JUNE 13, 2018
The Hidden Risk Shared by Grantmakers and Grantees
As a Senior Impact Advisor to Network for Good, I’m a strong advocate for the digital transformation of the nonprofit sector to improve efficiency and impact. Every foundation or donor wants to see its grantees succeed in raising the resources required to create impact and sustain the work they fund. Network for Good just announced a new initiative - Network for Good’s National Assessment of Grantee Readiness - that will help many nonprofits start this transition.
Many of the challenges facing nonprofits and their funders – service fragmentation, lack of coordination with other nonprofits and impact measurement – can be addressed by common digital technology platforms in use today.
How do we make digital tools and data-driven decision-making a capacity-building priority for the nonprofit sector? How can we make the digital transformation of the nonprofit sector a safer bet for philanthropists? How do we know if a nonprofit organization ready to begin this journey? Where do we find the resources to start? Where do we begin?
Too many nonprofits are “heads down” serving clients to think about sustainability and capacity building. Thus, they become overly-reliant on grant funding and do not have the means to create a basic fundraising plan, hire a staff or create the infrastructure necessary to start diversifying their funding base to upskill their teams and technology.
Using the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund’s national study on the challenges facing nonprofit fundraising, “Underdeveloped,” as a starting point, Network for Good created the Jumpstart Program. With the recent reports on the importance of general operating support funding, it’s clear there is a growing understanding of the link between a nonprofit’s ability to effectively fundraise and its ability to create and sustain impact through its programs.
Jumpstart expands a grantmaker’s impact by helping each of their grantees diversify funding and increase revenue through 12-months of coaching, technical assistance, templates and a toolkit. If you’d like to see an example of the impact, you can watch a short case study by clicking here.
One of the ways we validate these observations is through a needs assessment we conduct on behalf of funder collaboratives to quantify and articulate the bright spots and potential threats to local nonprofit sustainability. We’ve found grantmakers are impressed by the insights and visibility gained about their grantees through this exercise.
Read more about how you can participate in Network for Good’s National Assessment of Grantee Readiness by going here or contacting me here.