Who’s afraid of a little competition? Too many philanthropists.
Ever since Anand Giridharadas’s book “Winners Take All” became a bestseller five years ago, the words “competition” and “winners and losers” have made many leading philanthropists cringe.
In Giridharadas’ view, philanthropists compel nonprofits to compete against each other over scraps while building reputations for themselves as do-gooders.
But this zero-sum framing hurts the field. Philanthropists should encourage well-designed competitions for grants, which can put everyone on equal footing to apply, regardless of their connections, funding needs, or star power. Moreover, competitions with high-profile prizes can elevate important issues and the organizations best placed to address them, while moving funds quickly and efficiently.
Grant makers can also design competitions that encourage nonprofits to work together and fuel movements for social change. Take the buzz created more than a decade ago by the Gates Foundation’s “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge,” which drew media attention and sparked collaborative efforts to encourage safe sanitation around the world. Many of those efforts continue to this day.
Competitions can also excite other donors, bringing more funding to the table, magnifying the effect of each philanthropic dollar, and providing money to organizations beyond those that win through their proximity to the spotlight.
Organizations can embrace philanthropic competitions as tools to encourage equity in grant making, as we’ve done at Lever for Change, a nonprofit affiliate of the MacArthur Foundation. More philanthropists are overcoming their discomfort and joining us in adopting this strategy.
(The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a financial supporter of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.)
The number of large, application-based prizes and competitions in philanthropy has grown from 36 between 2005 and 2009 to almost 600 from 2015 to 2020, according to research Lever for Change commissioned. Some notable examples include Elon Musk’s $100 million prize for carbon removal, Prince William’s $1.2 million Earthshot Prize for climate change, and Google.org’s $25 million Impact Challenge for Women and Girls. The competitive prizes offered by my organization include the $22 million Stronger Democracy Award.
But donors rarely follow up with winners after a prize is awarded, the study found. Doing so could help them learn more about a competition’s impact on participants and awardees and how to make them more effective in the future.
In the meantime, here are several ways philanthropists can ensure prizes and competitions pack maximum punch.
Build in equity. At their best, competitions can help donors break out of their bubbles and consider more than the usual A-list of applicants. To do so, grant makers should loudly and clearly communicate their inclusive and equitable approach by framing the competition as an “open call.” This signals that anyone can apply, including emerging leaders and under-resourced organizations.
Grant makers should also budget enough to recruit a wide range of participants and avoid the “Matthew Effect”— to those who have, more shall be given. Make eligibility criteria widely available and easy to follow to lower the bar to entry and diversify the pool of candidates. Before you launch, check the criteria with as many people as possible. Are they clear? Do people of different backgrounds in the applicant pool, judging panel, and target audience understand them in the same way? Might they unintentionally exclude a promising, innovative solution?
Donors should avoid requiring certain strategies or technologies in the program design, which could make it harder for some groups to participate. For example, if a foundation was looking for solutions to end dengue fever, but specified that the solution must be a pharmaceutical drug, it would exclude a project such as the World Mosquito Program, which deploys a public-health approach and was one of the finalists of the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change challenge. Yet this is exactly the type of program that should be included.
Grant makers should also take time to ensure that those judging the competition come from a range of backgrounds, including grassroots groups in target communities.
Go big. The average grant awarded by a U.S. foundation in 2021 totaled just $23,000, according to a report by Foundation Source. If the goal is to change the trajectory of an issue, $23,000 isn’t going to cut it.
The prize purse must reflect the size of the challenge you want to solve, give organizations permission to think big, and be large enough to attract attention. The bigger the pot of money, the more it will elevate both the issue and the eventual awardees.
One option is to join forces with other grant makers to expand the pie. After all, two $100,000 grants are less valuable than one $200,000 grant.
Encourage collaboration. Design competitions that push nonprofits and social entrepreneurs to work together for joint funding. The application itself can specifically require this. In this way, competitions can build community and ignite or expand social movements.
Manage reporting. Communicate how you’ll manage the relationships with participants after the award is announced. Do you want them to report back on their projects? Will you set milestones tied to a gradual payout of the funds? Will you request an evaluation of the projects? Adjust your reporting requirements if they unnecessarily burden small, local organizations.
Overshare. Publishing the information and proposals gathered when you evaluated applicants helps participants who don’t win an award. Your research on runners-up can also help other grant makers find vetted opportunities that are ready for investment and guide nonprofits looking for partners.
For example, each of Lever for Change’s 11 challenges has generated far more promising proposals than our donors could fund. In response, we developed the Bold Solutions Network, a publicly available, curated list of highly ranked proposals from our challenges.
To date, the Bold Solutions Network has delivered almost as much funding for nonprofits ($610 million) from other grant makers as our challenges ($708 million).
For philanthropists interested in launching their own competition, a good place to start is the best practices for prize philanthropy guide from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and Lever for Change.
Competitions typically require more planning and administrative time than grant making. But they shouldn’t be feared. The attention competitions bring to issues and awardees — and their potential to achieve transformative change — make them well worth the effort.
