Philanthropic Grantmaking for Disasters: Lessons Learned at the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

This report, commissioned for the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, reviews principles, best practices and codes of conduct for humanitarian assistance, including disasters. Private foundations, like other organizations involved in international disaster assistance, have lists of common principles and best practices, but they are less detailed than those of other types of actors. The report offers a scan of the full spectrum of principles for humanitarian assistance, including for disasters, which are applied by the different types of organizations involved, including government donors, NGOs, the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, and the UN and other international organizations.

The report also offers a close look at the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and its grantmaking for disasters. The Foundation’s processes are briefly reviewed, for applications, approvals, monitoring, reporting, and evaluation, especially as they have been undergoing rapid change in recent years. The paper makes a number of suggestions, including systematic appending of 1-page tables of objectives, outcomes and outputs to grant agreements, with reporting based on the table. Regarding the timing of the Foundation’s grantmaking in the early stages of a sudden disaster, the paper finds that the Foundation has it about right, especially the strategy of making initial relief grants within a week or two and then more patiently researching the funding of a second round for recovery. The paper concludes with lists of the lessons that the Hilton Foundation has learned from experience, and offers suggestions for improvement