My Grantmaking Strategies ? and How I Got Here | Wise Philanthropy

It was a fair question. After all, I advise, lecture, and teach about grantmaking around the world. Helping funders align their strategies with intent, culture, resources, impact, and implementation is how I spend my professional time. And it is always flattering to hear that a growing number of wealth managers, philanthropy advisors, and independent funders and foundations are using the method I articulated some years ago.

So, indeed, it was a fair question when I was asked recently ? ?What are your priorities and funding focus?? Do I, as it were, practice what I teach?

I must confess that it took me several years to hold myself to the discipline I prescribe. It isn?t so easy to graciously say no to all of the ?social? requests. There are friends who are being honored; organizations which do good work which deserve support and whose staff or board we have a personal connection; colleagues on boards with us; past clients?. We all recognize the problem. None of us is exempt, and the higher one goes in leadership roles, the more the assumptions of reciprocity.

The next area which required a lot of thought, and squirming, is how I feel about the big legacy re-granting or umbrella charities. These groups defined 20th century philanthropy and, in professionally crucial ways, I was a beneficiary of these organizations for many years. Even as I became more focused, did I have a responsibility to continue to pay those dues [or as some would say, my communal tax]? Or could we, in good conscience, extricate ourselves from that kind of giving?

One of the areas which helped me along over the last decade was the degree to which I became a volunteer leader, with all of the time and financial responsibilities that entailed. I had always been an active board member of a lot of organizations, and often found myself an officer or executive committee member. But until 10 years ago, there was no question that those were extracurricular activities. I was fully employed by others. In a way that everyone recognized, the scope of what I could commit was limited. But over the last 10 years, as a self-employed advisor, I had no one to account to except myself [and Mirele, of course.] The extent of my time and financial commitments were up to me. It forced me to think quite differently about to what I wished to devote that time and energy, and which involvements were either not gratifying or beyond my capacity to be a meaningful leader. Even as my time and financial commitments grew, I found myself dropping boards that didn?t fit those standards. Implicitly I began to see that one important basis for the focus of my own philanthropy was the degree to which my personal involvement was meaningful and [pardon the jargon] impactful. It became easier to see that, as valuable and important as the large legacy organizations may be, our gifts are not large enough for us to play the kind of role I wish to do with the recipients of our personal philanthropy. Not so easy a decision, and clearly arguable, but one I reluctantly made.

That process, in turn, forced us to think more forthrightly about what really were the values that we wanted to support. There is no limit to need; no paucity of worthy organizations; and no shortage of societal issues about which we care. There was no way that these issues could be limited to one, but we gradually were able to winnow the focus down to two areas that seemed to work for us: social change [including, of course, environmental matters] and inter-group understanding.

Aha! there we have it: two subject areas. And within those, a style approach: a decision to support those with which I or we have a meaningful involvement. And it works. People have come to understand [if not always appreciate] our absence from dinners. They see that we have had enough leadership roles that we clearly are doing our part somewhere, even if not ?there?. And I suspect that they respect that we have tried hard to be good reliable funders who model making a difference ? and not fritter away our resources where it won?t.

In any case, the discipline has forced us to apply the standards and learnings I encourage others to follow. Even if the places we end up supporting are idiosyncratic, it is a strategy that works for us, and reflects a systematic strategy we can live with.

Thanks for asking.

Source: http://wisephilanthropy.com/my-grantmaking-strategies-and-how-i-got-here/896

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