Page - Funding Performance Monograph
Funding Performance
How Great Donors Invest in Grantee Success
Funding Performance Campaign
In an era when our communities are being rocked by a health pandemic, economic upheaval, racial injustice, and political turmoil, the world has never needed more from civil society leaders—and never have these leaders needed more from their funders. Now is the most important moment in our collective lifetimes for funders to dispense with conventional practices that have been shown to undermine grantees and adopt those that have been shown to produce greater impact for grantees, funders, and constituents alike.
The Funding Performance campaign encourages funders to rise to the urgency of this moment. You’ll find no pie-in-the-sky theory in the resources on this page. Instead, you’ll find practical advice about the specific practices that produce outsized progress on urgent issues of our time.
The centerpiece of this campaign is Funding Performance: How Great Donors Invest in Grantee Success (2021), a Jim Collins–style monograph intended to generate positive peer pressure among foundations and individual donors.
The monograph features insightful essays by eight highly respected thinkers and doers: Hilary Pennington, Ford Foundation; Daniel Stid, Hewlett Foundation; Sam Cobbs, Tipping Point Community; Jeff Bradach and Jeri Eckhart Queenan, Bridgespan; Lowell Weiss, Leap Ambassadors support team; Hilda Polanco and Deborah Linnell, FMA. All of these essayists have vantage points that have given them a close-up look at the best and worst practices in our sector. In Funding Performance, they share both—in the hope of turning this moment of crisis into a moment of truth and then a moment of productive pivot.
The essayists and their respective organizations joined forces on this project to begin merging closely related workstreams into a river of advocacy for the following changes in funding practices:
- If you want to empower grantees rather than hamstring them, provide more of what nonprofit leader Vu Le cleverly calls “MYGOD” support—multiyear, general operating dollars.
- If you’ve made the decision to give your precious resources to an organization, then give that organization the benefit of your trust and respect as well.
- If your website trumpets your concern about inequality, then don’t perpetuate it with funding decisions that always favor fancy pedigrees and PowerPoints over lived experience and relationships.
- If you’re moved by the suffering in your community, then show the courage to give more money when the supply of funding from governments is down and the demand for nonprofit services is skyrocketing.
Please read this practical, plain-English guide to what the best funders are already doing to supercharge their grantees, and let us know what you think!
If you’d prefer to read or share individual essays rather than the full monograph, you can do so below.
Individual Essays
Rising to Our Times: The Five Habits of Highly Effective Funders
Rising to Our Times: The Five Habits of Highly Effective Funders
“This essay highlights a remarkable group of positive-outlier funders that are supporting grantees. If every funder were to study these practices, our sector would be more effective by an order of magnitude.”
– Lowell Weiss
LISTEN
Helping Your Grantees Succeed—Or Trying to Catch Them Messing Up?
Are You Helping Grantees Succeed—Or Trying to Catch Them Messing Up?
“If you’re not willing to examine how racial and other biases play out in your work, that’s your prerogative. But don’t use the words ‘equity’ or ‘inclusion’ on your website.”
– Sam Cobbs
LISTEN
If Not Now, When?: From Virtue Signaling to Self Examination
If Not Now, When?: From Virtue Signaling to Self Examination
“We in philanthropy are our own worst enemy, and we are therefore uniquely called to examine and change our own practices”
– Hilary Pennington
LISTEN
We Depend on Well-Led and Well-Managed Grantees
We Depend on Well-Led and Well-Managed Grantees
“Grantees are hampered in developing their management chops because some penny-wise-pound-foolish funders balk at paying for it.”
– Daniel Stid
LISTEN
Accelerating the Movement Toward Funding Practices That Strengthen Nonprofits
Accelerating the Movement Toward Funding Practices That Strengthen Nonprofits
“The pre-pandemic status quo wasn’t working. But the crisis may prove to be the catalyst that ushered in a new era of grantmaking.”
– Jeri Eckhart Queenan and Jeff Bradach
LISTEN
What Grantees Need From Funders at This Time of Tumultuous Change
What Grantees Need From Funders at This Time of Tumultous Change
“Well into 2022, the nonprofit sector will be managing the change wrought by humanity’s shared frailty and hubris. We must take stock of reality, change behaviors, live with less, and dream of more.”
– Hilda Polanco and Deborah Linnell
LISTEN
SHARE WITH YOUR NETWORKS
Sample Tweets
Uncommon candor in #Funding Performance: “I can’t tell you how many times I saw orgs led by white Ivy Leaguers getting large-scale investments from the same foundations that gave us rounding-error grants—even when those orgs had outcomes inferior to ours. Click To Tweet#FundingPerformance can help nonprofits make compelling case to their funders for the kind of flexible support they need to navigate crisis and achieve greater impact for those they serve https://bit.ly/3co1gtM Click To TweetCheck out the new Jim-Collins-style monograph Funding Performance: How Great Donors Invest in Grantee Success from leaders at Ford, Hewlett, Bridgespan, Leap Ambassadors, Tipping Point, FMA. Every funder should read it #FundingPerformance https://bit.ly/3co1gtM Click To Tweet
Sample LinkedIn Post
Funding Performance: How Great Donors Invest in Grantee Success is a collection of essays intended to encourage flexible, trust-based funding practices. The Leap Ambassadors Community, Tipping Point Community, Ford Foundation, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Bridgespan Group, and FMA join forces to advance the same goal, and a testament to the importance of the subject at hand. https://bit.ly/3ouh944
FUNDER PROFILES
Read profiles of positive-outlier funders investing in the success of their grantees.
“A Better-Angels Funder Practices What It Preaches: A Profile of the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust”
“Invested in Empathetic Challenge: A Profile of Impetus-PEF”
“We’ve Walked in Your Shoes: A Profile of the Weingart Foundation”
“Brain + Heart + Ears: A Profile of The Blagrave Trust”
“Blunt Talk, Sharp Thinking: A Profile of the Mulago Foundation”
“Meaning, Purpose, and Joy: A Profile of the Philanthropist Duncan Campbell”
“Network Effect: A Profile of Venture Philanthropy Partners”
“Growth Mindset: The Evolution of Tricia and Jeff Raikes’s Philanthropy”
“Ecosystems Thinker: A Profile of Rose Letwin and Wilburforce Foundation.”