Since 1999, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation has focused on increasing the number of low-income youth served by programs with scientifically proven or persuasive evidence showing that they help youth lead healthy, productive lives. To accomplish this, the Foundation has devoted the bulk of its resources to strengthening a select group of organizations, helping them to serve more young people, achieve greater organizational effectiveness, and, ultimately, become models and leaders in youth development.

The reports in this section, along with our 2008 annual report, continue our commitment to reporting publicly on the performance of the Foundation and our grantees in meeting the objectives we have set for ourselves. We provide regular updates on the measures we use to evaluate performance on our website and in annual reports to ensure the most current information is available.

We have found that developing and implementing these measures, though difficult and time- consuming, is essential to accomplishing our mission and our grantees’ missions. We believe that setting clear performance objectives and establishing credible reporting systems to assess progress provide us and our grantees with an impetus to continue to improve our performance. As you will see in the pages that follow, our measurement tools and data collection are still being developed and refined.

We understand there is no reliable methodology for ascribing success or failure in meeting objectives precisely or directly to the Foundation’s investments and extra-financial support. Our grantees are effective and well-regarded organizations, with strong leaders and a broad base of supporters, and these factors in themselves increase their odds for success. Nonetheless, we believe that our strategy can complement the grants from other funders and strengthen the grantees’ work.