Support Beyond the Check
Funders have more to offer than dollars alone. Responsive, adaptive, non-monetary support bolsters leadership, capacity, and organizational health.
Steps You Can Take
Listen to your grantee partners for any needs, challenges, or opportunities that you might be able to respond to with support
Introduce grantees to other funders and like-minded organizations, and emphasize to those funders what you’ve learned from these organizations. This can have an outsized impact for smaller, younger-stage, and BIPOC-led organizations without large networks.
Highlight grantees’ work in your newsletter, on your website, on webinars, and/or during conference presentations
Make this offer of support clear, equitable, and optional: even if you’ve built a solid relationship, grantees may still feel obligated to accept your support
The Difference It Will Make
Helps build the capacity and strength of leaders and organizations over time
Fosters a deeper sense of connection to grantees and their work
Creates opportunities to learn more about grantees’ work and organizational context
Acknowledges that grantee partners operate in a wider context, and offers to support them in the larger landscape of that work
What It Looks Like
“For 20 years, we’ve been running our Sabbatical Program that enables nonprofit leaders to take three months off from their work and totally disconnect. In addition to funding the leader to take time off, we help the organization prepare for the time that executive director is away. Almost since the inception of the Sabbatical Program, we bring together alums for lunches and overnight retreats to weave a network of connected leaders throughout L.A. By bringing leaders together, we learn so much about the challenges in the sector, and it's great ideas, by spending time with the people we fund.”
- Carrie Avery, Durfee Foundation
From the Blog
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