This week, Hilary Pennington of the Ford Foundation and Stephine Hull, who leads the nonprofit Girls, Inc., wrote an essay for our Advice section in which they lay out steps foundations should take to further advance trust-based grant making. They stress the need for collective learning and offer suggestions for expanding and deepening a collaborative approach to philanthropy that also achieves greater impact.
Among the recommendations in How Foundations Can Build Trust-Based Relationships With Grantees is a call to take a different approach to developing strategies by involving nonprofits with community expertise in the early stages of information gathering.
“When there are opportunities along the way for grant makers to sit with, learn from, and engage as partners the people and organizations that will be helping realize their vision, they build genuine relationships with potential grantees that could shape their thinking,” they write.
When grant makers and potential grantees have candid conversations about goals and expectations, they create learning relationships that advance not just their individual and mutual interests, but the field as a whole, the authors say. They point to the S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, which established a community of practice for grantees to foster learning between the foundation and the nonprofits but also among the nonprofits themselves.
Pennington and Hull suggest three areas in which grant makers and recipients can interact in new ways, and each again stresses a two-way exchange: They recommend the practices of mutual learning, coaching, and program-evaluation to deepen trust, strengthen both organizations, and improve results overall.
Understanding the nonprofit world as an ecosystem of grant makers and grantees who share goals and can learn together is the trust-based movement’s next frontier, they write. Learn more in How Foundations Can Build Trust-Based Relationships With Grantees.
In closing, we offer our best wishes for the holiday season and success with year-end fundraising. Thank you for the important work you do all year long. Nonprofit Adviser will be taking a break and will return to your inboxes on January 8.
May you find time to relax and recharge in the coming weeks,
Margie Fleming Glennon
Senior Director, Product Strategy
P.S. If you missed our free forum last week, tune in to Insights From the Field: Navigating Fundraising Uncertainty, and find all past sessions on the Online Events page.
