How a Small and Innovative Grant Maker Helped Seal the Iran Nuclear Deal

Bryan R. Smith, AFP, Getty Images

Last summer’s international agreement that rolled back Iran’s nuclear program without starting another war in the Middle East was a resounding victory for global security that made headlines the world over.

What has gotten less attention until a few weeks ago is the important role philanthropy played in this deal — and the lessons my organization’s experience holds for other grant makers seeking innovative ways to use their grant making to promote public policy. We spent far less than opponents of the deal, but creative and nimble thinking executed by a coordinated network of nonprofits and foundations made all the difference.

Inevitably, when philanthropy gets involved in public policy, there’s risk. As a matter of fact, that’s probably why you may have heard so much about my organization — Ploughshares Fund — in recent weeks. A controversial New York Times Magazine story brought new attention to groups supporting the Iran deal, including our foundation, which has been working for 35 years to reduce nuclear-weapons threats.

But it hasn’t brought nearly enough attention to what matters most: the development of the strongest nuclear accord in a generation, one that sets a new standard for any future agreements. So far, the deal is working. Iran has ripped out two-thirds of its centrifuges, poured concrete into its plutonium reactor, shipped out tons of enriched uranium, and accepted a tough inspection regime.

Yet in an era of hyper-partisanship in Washington, not everybody saw the deal as a good idea. We faced an enormous challenge getting to this point.

With President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry at the helm, the United States — along with Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia — engaged in talks with Iran, sparking political attacks that grew particularly heated in 2013, and after the historic agreement was announced in Vienna last July, they only intensified. Needless to say, concerns were high that Congress would block the deal during a 60-day review.

Even so, the deal survived.

It survived because it was — and is — widely recognized as the strongest nuclear-restraint agreement in decades. It survived because the president assembled a team of talented negotiators who first forged the deal and then tirelessly worked with Congress to explain its benefits — particularly compared to all possible alternatives. But it was still a close call. Independent nonprofit groups and experts — and the foundations that support them — who understood just how important the deal was for national security also played an essential role in its survival.

Ploughshares Fund — a public foundation with a $10 million operating budget that is supported by more than 1,100 donors — acted as the hub of a highly efficient and diverse network involving 85 organizations and 200 individuals (some we funded, others we did not), spending $12 million in grants over a five-year period in the effort to find a diplomatic solution that would prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb. The network comprised some of America’s greatest national-security and nuclear experts that, like Ploughshares Fund, had begun working on ways to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran long before the Obama administration took office.

This network was so effective that it continues to be attacked by an opposition seeking to discredit the deal by distorting the true story behind it — and to discredit Ploughshares Fund and other experts who supported it. One article claimed that we were administration mouthpieces, while another claimed that the administration was ours. While these assertions are absurd, they underscore just how tough the battle was — and just how powerful active philanthropy can be.

Winning Over Big-Spending Opponents

How did a small foundation with a small budget have such an outsize impact? How did our network prevail in the face of the deal’s foes, who vastly outspent its supporters?

For one thing, we made sure we were ready to inject flexible, quick-turnaround funding where and when needed at a critical point in time.

But success was also driven by the three financing approaches we embrace to achieve our overarching mission: the reduction and eventual elimination of the threats posed by nuclear weapons.

Like other foundations, we do traditional grant making, but with a heavy emphasis on general operating support. Many of our grants are for research and analysis or to build capacity of nonprofit organizations working on missions similar to ours to provide leadership over the long haul.

In the case of Iran, the highly praised network of Ploughshares Fund grantees and partners did not appear overnight. Instead, it was the product of our traditional grant making — years of operating support to outstanding organizations like the Brookings Institution, Arms Control Association, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Women’s Action for New Directions, and Federation of American Scientists.

Our traditional grant making ensured this cadre of essential organizations was in place when the need for timely and expert advocacy work and analysis arose. And, of course, we do not operate alone. Many of the organizations working on nuclear-security issues have been funded for years by our dedicated sister foundations, including the. MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Skoll Global Threats Fund, the Hewlett Foundation, the Colombe Foundation, the Prospect Hill Foundation, and others.

