Featured Blog Post:
Category
How a Diversity Focus Changed One Foundation’s Board
Over 20 years ago, the Anna B. Stearns Charitable Foundation launched its Girls’ Initiative to amplify support for women and girls. More recently, the foundation’s board, historically mostly women, expanded its equity and inclusion focus to include race and culture for both grantmaking and board composition. Leadership sees its own diversity as essential to driving... Read More
Dispelling Fear and Anxiety About Advocacy for Your Foundation Board
Advocacy is a long game, and it can be messy at times. But when combined with grantmaking, advocacy is a powerful tool to advance system change, strengthen relationships with your partners (grantees), and enhance learning and understanding around the issues your foundation supports. Helping your board understand the broader concept of advocacy will help shift... Read More
Let’s Be Candid About Board Succession Planning
Joe Wilson, founder of the Xerox Corporation, and his wife, Peggy, formed the Wilson Foundation in 1963. A few years ago, we engaged in strategic planning to revisit our giving priorities. At the time, our board had 24 members that spanned three generations, and were spread across the country. In order to achieve our impact... Read More
Funder Best Practices: Simplify and Streamline Paperwork
Having specialized grant applications and reports imposes a big administrative burden on nonprofits. Consider, a nonprofit receives grants from 20 or 30 foundations (and some are funded by many more). The nonprofit spends its resources in two major ways: It applies for funding from 40, 50 or 60 different foundations. Each foundation has its own... Read More
Why We Accept Proposals Written for Other Funders
A few years ago, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation had a chance to rethink what we did and how we did it. The foundation painfully let go of important issues and organizations, believing we could do more for New York City by focusing our giving. Our board of directors decided to invest in city leaders,... Read More
Preventing Wire Fraud at Foundations and Family Offices
Wire fraud is a daily danger. Cyber-security filters may stop 90%+ of attempts, but some still get through. For international clients, efforts are especially focused when US, European and Asian bank holidays are out of sync. Scammers want to prevent you from verbally verifying a wire request, since the requester’s office is closed. Here are other... Read More