Cover Story

In the beginning there were file cabinets; about 14 in all, full of articles, brochures, pamphlets, cassettes and videotapes. In two closets, at opposite ends of the office, a mishmash of books, journals and reports completed the collection.

After a while, all this information begat more information—the kind that comes across the desks of busy grantmakers every day: Annual reports; financial newsletters and business publications; articles sent by well-meaning consultants; news magazines with stories about (fill in your mission statement here); and professional journals with the latest published research that somehow relates to past, present and future program activities.

This was the profile of the Kansas Health Foundation’s “information center” eight years ago. A steady stream of materials flowed into the makeshift library system, loosely organized together under the heading of a “Health Network.” Sadly, much like the infamous “Roach Motel,” materials went into the network, but very few items ever came out—for research, reading or discarding.

For a philanthropic organization with a mission to improve the health of all Kansans, and where ideas translate into products, this one-way flow of information led to an unproductive logjam.

A Growing (and Growing and Growing) Concern

Like most grantmakers, the Kansas Health Foundation (KHF) was thrust into the information age with little preparation. Mountains of paperwork, from grant files to everyday correspondence to research needs piled up without much regard about how to manage it beyond an alphabetized filing system.

As technology—particularly the Internet—has opened the floodgates to more and more information in recent years, the need for information management has escalated. More than a decade ago, Richard Saul Wurman wrote in Information Anxiety, “a weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England.” Since then, with the advent of Internet access, information consumption has skyrocketed. One Internet research company conducted a study that concluded there were 9.4 billion

e-mail messages delivered in the United States in 1998. That works out to an average of 26.4 e-mail messages per American—and that’s in addition to the other forms of information that come in daily, including “snail mail”—first class mail of which 107 billion pieces were delivered in the United States in 1998—as well as telephone calls, voice mails and one-on-one interaction.

Many expect technology to help us manage this tide of information, but databases, digital storage and other storage devices can answer only half of the equation. People—the creators, users, and organizers of information—are the critical “other half” of successful information management.

Since Harlan Cleveland underscored the importance of people in the information management equation in his 1985 work, The Knowledge Executive: Leadership in an Information Society, there’s been, in general, a mental shift to view information as a commodity, but with unique properties. Because information in itself is not tangible, it does not gain value by being warehoused. According to Cleveland, the value of information grows with the more “owners” it has. In fact, he says, information is diffusive, meaning that the more one tries to control it, the more it tends to leak, thus, it should not be hoarded.

Over Our Heads: Establishing a System

Enter, a new way of organizing.

Because the Kansas Health Foundation values evaluation and continual organizational learning, it decided eight years ago to enlist the help of experts to manage the onslaught of information. In 1993, two professors at Emporia State University’s School of Library and Information Management (ESU-SLIM) answered the Kansas Health Foundation’s request for a proposal to analyze the foundation’s information usage habits. Roger Greer (now professor emeritus) led the study to develop a customized, state-of-the-art, access-based information center, and was joined by now-retired Florence DeHart, whose specialty was cataloging and online database retrieval.

The project was strongly influenced by Greer’s philosophy of a people-centered system that would emphasize access rather than acquisition, the underlying notion being: “Too many items are kept ‘just in case,’ putting a drain on an information system’s resources of people and technology.” Greer’s vision of a streamlined system that would support each employee’s information needs would begin by collecting data on each employee’s activities. To achieve this, a graduate student spent the better part of the fall 1993 semester “shadowing” foundation employees to observe their information usage, preferred sources and how their job position influenced their information requirements.

Together the team examined the foundation’s artifacts, such as newsletters and annual reports. The analysis led the team to develop a classification and organization system (choosing a standard—Dewey decimal or Library of Congress— and deciding how to arrange documents and other data under that standard) for print, audio and visual documents based on the foundation’s program areas. The system also was designed to accommodate electronic media and internally generated documents residing on the foundation’s server.

To help KHF keep its new information center clear of superfluous materials, guidelines were set for what to acquire and what to keep—for example, the material’s clear relevance to the organization’s mission, or essentialness to ongoing research. Although the mantra of the information center’s development was “retrieval, not retention,” it did not preclude the archival of historical documents. The foundation recognized its responsibility to maintain its corporate memory for generations to come, and so, it continues to maintain supporting documentation on significant activities.

