News from New England’s largest public charity suggests that the winds might be changing in how much, how often, and how critically organized philanthropy distributes their money. The Boston Foundation announced a new strategy for giving that involves giving larger grants to fewer organizations, over longer periods, and with fewer strings attached. Says foundation president Paul S. Grogan in the Boston Globe:
“There is no question that we’re
focusing more resources on fewer organizations…. We’re
really trusting the organization to make decisions about resources…. We
want to be more generous to the organizations that will help us achieve
what we want to achieve. It will help them spend less time on
fund-raising and more time on getting done what we want to get done.”
The announcement is good news, of course, to those organizations who make the cut, as they’ll be able to spend the funding more strategically and responsively to their changing environments. But it will be difficult news to those organizations who no longer fit the giving priorities of the foundation, or cannot prove their effectiveness in delivering on those goals.
The shift is an effort to rethink and reframe the traditional challenges of organized philanthropic giving: emphasis on program funding rather than general operating support has led many nonprofits to distort their work and jump through hoops to secure resources; and the continuous need to change with the whims or priorities of major funders has led to mission creep and diffused impact.
Under the new model, each nonprofit will have increased responsibility to prove their impact in the Foundation’s area of focus — education reform, preventative health care, neighborhood
revitalization, economic development and job growth, and support for
the arts. And while this requirement may nudge nonprofits to staff up or retool their own evaluative capacity, and focus their areas of emphasis, there’s an upside to those costs, as well. Says Tiziana Dearing, president of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of Boston, in the article: ”Flexibility is priceless.”
Past experience suggests that when a major foundation rethinks and reframes its work, their peers soon follow if not in kind, at least in positioning. It will be interesting to see who’s next.
We applaud the Boston Foundation for recognizing that neighborhood revitalization requires flexibility from place to place, and from time to time. A “one size fits all” approach, even one exquisitely designed by a think tank for a foundation, rarely is successful in a system as intricate and detailed as a neighborhood.