When is an organization no longer a ‘start-up’? Is it age, size, or some other acquired wisdom that moves it out of the ‘test and experiment’ stage into the ‘institutional’ one? When is it time for an organization to change or adapt? Do we revisit strategies every 3 or 5 years because they are ‘round numbers’? Or do we watch the world around us and continuously react? How do you know when to grow?
Lowell Weiss and Jennifer Hoos Rothberg, executive director of the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust, continue their longstanding dialogue about how funders can pay careful heed–not just lip service–to what their grantees need for improving performance.
Shaping policy that influences and shapes what government does cannot and should not be relegated to nonprofits acting by themselves or to individuals in town hall meetings. Grantmakers have a powerful voice to contribute to these deliberations.
PEAK Grantmaking has been taking a look at how grantmakers can better align their grantmaking practices to their values through our Walk the Talk initiative.
The funders who catalyze change are those who show up at community and public meetings, attend local nonprofit conferences, talk with people in different walks of life. By engaging with people and listening, they develop insight into challenges and opportunities.
Equity has been like coconut water. It’s all over the place. It’s flavored with pineapple, sometimes with chocolate. Everyone is drinking Equity; it’s on websites, in conference themes, and in those “word-cloud” thingies. Given how pervasive it is, it’s weird that we don’t seem to have a common, universally-accepted definition for it.
At Robins Foundation, our board and staff aspires to connect equity with transformational change for children and families across our region. We are reflecting on opportunities in our own organization. This includes our governance, our management and our process of funding. This includes raising our awareness and deeper understanding of the past and its influence on dialogues locally and beyond.
This past year, we have seen political and social norms challenged and often trampled. We have struggled to keep our bearings and hold to our moral principles. As we have been inundated by the constant barrage of events, media firestorms, and tweets, a tragic and horrible day in Charlottesville provides a chilling moment of clarity and outrage.
These aren’t aspects of success that you can measure with metrics or data, and they are things that many funders often either take for granted or completely overlook. Yet, when they are present, they make a night-and-day difference in effectiveness.
As funders, we pay great attention to how potential grantees steward their financial resources, but do we pay equal attention to how they lead and manage their human resources? Volunteers are a vastly underutilized, yet virtually unlimited renewable resource. The need is urgent, the timing is critical, and the support is necessary.
