REPORT: Giving More, Making Change: A Journey In Progressive Grantmaking By French American Charitable Trust
Inside the report you’ll find:
• An overview of our funding strategy of providing long term, general support funding to a select group of grantees
• Strategies and outcomes that show how our funds helped support a group of organizations that are bringing justice and equity to low income and communities of color.
• Video profilesof 2 grantees – Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and Communities for a Better Environment
• What worked, what didn’t and what we’d do differently
• Suggestions for those embarking on their own journey of philanthropy
To go to the report, click here.
From the Introduction:
FACT is a family foundation that is spending down its endowment to make a targeted investment
in social change over twenty years. FACT provides long-term general operating support to multiissue community-based organizations that educate community members to organize and advocate collectively on their own behalf on issues and policies that impact their lives. We currently support 38 U.S. grantees with general operating funds that range from $30,000 to $100,000 with a typical grant size of $50,000.
In 2004, after nine years of making general operating support grants, FACT recognized that grantees might increase their external success by strengthening their internal operations. While experience
told us that organizational development was greatly needed, community-based nonprofits often
did not have the resources or expertise to focus on internal operations. FACT decided to ensure that
its grantees had the tools they needed for success. Beginning that year, in addition to our general
operating support grants, we created a comprehensive capacity building program with a menu
of different types of support. Our decision to invest in capacity building meant supporting fewer
organizations overall, but it also meant more in-depth work with a few of our grantees. We believe this was a worthwhile trade-off. Starting in 2004, FACT invested the equivalent of 20% of its grant making budget into a variety of capacity building endeavors.
While we believe capacity building can strengthen groups and enable them to achieve their missions and goals more effectively, we know that focusing on internal culture, structures, and processes takes time away from vital programmatic work. Therefore, we believe it is essential that grantees determine when to embark on such an endeavor. Utilizing any part of our capacity building program is voluntary and initiated by the organization. Our aim is to have a comprehensive program available to our grantees when they need it. The several different kinds of support include: working with a nonprofit technical assistance provider, accessing a discretionary grant, utilizing the expertise of a consultant through our Management Assistance Program, and developing the organization with a multi-year organizational development grant.
We created this report to provide funders with information and lessons learned from FACT’s capacity building program. We offer our experiences and those of our grantees in the hope that others will want to support the internal capacity of community organizations that are working so hard to create social change.
