Change Is Too Rapid in Covid-19 Era to Tie Nonprofits’ Hands With Old Rules (Dispatches)

Illustration by Maria Mottola

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

I always thought the saying ”You can’t step in the same river twice” came from the Quaker nature camp of my youth, but apparently it was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who said it (significantly earlier than when I was a camper in the 1980s). In that simple phrase, Heraclitus captures the reality that things keep changing. If we prepare for tomorrow based only on yesterday’s experience, we are likely to get it wrong.

Heraclitus’s words (not those of my cool camp counselor) have been ringing in my ears since Covid-19 hit, and they are as important for my grant-making job as they are for my family.

I think about the many times the guidelines I have used to protect myself and my family have changed in the past few months: On a plane in February, I scoffed at the people wearing masks. Back in New York, I reluctantly moved from hugs to elbow bumps and started using hand sanitizer begrudgingly after getting off the subway. I told my kids they couldn’t hang out with more than a few friends at a time, then one friend, and now no friends. When their schools closed, they moved to Zoom classes until the New York City public schools abruptly stopped using Zoom because no one anticipated “Zoombombing.” Everything has changed, and the guidance I gave my kids two months ago, one month ago, and even last week is totally outdated. And who knows about what comes next.

I thought of the changing river again when I talked (by Zoom, of course) to my friend and colleague Jill Eisenhard this week. Jill is the founder and executive director of the Red Hook Initiative, an organization that serves young people in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Her group unexpectedly found itself at the center of recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and eight years later is back in a similar position of helping Red Hook residents survive and thrive in the midst of Covid-19 — except that last time they worked to get people to come out and help, and this time, they are working to get people to stay home.

During both disasters, individuals and institutions threw resources at nonprofits, including hers, in the heat of the moment — food, clothes, medicine, and money. The money was for emergency relief and came with some strings: Use it to help a particular group of people, spend it by a certain date, use it to fix your (unbroken) copy machine. And in each crisis moment, it was given with urgency and often with certainty — faith that the river will be the same tomorrow as it is today.

As a result, Jill has resources she needs to spend by June 30 but no funding to provide Red Hook youths with summer jobs — which families in Red Hook depend on for income in the best of times but which New York Mayor Bill DiBlasio has just eliminated from the city budget.

That situation is playing out for nonprofits across the country as well-intentioned grant makers act with certainty and urgency, even as the circumstances change around us. Some of us are repurposing our annual budgets for Covid relief efforts, thereby throwing many of our current but soon-to-be-former grantees into panic. Others are releasing emergency grants to feed families but not allowing those funds to be used to create jobs or to be spent in the next fiscal year.

But the truth is, Heraclitus was right. Just as I don’t know how to advise my kids from one day to the next, foundations don’t know the right thing for their grantees to do from one day to the next. None of us know how to distinguish the exact moment between relief and recovery — or how to set priorities given the fast pace of change. I am trying this with my kids: sharing all the information I have and then making our best guess together. When I talk to Jill, I wish that for her: that her donors would provide the best information and their intent to her and then trust her, the staff, and the residents of Red Hook to make the best decisions they can, adjusting and planning as conditions change, as the river runs.

Lisa Pilar Cowan is the vice president of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation. This is the third article in her series on grant making in the coronavirus era.