Survival of the Fittest:
The Weeding Process

Once the classification and organization scheme was developed, “weeding” of the existing collection began. By this time, the project team grew with the addition of two more library graduate students and a foundation employee whose main responsibility was to double-check each item before it was sent to the “discard” pile.

Contents of the file cabinets and closets were reviewed piece by piece, and items retained were entered into the temporary computer system. Eventually this system would be converted to an Access™ database, which has grown with the foundation over the years. Users can check the holdings from their desktop and can search by title, author and subject. Most items contain a sufficient abstract to help users determine whether the item is a good match for their information need.

Today all research articles, brochures and pamphlets fit into five drawers of lateral file cabinets, electronic media (video and cassette tapes, CDs) into one media shelving unit, and various periodicals, books and reports on four floor-to-ceiling regulation library shelving—all housed in an office/library. Because the collection has desktop accessibility through its online database, users may conduct searches and even check out items with a single mouse click. As such, the “where” of any particular item is not as important as keeping this information current in the database.

In fact, the information center database was one of the first non-grant-specific databases to be created at KHF. Through the years, the importance of accurate data, accessed at desktop computers, has influenced how the foundation operates. Earlier this year, KHF introduced the first version of its intranet, which will eventually link all the databases in the organization.

This approach to sharing more information through a common portal has improved internal communications at the foundation. By combining different databases, KHF also is beginning to create a better understanding about who it serves, how it communicates with its different constituents and how the organization can contribute to the field of knowledge within health and philanthropy.

Organizing Chaos

KHF takes a strategic approach in its grantmaking, targeting specific outcomes and funding programs that will achieve those goals. Evaluation is an important component in each project as well as at a programmatic and operational level. Information—from reports to financial data to impact studies—becomes critical in establishing an organization that wants to learn as well as inform.

Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer, in their Harvard Business Review article, “Philanthropy’s New Agenda: Creating Value” (November 1999), argue that foundations should approach grantmaking strategically by selecting the best grantees; signaling other funders (often referred to as leveraging); improving the performance of grantees; and advancing the state of knowledge and practice. However, advancing the state of knowledge and practice involves a foundation’s commitment to internal evaluation and analysis of how it creates, distributes and uses its knowledge—and requires a solid information infrastructure to manage it.

The term “knowledge management” is used across disciplines and specifically relates to how organizations—from corporations to nonprofits—use knowledge to make themselves more effective and efficient. Although there is not yet a universal definition, the one KHF uses is “a system of people and technology that helps us know what we know.”

Part of the system is informal, found in conversations between coworkers in the offices and hallways of the foundation. Another part is more formalized, such as the information management system that began eight years ago. While information management is a critical component of knowledge management, there are differences that need to be considered when a foundation wants to organize itself.

The distinction between information and knowledge management is fuzzy. One can begin by describing the difference between information and knowledge as that of the potential versus the actual. For example, information can be described as the basic material of knowing, while knowledge is the result of understanding the significance of that information. The two are intricately related, and the most important factor that unites them is people, the users of information and the creators of knowledge.

Like information management, the bottom line with knowledge management is having a system that makes sense out of all this chaos, and one that ultimately serves the needs of the mission of the organization.

What Are We Learning?

With an infrastructure in place that manages information, KHF is working to create a system that manages knowledge and contributes to its own learning as well as learning within the field of health and philanthropy. In academic terms, the foundation is incorporating more definitive strategies in its goal of improving itself as a learning organization, which according to David Garvin in his Harvard Business Review article, “Building a Learning Organization” (July/ August 1993), is “an organization skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.”

It is the infrastructure for the management of information and knowledge that makes learning at the organizational level possible. The current components of KHF as a learning organization include

• redesigning the foundation’s internal filing system    
• updating the grant filing and management system    
• utilizing findings from a “knowledge inventory” of the staff    
• incorporating findings from a “learning styles” assessment of staff, and    
• implementing ideas from an internal communication assessment.

