By Andy Carroll, Exponent Philanthropy
In our regular “Pulse” blog series, I explore trends influencing philanthropy by spotlighting articles, reports, and essays in the media. I cast a wide net, venturing beyond philanthropy and traditional topics to consider a variety of ideas, innovations, debates, and critiques. Read previous posts in the series
It’s Not Foundation Money but Culture and Talent That Can Change the World
In a study exploring why some social-change efforts achieve transformational results while others do not, Community Wealth Partners found that a strong internal culture plays an essential role in the ability of nonprofit organizations and foundations to achieve change on important issues. A strong organizational culture is one where rules for acceptable and unacceptable behavior are clear and regularly communicated, expectations for how people are managed and treated are well defined, and where individuals’ learning, growth, participation, and dignity are valued.
For decades, academics and leaders in the business world have understood that an organization’s strong culture contributes to its productivity, ability to attract and retain talent, and its bottom line. Now, culture is seen as linked to social change outcomes:
The reason this matters so much is that people—not institutions and not checkbooks—solve problems. That’s why the most successful organizations make conscientious efforts to attract, retain, and develop team members who are capable of guiding large-scale change to advance the common good. By the same token, an organization’s culture can either attract or repel the people with that kind of talent.
The study’s authors call upon foundations to retool their cultures so they may achieve the outcomes they desire. Building a strong culture also empowers foundations to attract talent among Millennials and Generation Xers, who, they assert, “don’t want to work at places with opaque communication styles or that are inflexible and slow to adapt, and they won’t stay long if they sense that a foundation doesn’t believe firmly in the ability of young people to advance change.”
Distance and Divides Challenge the Nonprofit-Funder Relationship
Citing research and their own observations, several commentators highlight a growing disconnect and divide between nonprofit organizations and their funders.
In The New York Times, Chris Addy and William Foster of The Bridgespan Group observe that even though donors and foundations desire to give to smaller organizations focused on social change, they end up supporting larger, traditional groups. They reason that philanthropists aren’t out in the community engaging and researching nonprofits, and they don’t know who to turn to for savvy guidance. From the recent article:
Mr. Addy said research showed that 80 percent of organizations <foundations> put social change on their websites as a goal, but only 20 percent of their grants went to those types of organizations. The bulk of the grants went to institutions…. Mr. Foster added: “Our sense is there is widespread frustration that people don’t know where to put their money to create change in areas they care about. Where do you turn to for advice and how do you get there is the limiter. It’s not the desire.”
Pablo Eisenberg comments on data that show that nonprofit organizations are finding it increasingly difficult to apply for funding from foundations that don’t already know their work:
Seventy-two percent of the nation’s 96,000 foundations now do not accept unsolicited proposals from nonprofits. That number from the Foundation Center is quite an increase from just four years ago, when 60 percent of foundations were not accepting such proposals—a number that was already unacceptably high.
The stunning increase shows that a large and growing majority of nonprofits are being shut out of philanthropic opportunities. The lucky minority of groups that have access to foundations are already large and well established. They have well-connected board members or friends who have some way to gain access to foundation executives and staff. Organizations that are small to medium size as well as those that represent poor, minority, and other grass-roots constituencies, pursue controversial causes and activities, or lack influential connections or friends struggle to get foundation support.
And writing this month in The Chronicle of Philanthropy (subscribers only), Strobe Talbott and Kimberly Churches of the Brookings Institution see a trend of more project-based funding, in what they call “an era of restricted giving and widespread mistrust.”
Giving Circles’ Makeup Drives Support to Diverse Populations
According to research by Angela Eikenberry, giving circles attract donors from a wide range of income levels, and racial and ethnic identities. “Due in part to this diversity, giving circle members are significantly more likely to support women and ethnic and minority groups than other donors,” she writes. Also, giving circles in the U.S. and U.K. encourage their members to give more, and more strategically, and they inspire many of their members to volunteer more over time.
Eikenberry asks whether such groups may be well-positioned to engage in social change philanthropy: “The challenge is to move beyond encouraging more giving (even if it’s channeled to marginalized groups and decided by democratic processes), to enhancing the ability and willingness of donors to engage in deeper efforts to change themselves and the structures that perpetuate poverty, inequality, violence and discrimination.”
An Influential Foundation Focuses on Inequality, Drawing the World’s Attention
The Ford Foundation’s decision to focus its grantmaking on ending inequality has generated extraordinary interest among foundations, and attracted public attention to the world of philanthropy. In January, The New Yorker profiled Ford’s new president, Darren Walker, the man who would lead this venture. Born in a charity hospital in Lafayette, Louisiana, and raised in a small town in Texas, Walker worked in law, finance, and community organizations before entering philanthropy. Author Larissa MacFarquhar relates Walker’s first impressions of working inside a foundation.
The first thing he noticed when he arrived at Rockefeller was a strange sense of calm. There was a slow deliberateness to the way things moved that he wasn’t used to—there was no sense of urgency. There was no sense of urgency, he gradually realized, because the people at Rockefeller had no one to answer to. On Wall Street, he always had clients breathing down his neck, and at Abyssinian <the Abyssinian Development Corporation in Harlem> there were always people lining up in the office who needed his help that very minute. But at Rockefeller the people who needed help were far away—distant supplicants who communicated through applications and waited months for an answer. The supplicants had no right to demand anything—they took what they could get and were grateful for it. …
He was determined not to become an arrogant grant-maker who believed that people were deferential toward him and invited him to things and laughed at his jokes solely because of his own charm and intelligence. When he took over at Ford, he was determined to remember that even though he had half a billion dollars a year at his disposal, and his grantees were compelled to beg him for some, and he could say no to any one of them and that would be the end of it, still, it was those grantees and their work that gave his work meaning. It was a strange and uncomfortable thing to be a social-justice person in a social-justice foundation committed to ending inequality and yet to find yourself every day in relations that could scarcely be less equal.
Senior Program Director Andy Carroll writes resources, designs workshops, and facilitates seminars for funders. Andy also dedicates a significant portion of his time to managing our Leadership Initiative that defines, validates, nurtures, and celebrates the many ways philanthropists lead. Andy has 25 years of experience in nonprofit organizations, and he enjoys talking with funders about their questions, interests, passions, and plans for making a difference. Follow Andy on Twitter @andycarrollexpo.
