Philanthropic foundations are known for using their individual resources to address different social issues. But when foundations operate in concert, they can orchestrate big shifts in public policy, as happened with the growth of charter school networks in California, finds new research in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.

Researchers Rand Quinn of the University of Pennsylvania, Megan Tompkins-Stange of the University of Michigan and Debra Meyerson of the Stanford University Graduate School of Education studied the influence of large foundations on the growth of nonprofit, publicly funded charter school networks, also known as charter school management organizations, in California from 1999 to 2005. They discovered that the Gates, Broad and Walton Family foundations, as well as the New Schools Venture Fund, did not merely support but created California’s system of charter networks and pushed their fast rate of growth. The foundations pursued this strategy even though they had no clear evidence that charter schools generate better educational outcomes than district schools.

Nationally, also, the country’s largest foundations during this same period devoted an increased share of their philanthropy to nonprofit charter networks as opposed to stand-alone charters or other forms of charter schools. Approximately 75 percent of all grants to charter school networks came from the same four foundations active on this front in California.

In California, the foundations’ investments had the intended effect of fueling rapid growth in both the number of networks and their schools. In 1999, the state had one charter network with two schools. Six years later, California was home to 14 charter networks operating close to 150 schools. The objective was to scale up operations enough to give charter schools leverage within a school district, said one of the charter and foundation leaders interviewed for the study. Another said scaling up was akin to having an effect on “public education the way FedEx affected the Post Office.”

To ensure that the new networks grew quickly, the foundations contractually obligated them to meet certain performance targets or lose funding. Target numbers were set for such activities as the securing of charter authorizations, location of facilities and recruitment of students and staff. The targets were so aggressive that, in some cases, they interfered with the ability to focus on student achievement and had to be scaled back.