologies. Today, authentic transformation for lasting positive impact is faster and more accessible to all individuals, organizations and systems. Tapping into the collective wisdom of our teams, through high quality attention & intention, presencing, and embodiment is the new source for insight and innovation.