Internally, teams of representatives from all departments and levels within the organization are working on each of these projects. For example, a team is working on a plan that will reorganize KHF’s entire filing system. The purpose is to organize information so that all users can quickly locate internal information, increasing the foundation’s capacity as a learning organization. Some of goals include

• developing and implementing a single, uniform set of filing standards    
• requiring staff participation in the uniform filing system, and    
• conducting periodic audits to ensure compliance.

The new system is expected to increase information retrieval efficiency and to manage each stage of the information life cycle—including document retention, archival or discard. Savings of off-site storage costs are expected to help balance this time-intensive project. This project is also closely connected to a grants management project, which is expected to revitalize the way grant files are organized, stored and retrieved—both physically and electronically.

As it has with all its information work to date, KHF is taking these information projects in phases. With it will come a need to inventory the types of knowledge at the foundation, including those outlined by Michael H. Zack in his article “Developing a Knowledge Strategy,” in the California Management Review:

• Tacit (knowledge and appreciation of the foundation’s history)    
• Explicit (new knowledge for everyone)    
• General (philanthropy in general)    
• Situated (contextually driven)    
• Individual (expertise)    
• Collective (what “everyone knows”)

At the same time, KHF will continue to use its analysis of learning styles, a key component of the foundation’s work in leadership development, in its information and knowledge management projects. KHF has a deep commitment to developing leaders (including staff members) who can encourage and focus group purpose.

Learning styles, developed for community leadership programs by Indiana-based consultants Mary Jo Clark and Pat Heiny and adapted from work by David Kolb, a professor of organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve University and an early contributor to the theory of experiential learning, indicate how people receive and process information. For example, testing can show whether a person prefers to receive information through active experimentation or by reflective observation. At the same time, it indicates whether people prefer hands-on experience or abstract thought.

At KHF, all staff members have taken the learning styles test, and results are shared with each other. That way people begin to see each other as information recipients, and they can try to deliver information to each other more effectively. This exercise also encourages people to move out of their comfort zone when sending or receiving information.

The learning styles exercise also served as a precursor for an internal communications assessment conducted by the foundation in late 2000. Results from that assessment have uncovered more information about sharing information; and task forces related to human resources, professional development and dress code policies are working together to determine the best way to maintain a work environment that promotes trust and civility.

Of course, this is just the latest step in a constantly evolving information management process. As with almost any information-based project, there have been many points of stalling and starting over. Still, for every step back, two new ones propelled the Kansas Health Foundation forward.

Among the key reasons this project has persisted over the years are a commitment to leadership development by the president/CEO, and a dedicated and determined staff who want to make KHF—and the state of Kansas—the best place to work and live.

It’s apparent that what started as a project to organize an informal collection of files and closets became the infrastructure for a dedicated learning organization.

Information and Knowledge Management Resources

One of the strengths of the Kansas Health Foundation’s information management system is that it was established—and continues to evolve—as a customized system centered on the foundation’s vision, mission, and organizational culture. Here are a few resources that may help other foundations build their own customized systems.

Information Management

ARMA International (originally the Association for Records Management Administrators)

This organization has a number of publications for those seeking the “how-to’s” of records management.
ARMA International
4200 Somerset Drive, Suite 215, Prairie Village, KS 66208
Phone: 800/422-2762    Fax: 913/341-3742     E-mail: hq@arma.org
Web site: www.arma.org

American Library Association (ALA)

50 E. Huron, Chicago, IL 60611
Phone: 800/545-2433    Fax: 312/440-9374
Library schools today strive to prepare their graduates for a future in information and knowledge management. ALA publishes a directory of accredited master’s degree programs, which is available on the Internet at www.ala.org/alaorg/oa/progindx.html.

Knowledge Management

The knowledge management concept began with the notion of learning at the organizational level. The seminal work on learning organizations is:

Senge, Peter M. 1990. The Fifth Discipline: Five Practices of the Learning Organization, New York: Doubleday.

Related is the theory of situated learning or “communities of practice.” This theory was first presented by:

• Lave, Jean and Etienne Wegner. 1994. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

In addition, Davenport and Prusak’s 1997 book on knowledge management has received excellent reviews on the introduction it provides to this field:

• Davenport, Thomas H. and Lawrence Prusak. 1997. Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.

—T.B. and S.G.F.