Between 2008 and 2014, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Nuclear Security Initiative (NSI) made 128 grants totaling $24.7M. As part of the wind-down of the initiative, Hewlett engaged ORS Impact to conduct an evaluation looking back at the NSI strategy, its evolution, accomplishments and challenges. In the latter part of 2014, evaluators interviewed a wide range of 35 actors in the nuclear security field (grantees, non-grantee experts, foundation staff, advisors, and peer funders); analyzed over 700 Initiative grant documents; and reviewed other literature in the field. The evaluation yielded numerous insights pertinent to future work on nuclear security and potentially other policy fields, as well.
Consulting Program Officer David Shorr also wrote a blog post describing some of these insights.