Before the onset of Covid and the uprisings that followed the murder of George Floyd, the trustees of the Stupski Foundation had already made a huge grant-making decision: The fund would give away all its money by 2029 and shut down.
But in the first half of 2020, as foundations faced demands from nonprofits to give them more leeway in how they use grants, the foundation decided that how it distributed its assets was just as important as the fact that it was increasing its annual spending. Joyce Stupski established the foundation in 2014 in memory of her husband, Larry Stupski, a former president of the Charles Schwab Corporation. Her goal was to spend all of its assets, which in 2020 topped $300 million, to test “breakthrough” ideas in education, health care, food security, and early brain development in California and Hawaii.
The crisis spurred changes in how the San Francisco philanthropy made grants. To avoid repetitive paperwork, nonprofits are now allowed to use applications they’ve made to other foundations. Grantees help design the measurements that will determine their progress. And program staff are less inclined to lay out fully fleshed out strategies and instead rely on nonprofits to take the lead.
10,000 Degrees, a California nonprofit that helps prepare students for the job market, changed gears early in the pandemic. Instead of supporting a relatively small group of college students who had applied to receive financial aid and career guidance, it realized that larger populations of students needed help. It began holding workshops for all students in its area to attract more scholars in need. The message from Stupski: You know best. The grant maker continued to support 10,000 Degrees and gave the group flexibility in how it used its grant.
“It’s the first moment in our history where we felt like our grants have progressed with us side-by-side in real time,” Christopher Gonzales, director of strategic growth and school partnerships at 10,000 Degrees, says.
Spreading Ideas
Some of the foundation’s changes were initially limited to certain aspects of Stupski’s work. But those experiments have begun to spread throughout the organization. For instance, in 2020 Stupski made grants to a “learning lab” hosted by the Walter and Elise Haas Fund in which grant makers supported education projects that were designed by San Francisco residents, including students. Since then, Stupski has introduced the so-called participatory grant-making approach to one other program it runs to maximize the quality of life for people living with serious illness.
Nonprofits can use applications they’ve made to other foundations, and grantees help design the measurements that will determine their progress
Other barriers have come down. Nonprofits that want a Stupski education grant no longer have to be invited to apply. After dropping that requirement, Stupski made grants to eight organizations it hadn’t previously supported, six of which are led by people of color. All of them focus on advancing equity. Now two other programs at the foundation are open to grant solicitations.
The new approach is a recognition that the foundation isn’t the expert on the work being done by small nonprofits, says Malila Becton-Consuegra, a Stupski program officer.
A foundation officer’s role is to understand the landscape of grant makers and nonprofits working on a particular issue and to make sure that grantees are able to do the best work they can. So instead of peppering grantees with questions about their outcomes when they meet, Becton-Consuegra has a more human touch.
“I try to be people-centered,” she says. “So when I’m checking in, instead of jumping right into the data like, ‘Tell me how many people you serve,’ I’ll ask: How are you? How are the people you serve? How are your staff doing?”
Adds Gwyneth Tripp, Stupski’s director of grant making: “The nature of our jobs inside of foundations has changed. It doesn’t mean we’re not relevant but that we have to reimagine what our relevance is as partners and communicators and holders of space in a way that’s much different than when we were in a kind of compliance orientation.”
