2011
CALL FOR NOMINATIONS
THE MANHA TT AN INSTITUTE
SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AWARDS
W illiam E. S imonP rize for
$100,000
L ifetime A chievement in S ocial Entrepreneurship
;;;;;;;;;
Nominations are accepted online at
www.manhattan-institute.org/simon2011
until March 29th
;;;;;;;;;
The Simon Prize recognizes American nonprofi t leaders who
have developed new and successful private approaches to
signifi cant social problems.
For information about the Social Entrepreneurship Awards and previous winners,
please visit www.manhattan-institute.org/se
A Focus on Signature Programs Can Help
Charities Gain Grant Makers’ Support
By Caroline Preston
W;;; government money fast receding, many nonprofit groups are
hoping that private foundations
could be their salvation.
But with foundation assets
still well below their high-water
marks of 2006, how can non-profits possibly hope to win bigger grants from those funds—
or, even more difficult, catch
a grant maker’s attention for
the first time? To answer those
questions, The Chronicle spoke
with foundation leaders, non-profit officials, and fund-raising
consultants about what grant
makers are seeking right now.
Among their tips:
Emphasize collaboration.
Karen McNeil-Miller, president
of the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, says she’s keen on
supporting groups like AIDS
Care Service, a charity in Winston-Salem, N.C., that provides
office space to workers from other nonprofits that offer counseling in computer training, substance-abuse, and healthy eating to the AIDS group’s clients.
She’s not alone, says Robert
Carter, vice chairman of Chang-
ing Our World, a New York
group that provides advice to
nonprofits: “Unless you can talk
about collaboration with a lot of
these major funders, you’re not
going to get very far.”
But the approaches don’t have
to be as extreme as mergers or
long-term partnerships, says
Steve Meyerson, a fund-raising
consultant in Washington. For
example, he is helping a Jew-
ish day school explore ways a
nearby university might be able
to provide professional develop-
ment to the school’s teachers.
Focus on pressing problems and reducing costs.
Groups that work on urgent issues like unemployment may
have an advantage in getting
support. “You have to tie into
the current times in some fashion without making up programs,” says Mr. Carter.
At the same time, foundations
want to support groups that have
awakened to the reality of what
Doug Stamm, chief executive of
the Meyer Memorial Trust, in
Portland, Ore., calls “a decade of
deficits.” If a charity has a plan
for how it can provide services
more efficiently—and, better
yet, ideas for how that cost-sav-ing approach could be applied to
other groups—it will win favor
in grant makers’ eyes.
Seek support for the
group’s most successful programs. Foundations are more
open to supporting new programs today than they were
during the depths of the recession, but they certainly won’t
look favorably on groups that
want to go into new areas but
can’t raise enough to support
what they already do. They also
EDWARD CALDWELL
Steven J. McCormick, of the Gordon and Betty Moore
Foundation, says he tended to view grant makers as “ATM
machines” when he headed the Nature Conservancy.
tend to appreciate charities that
have pared back on the number
of programs they offer. Says Rachel Monroe, president of the
Harry and Jeanette Weinberg
Foundation, in Owings Mills,
Md.: “If there is a nonprofit that
is struggling with funding and
sustainability, now is not the
time to ask the Weinberg foundation, at least, to fund an ‘
innovative new program.’”
Be clear about how money
will help. Some foundations
are open to helping nonprofits
bridge a gap when government
payments stall—to a point. Robin Smalley, international director of Mothers2Mothers, a Los
Angeles nonprofit that provides
assistance to pregnant African
women and mothers with HIV/
AIDS, says she’s seeing interest from foundations in helping her group meet shortfalls
from stalled and reduced U.S.
Agency for International Development grants. But Ms. Smalley says she’s very clear about
how that money will help. Not
all nonprofits are, says Ms. McNeil-Miller of the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust. “We have
turned down plenty of organizations that have just wanted
what they called ‘bridge funding,’ but it was the bridge to nowhere. There was no plan.”
Be honest about finances.
Foundations appreciate a can-
did assessment of a charity’s fi-
nancial situation. Beth Nathan-
son, associate director of devel-
opment at the 92nd Street Y, in
New York, says she brings up her
group’s fiscal health during in-
formal chats with donors. “Initi-
ating the conversation shows you
have confidence,” she says. Also,
her charity discusses its short-
and long-term plans to reduce a
deficit in its grant proposals.
Line up with the foundation’s goals. Back when Steven J. McCormick led the Nature Conservancy, he says he
tended to view foundations as
“ATM machines.” Now, as head
of the Gordon and Betty Moore
Foundation, in Palo Alto, Calif.,
he says nonprofits need to do a
better job than he sometimes
did of understanding precisely
how foundations are trying to
advance change and making
the case for how their group’s
work fits into that.
Ask peers for advice. People who work at nonprofits that
have recently won a grant from
a particular foundation can be a
good source of intelligence. Mr.
Meyerson advises fund raisers
to speak with at least one recent grantee before approaching a foundation. Some charities
might not be willing to share
what they know, but Mr. Meyerson said nonprofits will probably have luck if they approach
groups that don’t work on the
same issue.
MORE DATA ABOUT GRANT MAKERS
Find more information from The Chronicle’s survey of
America’s largest grant makers online, including:
; How much foundations plan to give in 2011
; Where they made their largest grants in 2010
; A look at median assets and the size of median grants at
dozens of foundations
; An interactive database of the more than 180 grant makers
in the survey
Go to http://philanthropy.com/extras
