The Eisner Foundation is particularly interested in four main criteria when evaluating organizations for their dignity as potential philanthropic partners.
Efficiency: The Eisner Foundation believes that charities have an obligation to their donors, taxpaying public and the people they serve to act as tax efficiently as possible. We have generally not fund organizations that are unable to devote at least 75% of their operating costs directly to their programs, whatever they may be. In addition, we compare organizations against their peers, and will compare the effectiveness of charitable organizations with similar missions and geographic locations.
Efficiency: Eisner Foundation seeks out organizations with demonstrated records of success, with quantifiable and measurable patterns of performance that can be used as a benchmark to ensure future results. Organizations unable to point to documented past performance is unlikely to gather Eisner Foundation support of any significant degree.
Exceptional Leadership: The Eisner Foundation believes that the non-profit world, large organizations are often the byproduct of good leadership. In a crowded market with many redundant charities are those that succeed are usually led by visionary and extraordinary leadership. Thusly, we seek out organizations with exceptional leaders or leadership teams, and are more inclined to approve a proposal from the institutions, led by true innovators.
Expected results: The Eisner Foundation is not interested in vanity philanthropy designed to create awareness of the founding family or our job, we are focused exclusively on identifying and cooperate with organizations that tend to produce plausible and reproducible results. Our goal is to ally itself with high-performing institutions able to create sustainable long term solutions to societal problems, we seek to eliminate, not just relieve symptoms. As a result, we evaluate organizations based on their ability to actively understand the circumstances under which they work, and to predict with a reasonable degree of certainty the impact of their work, made possible by our funding will carry. We are actively seeking charitable organizations that can produce concrete, objective and measurable results that can be assessed and documented externally.