While serving each unique client, Benevolent Vision asks – How can we support a transition from transactional relationships to mutually beneficial, long-lasting, transformational relationships?
Relationships between foundations and grantees should be more meaningful than a check in the mail. Here are the top 3 ways we have identified to take grantmaking relationships from transactional to transformative:
1. Have More Fun
Grantmakers should be qualified and equipped to procure creative, outside-the-box solutions and to ensure that great nonprofits benefit from great funding.
That could mean shifting interview language away from dry questions (i.e., What program would this money be allocated to?) to more playful language (i.e., What would you do with $100k and why?). By getting to know grantees’ dreams for the future and unique organizational needs, creative solutions can be found to maximize every dollar.
Recently while interviewing potential grantees for our client L.L. Foundation for Youth, we encountered a grantee which served our client’s target demographic with excellence but didn’t quite fit the mold structurally for the specific one-time grant we were offering. We got creative – a trait L.L. Foundation for Youth emulates in every aspect of their grantmaking process. We split up the grant and offered it to them over the course of 3 years while they simultaneously raised separate funds for endowment. Everyone won!
L.L. Foundation for Youth is breaking the mold with its flexible, responsive, and collaborative philanthropy. They enter communities and become real partners, streamline processes to respect grantees’ time, and display immense willingness to ensure the needs of their grantees are met. Most importantly – they make grantmaking fun!
Start flexing those creativity muscles – and have more fun in the process!
2. Show Up Where it Counts
Our client Helen and Jose Colton Foundation (HJCF) has an effective, albeit unusual practice that transforms relationships with their grantees into long-lasting and meaningful partnerships.
HJCF grantmakers frequently conduct field visits to prescreened potential grantees and, if impressed, accept applications and commit to grants on-site. In doing so, they are able to remain nimble. HJCF has perfected the art of allowing their grantees to tell them what they need, simply by showing up.
While not every foundation has the bandwidth to conduct field visits in person, we can learn from HJCF to keep it simple and exert energy where it matters most: in getting to know and establishing real relationships with our charitable partners.
Show up where it counts!
3. Be Charitable in Your Grantmaking Process (Pun Intended)
An extra inch of attentiveness from a foundation partner will often go an extra mile for the target demographics being served.
Sometimes during interviews of potential grantees, our grant program officers realize that nonprofits are leaving major funding on the table by not understanding the full breadth of qualifying demographics or programs. For example, a potential grantee doing fantastic work insisted recently that their organization would not qualify for our client’s grant, only to be painstakingly convinced otherwise. Our persistence transformed their skepticism into gratitude.
While this phenomenon may seem counterintuitive (please, take our money!), it happens frequently – and the real loss is absorbed by the demographic their nonprofit is serving.
Give an extra inch when interviewing potential grantees to ensure they aren’t leaving money on the table. Be charitable!
Grantmaking should be a creative, engaging, and charitable process. It should be fun, simplified, and personal.