Backing High-Risk Ideas

We also put some of our money into what we call venture grant making. Ploughshares Fund seeds high-risk, innovative ideas to defeat the spread of nuclear weapons. Like a venture-capital firm, we incubate and make “bets” on novel projects, whether it’s trying to figure out the “next big thing” policy-wise or to boost the work we are seeking to advance with fresh energy and people.

Indeed, our decision to make Iran a priority did not just happen; it was the result of work that began over a decade ago and increased in 2010 with a series of small grants to determine if (1) an Iranian nuclear deal that protected U.S. interests was even substantively possible and, (2) if so, whether the political environment would allow a deal to go through.

Moving Fast and Building Networks

Our third approach focuses on making grants to tackle immediate policy opportunities. We seek concrete outcomes over a relatively short time frame by gathering key players, sharing analysis, reducing redundancies, identifying where our money can help attract other funds, and coordinating efforts when needed.

This fast-paced grant making was critical to our success on the passage of New Start in 2010, a historic nuclear-arms-reduction agreement between the United States and Russia, as we outlined in a Chronicle piece.

With Iran, we supersized it.

The key players that you need to win this kind of policy fight were at the ready to defend negotiations: the arms-control experts, the regional specialists, the peace organizations. This is nothing new. What these disparate groups and individuals lacked was the funding and, equally important, the common platform to amplify their collective voice.

Ploughshares Fund was able to provide both. It is this combination that optimized our impact as a grant maker. And because of grants we had already made, we had the blueprint of a vibrant network in place. So when negotiations began in 2013, we were ready.

With an eye on making immediate gains, our network rapidly ramped up its efforts. We significantly increased funding for traditional grantees and newer organizations we helped expand, like the Iran Project, Berim, and the Truman National Security Project, all of which played critical roles in the debate over the Iran nuclear agreement. We invested in grantees newer to nuclear-arms issues like the digital campaign group, MoveOn.org, supporting public-outreach work on the Iran deal. And we experimented with social-media-friendly digital content as a way to reach and educate wide audiences on the benefits of the deal.

In short, we identified needs spanning different areas of expertise and awarded grants accordingly — and were quick to make adjustments when necessary. We optimized our growing network by funding all the key parts — from media strategists and grass-roots activists to nuclear-policy wonks and Middle East experts — needed to run an effective campaign.

Providing Leadership

But our approach requires more than just increasing funding and the number of grantees. It also involves active leadership: providing a forum to develop and put in a place a strategy for achieving a shared policy goal.

We brought together many diverse organizations and individuals who otherwise might never have met, let alone collaborated. We provided the platform for them to meet, share information, and develop strategies. Together, they achieved much more than any one group could have done alone.

Thanks to swift action by our board, staff, and vital outside supporters, we were able to put a surge of money into our network when grantees needed it most — almost $5 million just in 2015 — much of it outside of our regular grant-making cycle. This was particularly important during the last few months of the campaign, when it appeared that Congress might reject the deal. It was critical to educate the public on the overwhelming benefits of the negotiated agreement as the opposition was spending tens of millions of dollars on media ads and other activities aimed at killing it. Enhanced, coordinated media outreach and timely, discrete grants enabled policy, advocacy, and grass-roots groups to undertake specific projects. Their many reports, petitions, digital campaigns, and other complementary efforts helped turned the tide.

Ploughshares Fund’s work on Iran illustrates how seemingly intractable challenges can be overcome. Our experience shows that highly strategic, targeted, and flexible grant making coupled with a comprehensive and capable network of nonprofits can be highly effective. With an opposition that has much deeper pockets, it can mean the difference between triumph and defeat.

The history of our New Start and Iran efforts has shown us that no single approach to grant making works. Our traditional grant making — especially strong doses of unrestricted grants — coupled with the big bets we made over the years on new potential and the quick- turnaround investments we made at key strategic moments were all crucial. Without all of these types of funding, as well as our ability to gather everyone with a stake in this debate, we couldn’t have succeeded in helping fend off a critical threat to world peace.

Working toward securing the Iran nuclear deal was a unique experience. But our approach to grant making can provide a much more universal lesson. By applying and adapting it to their own public-policy goals, other grant makers can successfully tackle the pressing issues that matter most to them in the world today.

Philip W. Yun is executive director of Ploughshares Fund, a public foundation that works to reduce and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons.