CEP’s biannual meeting will be held in early May in Minneapolis, and I will attend along with two members of our Board of Directors. The pre-conference session will feature CEP’s most recent research paper, Greater Good: Lessons from those who have started major grantmaking organizations.
At December’s Continuing Education presentation, “How to listen to grantees (and still find out what we need to know),” Bobby Krause of the Johnson Scholarship Foundation Board of Directors made the point that we must actively and empathically listen to our grantees. His presentation to his fellow Grant Program Committee members contained good communication and relationship building advice, namely, show up, shut up, engage and interpret. This advice fits well with recent research by the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), Strengthening Grantees: Foundation and Nonprofit Perspectives.
Here is the summary of CEP’s findings:
The first finding is hardly surprising, and neither are the numbers behind it: 95% of foundation leaders believe that their foundation cares about the health of their grantees and 87% of them believe that they are aware of grantee’s needs. But only a minority of grantees (43%) believe that foundations care about strengthening their organizations and most of them (58%) say that foundations don’t ask them what they need.
It seems trite to say that funders care about the health of their grantees. It is the grantees, after all, who execute the funder’s mission. Money may be an essential ingredient, but it is the grantees who do the work. So why would they think that foundations do not care about them?
Much of the answer lies in the parties’ unequal bargaining position; the grantee asks, and the grantor decides. According to CEP’s research most grantees (64%) primarily consider what they think a foundation will fund, rather than what they really need. JSF has adopted practices to mitigate the power imbalance (listening is one of them) but nonprofits’ telling funders what they want to hear is pervasive, if understandable.
Going back to Bobby’s presentation, we must do more than listen to grantees. We must “interpret” and deeply understand them. What do they care about? Do their values and mission align with ours? What are they doing? What do they want to do? Will their work fit well with our mission and strategy? Does their leadership inspire confidence? The understanding that comes from answering these questions is the first order of business and is by far the most difficult part of the grant making process.
Our grant making process is designed to quickly decline requests that obviously do not fall within our mission and strategy and concentrate on those few that might. We frequently spend a year or more researching and meeting with a potential grantee (and its end users) before deciding whether to entertain a grant application. Implicit in our decision to accept a grant application is confidence in the grantee and a belief that its work aligns with our mission and strategy.
It follows that the grant transaction should be a simple matter of asking how we can best support a grantee or potential grantee. If we have done our work well then the grantee will trust us and tell us exactly what it needs.
Malcolm Macleod is the president and CEO of the Johnson Scholarship Foundation (JSF). Since joining the Foundation as president in 2001, he has spent the past 18 years working with the Board, staff and grantees to ensure that JSF is a Foundation that makes quality grants serving as catalysts for effective change. Prior to his work with the Foundation, he had a 26-year career in law and is currently a member of the Bar.
Sometimes it seems impossible to tell the difference between good grants and bad ones. If we feed the hungry and house the homeless, it feels good but the lasting result is to encourage dependency. If we fund groundbreaking research on how to address poverty, the connection between our grant and the end result is usually hard to see.
Accepting accolades and congratulations from a grantee for our generosity, wisdom or hard work should make us skeptical. Are we really so selfless and smart? Or do these grantees need our money so much that they will say anything to get it? And if that is the case, have we done anything to help our grantees become more independent or is our grant just another link in a chain of endless handouts?
One of my favorite stories about philanthropy is a much criticized grant for medical research that was made in the early 20th century by John Rockefeller. Pure medical research was unheard of at the time and one incredulous observer asked, “Why would you do this?” to which the reply was: “Because we have the faith of fools.” It was not until years later that the grant proved its worth and medical research became a new standard in the world.
Effective grant making often involves risk of failure and, worse yet, risk of looking stupid. None of us enjoys being on the receiving end of a critic’s hindsight, “what were you thinking!” In the short run at least, it is much more enjoyable to be the object of a grantee’s gratitude and affection. But for really great grant programs, the ones that we are proud of in years to come, we were usually faced with the prospect of failure and, at some point or other, found ourselves asking ourselves if this program was worth doing.
Scholarships, education and even transition involve relatively less risk and reward. The Johnson Scholarship Foundation’s grants are less likely to be a waste of money (or to revolutionize the world). Our choices usually involve the question of how best we can utilize our limited resources and talent.
On the one hand, we may be overreaching with such programs. We might ask: Is this program too complex and expensive for a Foundation of our size? Can we really be a catalyst for the community support required to sustain this program in the long run? Time will tell and proper evaluation tools and data collection will help understand the impact.
Accolades should always make good grantmakers nervous. But striving for honest relationships and insightful data can ease the nerves and take the spotlight off of the funders and onto what really matters: doing good.
Malcolm Macleod is the president and CEO of the Johnson Scholarship Foundation (JSF). Since joining the Foundation as president in 2001, he has spent the past 18 years working with the Board, staff and grantees to ensure that JSF is a Foundation that makes quality grants serving as catalysts for effective change. Prior to his work with the Foundation, he had a 26-year career in law and is currently a member of the Bar.
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The Johnson Scholarship Foundation is a private Foundation. It does not make individual grants. All scholarships and grants are made through selected institutions. The Foundation’s support of these causes is delivered through a variety of scholarships and grant programs, which are described in this site.
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