Guest Post: Grantmakers and Collaboration

Note: In October I interviewed Kathleen Enright, CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO), on the blog. In the course of that interview, she mentioned GEO’s upcoming study of staffed grantmaking institutions. That study was released a few weeks ago, and I asked Kathleen to provide some perspective here on what the results mean. Her guest post is below.

A few weeks ago GEO released our latest field study, Is Grantmaking Getting Smarter? We conduct this national study of staffed foundations in the United States every three years to better understand how and whether grantmaker attitudes and practices are changing in ways that help nonprofits make faster progress on their missions. In our 2014 survey, we endeavored to understand how funders support and engage in collaboration.

We were anxious to make meaning of the results related to collaboration in part because it was a key theme across the nonprofit listening sessions we conducted last year. Leaders touted the value of funders connecting them with each other and building peer networks. They recommended funders create more opportunities for nonprofit leaders to share ideas and allow collaboration to be an organic outcome of these peer exchanges. In addition, they made a strong case for funding collaborative work. As one listening session participant noted about collaborating, “It is expensive to undertake and not really fully funded.” Hopefully these results will provide an opportunity for funders to look carefully at their own practices to make sure that they are doing what they can to help productive collaboration flourish.

Collaboration in the context of philanthropy has many dimensions (you can find a description of the many forms and uses for collaboration here). In this survey we attempted to learn more about the extent to which grantmakers:

Fund nonprofit collaboration
Collaborate with one another
Create an enabling environment that supports collaboration

The findings in Is Grantmaking Getting Smarter? were mixed on this issue.

Fund nonprofit collaboration. Anyone who has participated in collaborative initiatives knows the truism that they take longer and cost more than you think at the beginning. It follows that successful collaborative initiatives hinge on nonprofits having sufficient bandwidth to meaningfully engage in them. This is why it’s encouraging that multiyear support has rebounded to pre-recession levels and general operating support is on the rise. General operating support increased in terms of share of total grantmaking dollars from 20% to 25%.

Our past two surveys also sought to understand if grantmakers directly support the costs necessary for nonprofits to collaborate. The 2014 findings suggest that grantmakers are now less likely than in 2011 to fund the costs of collaboration or managing strategic relationships among grantees. In 2011, 38% of respondents reported never or rarely funding the costs of collaboration or managing strategic relationship among grantees. In 2014, it got even worse—53% said they never or rarely provide this kind of support.

As the drum beat for collaboration has grown louder, it’s surprising (and a bit worrisome) that direct philanthropic support for collaboration appears to be in decline. Our research partners at Harder+Company hypothesized that improving economic conditions may play a role. Foundations may have seen collaboration as a way to make limited resources go farther in order to withstand the tough economic conditions. Given the rebounding economy, maybe funders see this kind of support as less important.

It is also interesting that general operating and multiyear support are going up at the same time that support for collaboration is going down. Might funders be increasingly providing organizations with flexible, long-term grants as a strategy to support the collaborative work they need to do? If so, that’s a positive instinct. Regardless, if funders expect their grantees to collaborate, they have to be willing to underwrite the costs of doing so. Otherwise it’s an unfunded mandate that is unlikely to succeed.

For the first time this year, we asked a question about what kinds of support funders were providing to enable collaboration. The most common approach is to organize collaborative meetings or events for grantees. Nonprofits who participated in our listening sessions appreciated when grantmakers do this work well.

Collaborate with one another. Most grantmakers (69%, which was the same in 2011) reported developing strategic relationships with other grantmakers. Those who are cultivating such relationships are overwhelmingly motived by achieving greater impact, followed by an interest in tapping the expertise of other grantmakers. The least common reason for collaborating with fellow grantmakers was to minimize burden on grantees.

That such a strong percentage of grantmakers recognize both the importance of and motivations for collaborating with one another is a promising result. However, this further highlights the divide between what grantmakers are willing to support for themselves and what they are willing to fund for their grantees. As more grantmakers engage in collaborative partnerships hopefully the case for supporting similar work for their grantees will grow stronger.

Create an enabling environment for collaboration. In addition to directly supporting nonprofit collaboration and engaging in collaboration themselves, we were also curious about whether grantmakers are doing what they can to create an environment conducive to successful collaboration.

- By seeking and using input. Asking for and using feedback from key stakeholders lays the foundation for collaboration. At last, the majority of staffed foundations in the US are asking for grantee feedback. Additionally, grantmakers have become more likely over time to engage external voices in decision-making and strategy setting. They were most likely to seek external perspectives on foundation strategy (63% do so sometimes, often or always) and the majority of respondents now seek advice from a grantee advisory committee about policies, practices and program areas (52% up from 42% in 2011). This is good news.

In how they engage with grantees. Survey participants were asked how important certain funding practices were to their success. Fully 92% of respondents indicated that it is important that staff build relationships with grantees so that grantees can be open about their challenges. A slightly lower but still substantial percentage (89%) indicated that it’s important to provide opportunities for staff members to spend time outside the office with representatives of recipient communities or grantees. Given that strong and trusting relationships are an important ingredient to successful collaboration, this sense of priority is encouraging. However only 63% thought it was important to their success to have staff with experience working at nonprofits like those they fund. Nothing really beats having walked in someone else’s shoes, so it is my hope that more and more foundations will recognize the importance of hiring program officers with nonprofit leadership experience in the years ahead.

I’m curious what you make of these survey findings, so please let us know what you think:

- Do you have ideas for why philanthropic support for collaboration might be declining? Do you think there’s any relationship to the increases in multiyear and general operating support?

- For grantmakers: To what extent are you creating an environment that enables collaboration inside your organization? How are your practices smoothing the way for your grantees to collaborate more effectively?