Making Things Easy for Grantees Is High Priority for Foundation Officials. But Are We Doing It Right?

Illustration by Maria Mottola

Editor's Note: This is Lisa’s ninth piece in a Chronicle of Philanthropy series that originally focused on grantmaking in the coronavirus era. Recent pieces explore philanthropy's role in dismantling a system of racial injustice. Today's piece touches upon both themes. You may view the original piece here.

I was on the phone with a friend the other day, catching up after a few months on each other’s work, communities, and families. After talking through a long list of the things that are challenging, confusing, terrifying, and boring — we decided we couldn’t hang up until we had each come up with three things that were not terrible — that, in fact, were kind of good. It took us a little while to get there — but one of the things I came up with was the relatively fast pace of change within philanthropy.

I have been feeling pretty positive about this change recently — the growing recognition of structural racism in society and within philanthropy, the dollars flowing to organizations led by people of color, the conversation and action on raising payouts and making more grant dollars available, the streamlined application processes. Grant makers are having many exchanges about how to fund differently in recognition of the challenges our grantee partners face. I have been part of conversations about how we need to change, flex, decolonize, and adapt to the moment. It has felt exciting and hopeful. Even from my dining-room table, now my workspace, I can feel the momentum.

But then an exchange with another friend took the wind out of my sails. This friend, who leads a community-based organization that has grown to be a highly regarded, prize-winning center for young people who live in public housing, is leaving the organization she founded after 18 years. She had texted me to ask advice on defining measurable outcomes for an executive-director transition. She had tried and rejected “keeping the organization’s doors open” and then “100 percent staff, board, and donor satisfaction” or “ED will be well paid and work only 40 hours per week.” None seemed right. I suggested “ED will manage to drag herself, bloodied and exhausted, across the threshold of another month …’ She did not like that one either.

When I called her to follow up on that text exchange, she told me that more grant makers than usual were giving general operating dollars, and that was a noticeable difference. However, she was spending hours trying to report on Covid emergency grants that the organization had been required to spend in three months. The emergency grants were given to cover specific staff members and activities. Unfortunately, some of those same staff members had become so overwhelmed by balancing work and life, they left their jobs. And some of the activities had become irrelevant or redundant.

One of these foundation emergency grants was for staff expenses that were also covered by a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan — and if the PPP loan was not used on salary, it would have to be paid back. My friend did not feel safe calling the foundation to explain that and ask for a budget modification, for fear that another proposal pending with the same foundation would not be funded. In the next week, she had four grant reports due on her organization’s college and career programs, each asking for a different set of outcomes, none of them acknowledging that school and employment have been radically transformed in the last four months. “I keep waiting for someone to call me and say that they know that their reporting requirements don’t make any sense in this moment. But no one has called.” So she plugs away, while searching for a successor, sweating over Excel spreadsheets and budgets, and writing reports about attendance and enrollment outcomes that are literally impossible to reach with closed schools and job sites.

Communications Failures

My guess is that within these foundations are people who know that schools and job sites are closed and that they are joining the same calls I am about how to support grantee partners during crises. My guess is that they know my friend’s organization is operating in chaos, and probably they won’t review reports with the same scrutiny as usual. But I wonder whether they forgot to convey that — or to consider the impact of their usual reporting requirements on their overstressed grantees.

I understand how this happens, and how good intentions may be. This week I was eager to send out a survey to our grantees to ask them what additional help they might need from us, and in my eagerness, I wanted to get that survey out before I left for vacation so that the results would be ready for me when I got back. When one grantee partner very gently pushed back, asking for a little more time, I realized that my request did not consider the reality of what it would take for him to complete the task — I was only thinking about what I wanted to do with his input. Lucky for me, he did ask for more time, and his email came in a moment when I could read it all — breathe out — and realize that in the end, it did not matter whether I send the survey out this week or next. My need to complete my to-do list is trivial compared with the work our grantees are managing.

It’s a challenge for me to look at the big picture — to look ahead and think about all I want to change — but also pay attention to the moment, and what my actions mean for the daily work of my grantee partners and allies as they try to change the world. We are imperiling our grantee partners when we forget about the trees in our attempts to focus on the forest. Going forward, when we protest business-as-usual philanthropy, it feels essential to keep in mind whether we are asking that our grantee partners continue doing our business as usual even when the world has been turned upside down.