The role of Program Officers at the Hewlett Foundation
The Hewlett Foundation’s Program Officers (POs) have significant autonomy in making decisions on grantmaking practices, selection and review processes, portfolio development and exit strategies.
In Mexico, POs merge this autonomy with a deep knowledge of the Mexican context. Indeed all are either Mexican nationals or foreigners (usually Americans) who have spent considerable time living and working in Mexico.
The foundation hired a diverse group, rich in professional and personal experiences that shaped their grantmaking.
POs complemented their diversity with a spirit of collaboration, holding frequent discussions about their grantmaking approaches and brainstorming ways of mutually supporting each other’s work.
It was a virtuous circle. Complementary perspectives benefited grantees while also allowing POs to learn from each other, improving their collaboration and effectiveness, which resulted in further benefits to grantees.
Since the nature of TPA work is unpredictable (affected by a range of political, socio-economic factors), a certain level of portfolio diversity is useful as one cannot predict what will work and what will not. As such it may be unrealistic to talk about portfolio coherence and strategic alignment for every grant all the time.
The foundation relied on the close to the ground insights of their POs, which was the best possible approach to work in a fundamentally complex environment and in favor of a fundamentally complex goal. And while there could be some guiding principles or storylines to pursue in the long-run, short-term incoherence in the portfolio was a sound strategy.
Nonetheless, the difference in PO approaches contributed to a portfolio that at times lacked a coherent story, which resulted in inconsistencies across the portfolio, a lack of transparency and inconsistent messaging for grantees.
It was an operation reliant on POs’ own perspectives.
