No Thank You: Why One Foundation Leader Doesn’t Want Gratitude From Grantees

Illustration by Maria Mottola

Editor's Note: Lisa wrote this Op-Ed for The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and we're pleased to cross-post it today. You may view the original version here.

Early in my career, I had a job as an administrative assistant. I kept a manila file folder on my desk called “Excellent Lisa.” When I got a good annual review or someone wrote a positive note about my work, I slipped it into the file. Then when I got a lousy review, or I screwed something up, I went back to the “Excellent Lisa” file to remind myself that I was sometimes competent. I still keep a secret “Excellent Lisa” folder on my computer. In it I often save complimentary emails in the hope that they will make me feel better at low moments.

But when I went back to read through it recently, emails from grantee partners thanking me for my generosity had kind of an opposite effect. Instead of making me feel like I was doing the job well, the expressions of gratitude made me uneasy. Those thanks, which I have craved in the past, are now causing me to think about the larger system and what I am inviting and putting out in my relationships with grantees.

Like most, if not all, grant makers, my foundation shares the goals of our grantees and wants them to succeed in their work. We want to support and partner with them to meet our collective missions. One way we try to support our grantees is by minimizing what we require of them so that they spend less time working on the grants, and more time on their important mission work. To that end, we combine our annual site visits and reporting into a single conversation and do not ask for a written report. We send them the questions we will be asking ahead of time and gear the conversation to what they are seeing and learning, rather than how they are doing against a set of goals that we define.

Generally, this works pretty well. I have had some far-reaching and expansive conversations that have challenged and helped both me and the grantees. Together we come up with potential partnerships, identify resources, brainstorm different program strategies and new ways the foundation can support them.

The conversations are exciting and energizing, until we get to the end. In almost every circumstance, we come to a moment in the conversation when the grantee representative thanks me for the foundation’s support and dollars. They tell me how lucky they are to be funded by us. And I fumble over some demurral and then tell them how grateful we are to be working with them. The conversation switches from one about our collective work and reverts to grant maker-grantee kabuki. I awkwardly walk out the door or shut down the Zoom as quickly as possible. I do not want to disrespect or snub their expressions of gratitude — but I think that if I were doing my job right, this kind of gratitude would not be a part of the relationship. It’s been hard to put my finger on what exactly I am doing wrong, or what I am looking for instead.

I found part of the answer in one dictionary definition that describes philanthropy as: the desire to promote the welfare of others, expressed especially by the generous donation of money to good causes.

In general, generosity connotes the person “with” means giving to the person “without.” If I am the one “with” in a relationship with a grantee, that implies they are “without.” That makes it challenging for us to have a reciprocal relationship or to be in right balance. The relationship between foundations and grantees rests on the deeply ingrained but often unspoken (false) belief in our society that those with the most money are the smartest and most deserving of power. When we look at how and why foundations come by their money, this belief is easily refuted.

In looking for a different way to think about the work of grant making, the two approaches that are most compelling to me are those of reparations and, relatedly, the recognition of self-interest.

Repaying Money Taken From the Public Good

While looking around, I found a helpful Medium post from Alexandra Williams, a manager at the Bridgespan group. Most often, she writes, “wealthy philanthropists and large, endowed foundations came to accumulate their wealth through an extractive economy that relied on under (or un) paid labor, stolen Native land, and benefited from a racial and economic hierarchy that enabled unfettered accumulation of resources for the elite few.”

And if those people and institutions couldn’t directly trace their wealth back to the benefits of slavery, she writes, “they could trace it back to choices made by the U.S. government designed to systematically oppress Black people.”

I would remind us that in addition to that initial extraction of wealth, philanthropic dollars are held back from taxable income — so once again, extracted and put under private control.

Those of us who have shaped and continue to shape philanthropy have created a system where we take money from the public good twice, and then are thanked for giving it back to address societal problems that often result from the system that benefited the original donor. And then we get a paycheck and a thank-you note for doing so.

The concept of reparations is not, of course, new. Ever since the 1865 broken promise of 40 acres and a mule, some Americans have been holding reparations as a framework for addressing the tremendous harm and violence that began with the institution of slavery but has seeped into nearly every aspect of how American society is organized. In recent years, philanthropists and the public have become increasingly aware of where philanthropic dollars originate. Acknowledging this and seeing the act of philanthropy as part of the general act or process of making amends for a wrong would shift the power dynamic.

The relationship between the person or entity bringing the money and the person or entity receiving is quite different under the terms of a relationship of reparations — and it frees the receiver to get to work in a wholly different manner.

The Myth of the Selfless Donor

Any development director worth his or her salt has been trained to thank donors — to build relationships with them, send them acknowledgment gifts, and tell them how generous they are and how much the organization appreciates them. It is rarely a fundraising tactic to point out that the donor is doing something to benefit themselves when they give.

If for no other reason, I tip my hat to Barre Seid for shattering the myth of the selfless donor with his recent $1.6 billion gift to a politically focused right-wing nonprofit. With Seid’s gift, the nonprofit was able to play a critical role in bringing about the conservative power on the Supreme Court and to finance fights around abortion law, voting rules, and climate policy. There is no doubt that these political movements benefit Mr. Seid’s personal wealth and political goals and that he made his grant to create the world that will benefit himself. So what does the thank-you note to Mr. Seid look like?

As much as I disagree with his goals, I do appreciate this clear example of the gift benefiting the giver.

When I give money to a local community-based organization, it is because I want to live in a city that offers every citizen the same opportunities — so that the whole city tilts toward a healthy and thriving place for me and my family and neighbors. When I give money to a climate organization, it is because I hope that my grandchildren will have a livable planet.

So it follows that these gifts are not generous; rather, they are necessary for me to thrive. The gifts are part of collective responsibility toward one another, in a world in which we need to take care of each other to survive. And those are just the gifts I give from my own pocket on my own time. When I make grants from the foundation, I am just doing my job. I don’t write thank-you notes to my bank teller or librarian — bank tellers are not giving me their own money and librarians are not lending me their own books — so I wonder if a foundation program officer should be treated any differently?

Shifting Practices

Either approach to thinking about our work — self-interest or reparations (and they are not mutually exclusive) — changes the terms of engagement between those with dollars and those doing the work to a relationship of collaboration rather than that of transaction.

I am left wondering how to shift my practice based on this understanding. And, on a much smaller scale, what I hope to add to the “Excellent Lisa” file going forward (yes, I’m keeping the file — neither my ego nor my insecurity has shrunk during this line of inquiry). I hope that my grant collaborators will write to say that our partnership had advanced their work for justice, our conversation sparked a new idea, the shoes I was wearing were cool, the person I introduced them to was helpful, or that they had fun hanging out with me.

And I hope that they, and you, will help me to figure out what moving from understanding philanthropy as generosity to seeing it as something more complicated requires from us. And perhaps more importantly — what does it allow us to do together?