Case Studies: Relieving the Burden

“our grantees don’t exist to serve us”

In 2006, Wilburforce Foundation affirmed its focus as a place-based funder working in certain priority regions. They realized that if they were to be successful, they needed to build deep and ongoing relationships with grantees—what Associate Director Paul Beaudet, called “a shift from transaction to interaction.” In practice, this shift meant moving away from the foundation’s traditional application and reporting to rely more on personal interactions between program officers and grantees. To the extent that paperwork is requested, it is in the form of consolidated proposals and reports, allowing grantees to look back (report) and forward (apply) with the same document. Program officers have the authority to select from a menu of options the questions that are most meaningful to the project. They also accept off-the-shelf documents, including financials, rather than asking grantees to create customized reports used only by the foundation.

To support this relationship emphasis, the foundation increased its staffing, creating teams of program officers and program associates. Staff are mandated to use extra time and capacity for relationship building. “Someday we’d love to eliminate all the narrative parts of the application and focus exclusively on the partnership,” said Beaudet. “We’re not there yet, but our board feels strongly that our grantees don’t exist to serve us, we exist to serve them.”

“maybe there’s something important about not knowing what foundations are ‘supposed’ to do”

The Winter Park Health Foundation (WPHF) in Winter Park, Florida, started its life as a hospital. When it became a foundation in 1994, its senior staff hailed from diverse fields, including philanthropy, but none had grantmaking pedigrees. After assessing community needs, they conducted two rounds of grantmaking using an RFP. And two rounds were all it took. According to Winter Park’s CEO, Patty Maddox, “Everyone hated it: staff, board, applicants… everyone!” The following year, they chose a different approach, forming work groups of staff, board, and community members in each of the foundation’s focus areas. Each work group develops measurable goals for the focus area, gains intimate knowledge of relevant nonprofits in the community, and has the authority to fund community efforts that advance its goals.

“When it comes time for something to be written down, we do get a packet of information from the nonprofits for the work group’s decision process and for the foundation’s records—all those due-diligence things like audited financials. But, although those things are important, we don’t feel like we need these things right off the bat as we begin the conversation with the non-profit.”

         —Patty Maddox, CEO, Winter Park Health Foundation

The WPHF does not have an application form for unsolicited requests, choosing instead to learn most of what they need to know through interactions and community connections. Maddox explains: “We think it’s important to work with the non-profit to assemble the information most relevant to the work group’s decision process. The focus is on achieving measurable progress toward our goals.” WPHF is especially serious about evaluation, which it considers essential to its effectiveness. The foundation works closely with a third-party evaluator to understand the impact of their funding and to redesign their processes for even greater impact.

“we were going on good faith—they were not in the situation to get paperwork to us”

Two days after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and parts of Louisiana, the Ms. Foundation for Women threw their usual modus operandi out the window. They had no choice. “We needed to do rapid response grantmaking to existing grantees and other organizations,” said Bharathi Sethumadhavan, the Grants and Evaluation Administrator, “But people didn’t have offices or computers. We couldn’t adhere to our usual process.” They formulated a set of questions that would make it as easy as possible to get information, and then conducted phone interviews to gather the basic data on the organization, an understanding of the need, and a sense of how the money would be used. The foundation took responsibility for due-diligence, using IRS information to verify the nonprofits’ 501(c)(3) status and eligibility.

Now, several years out, some of the changes prompted by this crisis funding have stayed with the Ms. Foundation. They continue to use telephone interviews before requiring a proposal, which helps establish relationships and get the funds committed more quickly. They are developing a grantee “extra-net” to make communication with and between grantees more efficient and designing a new website with online application capacity. “Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that we could mobilize quickly,” said Ms. Foundation Communications Manager, Irene Schneeweis. “If we encounter another, similar situation, we’ll be in an even better position to get money to the ground strategically and rapidly.”

“we want to keep their money in their program . . . not in impressing us”

The board members of the Dekko Foundation, a family foundation in Indiana with about $200 million in assets, share a philosophy that Dee Slater, the foundation’s grants manager, describes as “let’s see how we can lessen the red tape to get the job done.” As a result, staff continually ask themselves the following questions:

• Do we really need it?
• Is there some other way we can get it?
• Have we explained sufficiently to our grantees why we need it?

The foundation requests a three page project summary from nonprofit applicants. The program officer is then responsible for going out and having conversations with the prospective grantee and collecting any additional information needed to make a decision. Although all grants decisions are made within 60-90 days, the foundation also has a streamlined process for small requests of under $5,000 and for repeat, successful grantees. Although the foundation does not have an online application, they gladly accept applications and reports via email, and encourage grantees to cut and paste information from other sources, as appropriate.

For the board and staff of the Dekko Foundation, there is “great pride in knowing that we are an approachable community resource,” says Ms. Slater, “and our grantees have told us, through the Grantee Perception Report, that we are a relief and a pleasure to work with.”