By Janessa Blythe, BA ’18
At some point, before we started visiting organizations, we had a conversation in class about the way grants are typically given. Grantors typically designate money for a particular purpose. This is useful and good, because organizations are often able to make convincing pitches for exact sums of money, and they are able to fund important projects. At the same time, this limits organizations because they are unable to direct money to where it is needed at the time. They may have a need come up that they cannot use the money they have in their bank account for. Before an organization can execute any sort of interesting project, they have to be able to keep the lights on.
As I’ve become more familiar with the philanthropic world, I’ve heard from numerous executive directors that what they need, more than funding for specific projects, is money that they can use where they need it when they need it. They cannot always predict what needs they are going to have a few months down the road at the time they apply for grants.
As grantors have been working on becoming more strategic in their giving, have they begun to limit the ability of organizations to be more strategic?
It has to be difficult to need money for something and not be able to utilize the funds in the bank account because they have been designated already for other projects.
On one of our site visits, we were given a list of possible projects to fund, but the person describing the projects exhibited very little excitement about the projects. I asked this person if there was anything else they needed. They looked at me, hesitated, and confessed what they really needed was money for their general budget.
We talked in class about a trend among grantors where they are starting to consider giving sums with to organizations they trust, and allowing them to decide where the money goes.
I’m not sure what the right answer is. I think there is room for granting for specific purposes and granting with trust for organizations in the philanthropic world, but I think we really need to consider that organizations have the right to be strategic for themselves.
At times it has to feel like your mother is making decisions for you again. Yes, you get to propose the possible things a grantor can fund, but what if the project that would help the most people doesn’t get funded? What if what your organization needs isn’t an attractive thing to fund? What if there is just low interest in the problem you are seeking to solve? Sometimes outsiders cannot really understand the need. Sometimes an organization needs the freedom to make decisions for themselves.