Not sure you got my meaning right. There should be tremendous tolerance for failure in fundraising – it’s the only way we’ll make progress, but right now there is pretty much no tolerance for it, and that has to change. I think we’re in agreement.

Thanks for keeping the spotlight on this issue. With the leadership of Jim Canales and Paul Brest, among others, the field is beginning to appreciate that failure can be an important portal into learning and effectiveness. Last year we (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-RWJF) participated along with colleagues from 7 other foundations in a failure ‘learning session’ organized by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. It was a very useful and frank exchange among the foundations that participated about where our programs had failed, and how difficult it is to come to terms with failure. That prompted my colleague David Colby to organize four chapters on failure in this years RWJF anthology (Volume XIII, available at http://www.rwjf.org) that describe a number of failures from RWJF’s program history.
One aspect of failure that gets too little attention is how tied it is success. Judgments about both require clear goals and strong performance assessment. Perhaps someday it will be routine for foundations to have a much better sense of how they are doing, and how they can learn from failure to get better in the future.

We must begin distinguishing program from fundraising in all of these discussions. To the extent that there is any tolerance for “philanthropic” failure (not completely sure what you mean by “philanthropic”) it exists on the program side. There is zero tolerance for failure on the fundraising side, and that’s the side on which programs depend. That is the larger tragedy and problem.