[Note from Alliance: Tim Ogden and Laura Starita of Philanthropy Action have been blogging from the Council on Foundations conference in Philadelphia, which finished yesterday. Our thanks to Philanthropy Action for allowing us to re-publish a number of their posts in Latest from Alliance. To read more, go to http://www.philanthropyaction.com]

One of the first sessions at the Council on Foundations conference was the somewhat mistitled Philanthropic Strategy –Too Much of a Good Thing? The session was put together by Chris Cardona of the TCC Group, a consultancy that helps foundations and non-profits with strategy among other things. I say the session was somewhat mistitled because none of the speakers made anything like an argument that there was ‘too much’ strategy happening in foundations – all were very pro-strategy. As a result there wasn’t a great deal of debate but there were some interesting points made: