Covid-19 Lesson for a Grant Maker: Listening and Understanding Matters (Dispatches)

Illustration by Maria Mottola

Editor’s Note: This is Lisa’s second piece in a Chronicle of Philanthropy series on grantmaking in the coronavirus era. You may view the original piece here.

At the beginning of the Covid-19 shelter-in-place guidance, I went up and down the staircase of my 13-floor Brooklyn apartment building, slipping notes under people’s doors, assessing need, collecting offers of help, and navigating different levels of technological savvy to create and moderate an online discussion list for building residents to stay in touch with each other.

I thought of this as my civic duty, something I could do to take care of others in a time of need.  Looking back, I see that doing this work also allowed me to feel strong, in control, and a little bit superior to my neighbors. But then the unexpected thing happened: I contracted a mild case of the virus, and my family couldn’t leave our apartment. I found myself using the email list of neighbors to ask for help.

That shift, from giving to asking, was profound for me. In my mind, I was never supposed to be the one who needed help. I felt an uncomfortable shift in my body as I metabolized what it meant to be on the other side of this mutual relationship.

I felt a similar shift in my body when the president of our foundation, Phil Li, and I had a conversation with one of our grantee partners this week. As we Zoomed into each other’s homes, the nonprofit leaders described the role they are playing navigating between the city, state, and 80 housing and neighborhood development institutions, communicating critical information about resident needs and neighborhood-level resources and gaps in service.

As I listened to them, I let go of any pretense I ever had that we — the people dispensing grants  — were helping them, the grantees. Instead I felt grateful that they knew what to do to take care of me and my neighbors across the city.

At best, what we at the foundation are doing is holding up our end of a partnership: We provide funding so that nonprofits can use it to take care of our collective hometown.

It struck me that what we were doing as foundation officials is akin to bringing sandwiches to doctors on the front lines. Just as the people making the sandwiches do not get to dispense medical orders or make demands as a condition of their support, I did not feel qualified to dispense any kind of orders or make any demands of our grantees. Even the idea of grant makers as actors and grantees as those acted upon seems wrong. I can offer to help them think through challenges, identify other potential donors, share what is happening in philanthropy, sure. But the idea that I could tell them how best to operate? Ludicrous.