Mitch Hurst of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation said, “It’s my view that grantees are well ahead of their funders when it comes to Web 2.0 because they (the grantees) have other motivations that force them to think about how to use these tools strategically: to raise funds, find volunteers and fill other sorts of bottom-line needs that foundations just don’t have.”

Michael Hoffman agreed. “There isn’t a fundraising pressure, or a membership pressure on a foundation the way there are on nonprofits or membership organizations. And absent that, foundations have been slower to move and adapt. Foundations do have communication goals though. And these new technologies—if applied strategically—can help meet them.”

Some described this as a branding or identity issue. Amanda Rounseville, grants officer of communications and public affairs for The California Endowment put it this way: “There is a personality question, in terms of where foundations want to be. How important is the role of the foundation, and how important is the role of the work? Most foundations realize that it’s critical to support the work by taking risks and investing in new communication strategies. On the flip side, they are also realizing that they can use innovative platforms to better leverage their own voice to advance an issue.”

William Hanson of the Skillman Foundation took the argument to this conclusion: “Would it be better spent if communications professionals that work for foundations got a pot of money to help nonprofits communicate about the work they’re doing?” Maybe it’s less important that people recognize foundations by name and more important that they are aware of and engaged in the issues foundations care most about and are trying to change.

Many of the challenges of using new tools are best addressed by being strategic. Alfred Ironside of the Ford Foundation describes their process this way: “We are taking a very user-centric approach. We’re using research to back-up and guide the decision-making. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Just make sure tactics make sense to the strategy at hand. The Web is a place and 2.0 is a tool where a lot of good things can happen. But we’re not going to just jump into that blindly or put up a blog because blogs seem to be a cool thing to do.”

Taking this kind of strategic approach can help a foundation balance the opportunity for greater influence with the challenges of resources, prioritization, internal advocacy and measuring return on investment. After all, these challenges are always present—whether a communications professional is innovating with Web 2.0 technologies or spreading the word in more traditional ways.