A 60-year legacy of giving.
The Packard Foundation is one of the largest family foundations in the US. For the past 60 years, the Foundation has made long-term commitments to help address complex social issues, including climate change, reproductive health, and support for healthier children, families, and communities. Their work has supported local Bay Area organizations and global NGOs, and the brand had grown and developed organically over the years. In 2021, the Foundation made the decision to invest in its brand strategy as they looked toward another 60 years of giving and impact.
Challenge
The Packard Foundation had operated on a set of shared principles for decades, but had never developed an intentional brand strategy. Their reputation as a philanthropic leader that respects, supports, connects, and understands its grantees was a great place to start. They also have significantly fewer reporting requirements for grantees, and typically receive exceptional results from their annual Grantee Perception Report.
Our greatest challenge was to build on the Foundation’s principles while helping navigate and communicate its strategies for addressing structural and systemic racism—both in its grant-making processes and in the US. Our research also uncovered a tension point connected to justice and equity: How bold would the Foundation be?
“Justice and equity are the fulcrum, the lens through which to address all the interlinked crises. These issues do not show up in the work. They are the work.”
Approach
We conducted surveys and more than 90 interviews with Foundation leadership, staff, and grantees. We spoke with peer foundations to learn more about its reputation. And we led a workshop to explore hopes, fears, the tangible outcomes of its mission, goals, values, and empathy maps for a range of audiences.
INSIGHT
Balancing the head and the heart
The Packard Foundation is widely respected for its seriousness and intellectual rigor. But while it is also lauded for its “heart,” this quality is not always as apparent. While evidence can explain “what works,” engaging people with the aspirations, values, and moral imperatives of social change is rooted in emotion. Striking the right balance of head and heart can deepen relationships that help achieve greater impact. The challenge is to ensure that the Foundation’s headiness does not come across as aloof or detached when its priority issues feel under siege.
INSIGHT
What does it mean to be bold?
“Bold” came up in nearly every conversation with stakeholders, and each person has their own definition. What being bold looks like for the Packard Foundation, both in words and in action, is perhaps its biggest brand tension. A key question for many is, while the Foundation is well-known for standing behind its grantees, what does it mean to stand beside them as they fight for justice and equity? Many want to see the Foundation put its power to greater use by taking bolder stances. The challenge is doing so in a way that remains true to the Foundation’s authentic identity and working within legal restrictions on advocacy.
A KEY DIFFERENTIATOR
Making It Easy for Grantees to Make Meaningful Change.
The Packard Foundation invests in its grantees to enable progress on specific issue areas and improve an organization’s ability to reach the communities it serves. While reporting status updates on grants is important, the Foundation believes that its job is to make grantees’ work easier by encouraging them to spend time on the most important and impactful things, not additional reports and requirements. This allows for the Foundation to build strong and trusting relationships with grantees and create an open space for collaboration and consultation. As a result, they’re able to increase the overall impact of grantmaking efforts, empower grantees to view Packard as a true resource, and foster meaningful and long-lasting partnerships.
A key strength of the Packard Foundation is its ability to act boldly and speak intentionally, not provocatively. The Foundation values action and pursues boldness through its grantmaking, while using its voice in service of grantees—who do the work and know it best—to ensure that Packard’s support enables them to pave the way for progress.
My Role:
- Developed the plan for how we would approach research, discovery, and strategy and oversaw its implementation across the duration of the project.
- Provided oversight during interviews, surveys, peer research, and workshops while contributing to distilling insights from the qualitative and quantitative data our team had gathered.
- Contributed to the brand assessment, helping establish a baseline for where the Foundation is today and what its future might look like.
Other Contributors:
- Agency leadership facilitated on-site workshops for the Foundation’s staff and the board of directors.
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