Funding Performance Profiles

Funders are like fingerprints: No two are exactly the same. Yet all funders have one thing in common: They want their grants to make a difference. There’s another common denominator. All funders—small and large, individual and institutional, local and global—come to realize that making a difference is harder than they thought.

Wilburforce’s Funding Performance formula sounds simple: Invest in organizational muscle. Invest for the long term. Invest in leaders. But there is nothing simple about the work Rose Letwin and her team have done and their approach to ecosystem conservation has led to meaningful successes.

Wouldn’t it be nice if funders had a simple formula to help grantees become high-performance organizations? The Blagrave Trust is helping their grantees make the leap to high performance by combining intellectual rigor (brainpower) with humility and openness with its grantees (heart) and a deep commitment to listening to the young people it aims to serve (ears).

Businessman and philanthropist Duncan Campbell founded Friends of the Children some 25 years ago to make a meaningful, measurable difference in the lives of the most at-risk children growing up in difficult circumstances—much like his own.

Einhorn believes that helping people strengthen their empathy muscles, from the earliest stages of life through adulthood, is critically important for building a healthy, cohesive society capable of solving big challenges.

The story of the Mulago Foundation’s transition from arm’s-length checkwriter to a changemaker whose grantees praise how it supports their ability to perform at a high level is relevant for any foundation leader who is eager for impact.

Venture Philanthropy Partners was created to find and support organizations that already had a good track record, strong leadership, and big aspirations – all for the benefit of the neediest young people in Greater Washington, DC.