What to consider
as a funder who wants to support their grantees
The majority of program officers, program directors, and individual donors we have spoken with want organizers to have the resources, training, and support they need to do their jobs well. And, most funders who currently provide grants for base building and organizing efforts know organizing is challenging work subject to the ups and downs of campaigns, election cycles, and political upheaval. But, many nuances of organizing work can be lost if funders have not held an organizing role themselves (or have not organized for a long time), or if funders are not connecting directly with organizing staff.
Understanding the challenges
To best understand what your grantees are experiencing, we have outlined some questions to help start the conversation with a grantee (typically an executive director):
- In order to support you more fully, I would like to better understand how your organizing efforts are connected to the rest of the organization’s work. Could you please tell me more about the role organizing plays in your theory of change?
- Given the importance of organizing as one of your core strategies, how would you like to see that part of the work grow over the next 2–3 years? 5–10 years?
- I would like to know more about your organizing team and how they experience the hard work of organizing. Could you please tell me more about your organizing staff (how long they’ve been on the team, where you see their strengths and growth areas, their own professional development goals)? Would you be comfortable bringing 1–2 of your organizing team members into the next conversation we have?
Providing more resources
The largest obstacle to a directors’ ability to provide higher wages and stronger benefits to their teams is, without question, a lack of funding. If you’re a funder who can move more money or restructure grants to provide multi-year general operating support, doing so is the most helpful path. Additionally, organizing funder colleagues to collectively support an organization more fully can go a long way toward an organization’s sustainability.
But most funders face a limit on the amount of money they’re able to direct and move. And regardless of their advocacy, there may not be a pathway toward increasing that amount. Within those constraints, we have some suggestions from our conversations with both directors and organizers about how to support teams without overstepping or becoming too prescriptive.
Ensure submitted budgets represent the full costs of doing the work.
For the most part, the cost of running an organization has increased significantly in the past few years, from inflation to escalating needs in the face of greater injustices. If personnel expenses are staying the same from one year to the next, this is something to ask about. Are directors planning raises for their teams? What are the types of benefits that staff receive? Budgets should be treated as a starting point for a conversation, not taken as a final draft of what an organization is asking for. Resource to check out: Nonprofit Finance Fund’s Full Cost Project.
Example: I would like to be able to understand and support your team’s needs to the best of my ability. Could you please tell me more about how you structure compensation, benefits, and other support resources for your organizers? Have you been experiencing high rates of turnover? How could we work together to ensure you’re able to build and sustain the team you need?
Counteract previous philanthropic norms by making it clear you see personnel expenses and “overhead” as fundamental to the organization’s impact
— that the old assumption that “no more than 30% of a budget should be going to overhead” is not part of how you do your grantmaking, and that you see compensation and consideration for the needs of staff teams as the only way the work will be done. Many directors still believe funders want them to allocate resources to programs to ensure a better return on investment.
Example: I know you may have had previous conversations with donors who expressed a lack of interest in funding personnel costs or other overhead expenses. I do not see a distinction between funding programs or funding people. Could you please tell me more about how you’re allocating resources and where we might be able to rightsize the budget, if needed?
In the same vein, many organizations commit themselves to ambitious goals in order to demonstrate relevance and impact in a competitive funding landscape.
While organizations should be encouraged to set big visions and test new ideas, often those goals are set with funders in mind, with an aim to secure or maintain funding, rather than set in proportion to what their teams are capable of over time. When a funder is unable to provide additional funding, we encourage program officers and donors to suggest scaling back programming with no shift in funding amount. This allows directors to recalibrate the workloads of their teams without fear of being seen as failing in some way.
Example: I have always been impressed with your vision for the work, and I’m excited about the goals you’re committing to this year. I’m also hearing that you’re feeling pressure to ensure your team reaches these ambitious goals despite the fact that your team feels overworked. What would it look like for your organization to commit to 20% or 30% less work for the year and reallocate some of those resources towards supporting the sustainability of your team? I want you to know that if you scale back your proposed outcomes, it will not impact the size of your current or future grants.
Aside from increasing funds and organizing other donors, the
strongest tools a funder has is their ability to open up transparent conversations and be explicitly clear about their support for compensation, benefits, and staff needs as a fundamental part of demonstrating impact.
Additional tools for funders can be found in All Due Respect’s “Sustainable Jobs for Organizers” toolkit.