By Marisela Orta, Northern California Grantmakers

The Foundation Center has launched Glasspockets.org, a web platform “designed to inspire greater openness among private foundations…[encouraging foundations] to tell the stories of their successes — and failures — in part by highlighting exemplary efforts of their peers.”

The term “glass pockets” was coined over 50 years ago by “then-Carnegie Corporation of New York Board Chair Russell Leffingwell, who told a McCarthy-era Congressional hearing: We think that the foundation should have glass pockets.”

The call for greater transparency in philanthropy has already been answered by several foundations featured on Glasspockets.org.  In doing so, foundations are able to tell their stories: why they give grants, to whom, and the impact and difference they are making in the communities they serve.