The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy is shaking up its staff to get the organization in a better position for its new focus on urging foundations and individual donors to steer money to grassroots movements.
The group laid off three staff members and is seeking to fill three newly created positions, including chief operating officer, with the goal of building relationships with movement groups.
The changes are part of a 10-year strategy drawn up during the 2016 election cycle that placed an emphasis on supporting “people and opportunities with the least wealth, power, and opportunity.”
The strategy was devised before the election of Donald Trump. However, Aaron Dorfman, the group’s CEO, said Trump’s rise — and the threat Dorfman felt the administration posed for groups that support immigrants, the poor, people of color, and LGBTQ groups — made increased support for those movements a more urgent priority.
“Most of the funding goes to highly professionalized white-led organizations, and very little support is going to grassroots organizations led by communities most affected by unjust public policies,” Dorfman says. “We’ve seen bigger wins when there were really scrappy grassroots movement-type organizations” working alongside professional advocacy groups.
Power Moves
Previously, the organization was more of a traditional foundation watchdog, working on behalf of nonprofits that seek support from grant makers.
Since the new strategy was put in place, the committee has suspended its Philamplify project, which sought to provide “unvarnished critical feedback” on foundation operations.
Recent work includes “Power Moves,” a guide for grant makers to assess how they wield power in relationship to grantees. This year, the committee released an assessment of grant making in support of immigrants. Dorfman said future projects will explore pro-immigrant grant making in certain regions, to be named later, and studies of philanthropic support of other causes, which have yet to be named.
Pushing More Payout
In a 2017 column in the Chronicle, Pablo Eisenberg, who helped found the committee in 1976, bemoaned the “cooperative approach” the organization had begun to take. He had long pressed for the group to advocate for nonprofits that receive foundation support and push grant makers to pay out more than 5 percent of their assets a year, a minimum requirement set by the federal government.
“Maybe another organization needs to be created to monitor foundations and play a watchdog role,” he wrote.
Dorfman says the committee’s annual budget was about $1 million in 2007, the year he took over. This year he had $2.6 million to work with, and he expects it to grow to $4 million by 2026. About $1.3 million of the committee’s revenue for the fiscal year that ended in September 2018 came from Borealis Philanthropy, a fund supported by the Ford and W.K. Kellogg foundations.
As part of the organization’s staff restructuring, the committee is looking for a chief operating officer, an addition that Dorfman says will help free him up to speak publicly and consult with grant makers privately.
Showcasing Nonprofit Work
Daniel Borochoff, president of Charity Watch, a group that tracks conflicts of interest among nonprofits, says the committee, which is supported by foundation grants, may shy away from “biting the hand that feeds it,”
But he thinks the new focus makes sense.
“Because of the divisive politics in our country, there’s a lot of enthusiasm for building social movements,” Borochoff says. “So it’s a sign of the times that they would want to go in this direction.”
By showcasing the work done by smaller grassroots organizations, the committee is holding foundations accountable for what they support and what they overlook, says Dorfman.
He says: “Part of being a good watchdog is holding up a mirror to the sector and helping philanthropy see where it may be missing greater opportunities for impact.”
Alex Daniels covers foundations, donor-advised funds, fundraising research, and tax issues for the Chronicle. He recently wrote about philanthropy’s attempts to save democracy and about a $100 million effort to use data to improve health care in poor countries. Email Alex or follow him on Twitter.
Correction: A previous version of this article said that the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy had acquired Bolder Giving, but that acquisition did not go through.