On Tuesday, MacKenzie Scott made headlines once again when she announced the 361 winners of an open-call grant competition. Each organization will receive up to $2 million, adding to Scott’s $16 billion in unrestricted grants made to more than 1,900 nonprofits since 2019.
Through her donations, Scott provides urgently needed funds to organizations working on critical issues. But the competition also underscores philanthropy’s glaring blind spot when it comes to supporting small, community-based nonprofits.
After the competition was announced early last year, my inbox filled with messages from friends and acquaintances who believed the organization I lead, Generation Patient, was the perfect candidate. But then I read the fine print and saw that applicants need an annual budget of at least $1 million.
Generation Patient, which had an operating budget of $450,000 at the time, didn’t fit the bill.
Given that 92 percent of U.S. nonprofits operate on budgets of less than $1 million a year, it makes no sense for Scott — and philanthropy more broadly — to measure a nonprofit’s worth and potential by its annual budget.
I founded Generation Patient when I was 13 years old to support the large number young adults with chronic conditions like me. I’ve lived with ulcerative colitis since I was 6. I’m now 25.
As a young nonprofit leader, I’ve seen first-hand how philanthropy ignores small, community-led organizations like mine that do novel work but don’t fit into the sometimes arbitrary parameters grant makers adopt when determining who should receive their money.
When it comes to being close to those in need and understanding how to help them, I’ll bet on small, community-led organizations every time. Yet grant makers often give priority to large nonprofits that already have access to philanthropic dollars and the networks and familiarity with the funding process to ensure money keeps flowing.
Don’t get me wrong: A lot of large organizations do important work. But many of them, such as some big patient-advocacy groups, are only nominally connected to the community. And their fundraising practices, including accepting large grants from private health-care companies, raise questions about their advocacy priorities and who benefits from their work.
A Lot With a Little
Generation Patient has just three employees. But we do a lot with a little, including providing peer support, advocacy, and resources through our Health Policy Lab and Crohn’s and Colitis Young Adults Network.
Unlike many health-care nonprofits, we don’t accept any private health-care industry funding, including from pharmaceutical companies. Thanks to donations from a handful of foundations, grant maker collaboratives, and others, we aren’t forced to bend to the whims of health-care companies and can better serve our community.
But to help more young adults with chronic and rare conditions, we need a bigger operating budget and more flexible dollars.
We’re not alone. The situation is especially difficult for organizations led by people of color. A 2023 report from the Young Black and Giving Back Institute found that six out of 10 representatives of Black-led groups, most with budgets under $500,000, felt that grant makers never or rarely create funding opportunities specifically for organizations that serve Black people and are led by them.
The fundraising challenges for small, community-based groups can be summarized in one word: access. In Generation Patient’s early years, we weren’t plugged in to the right networks to ensure wealthy grant makers noticed us. It’s a tough world to break into. As a young nonprofit leader, I found it difficult to learn the language and convey the image of a big, more established grantee that fits traditional philanthropic norms.
Leaders and staff of other small nonprofits have shared similar frustrations with me about connecting and working with larger grant makers. Many have said, for example, that they find it hard to ask for and secure staffing and operational funds when those costs make up a bigger share of their budgets than those of large grantees. Donors often want to pay for programs but not the people and organizational needs that make those programs possible.
Many have also told me they find the application process — and often rigid budget requirements — time-consuming and better designed for large nonprofits with dedicated administrative and grants staffs. If they do get money, they may be obligated to participate in efforts to build management and leadership skills that take crucial time away from our mission.
Some Donors Get It
This isn’t true of all foundations, of course. Some do recognize what we need. For example, one grant maker provides us with unrestricted support and what it calls “joy grants” to refuel our staff with additional income and support our community. Another donor paid for a leadership transition consultant and executive coach for me. I’d never managed a staff nor had a manager myself, which made the additional coaching transformational for my career. Crucially, our grant makers also recognize and ask how they can support us better.
Yet flexible support like this is rare and proves the larger point: Many foundations just don’t understand what it takes for small, community-led groups to evolve and help more people. Donors, for example, could provide staffing and operational funds, individualized training, and simplified grant applications geared toward organizations with fewer resources.
When Scott’s open call was first announced, Cecilia Conrad, the CEO of Lever for Change, which managed the competition, said they were looking for nonprofits “making a meaningful difference in people’s lives.” But these organizations are everywhere. Screening out nonprofits that don’t have a certain minimum budget leads grant makers to close their eyes to a huge number of groups with deep connections to the communities they serve.
Scott deserves credit for using her money to advance important causes and organizations. But her latest round of giving highlights the problems that small nonprofits face getting sufficient funding. Organizations like mine are working hard every day to meet the needs of our constituents. We just want philanthropy to take notice.
