2006 Annual Meeting - Philanthropy: Art or Science?
Overcoming Distance, Staff Size and Resources in Working
with your Grantees
• Tom Kennedy, Senior Vice President, Sovereign
Bank
• Jenny D. Russell, Executive Director, Merck Family Fund
Many AGM members are seeing increased numbers of applications
from nonprofits, as well as increased requests, across the board,
from their grantees for resources of all types. As federal and
state governments continue to limit or cut funds for social services,
it seems clear that funders will continue to face resource issues
of time, staff and money as they manage their grantee-grantor
relationships.
This workshop offered an opportunity for participants to hear
from two experienced grant makers who manage geographically diffuse
portfolios with limited staff resources, and to share their own
experiences with resource management.
Jenny Russell opened with an overview of the Merck Family Fund.
It is approximately 50 years old, with assets of about $70 million.
They make about 100 grants each year, which are awarded nationally
for a total of about $3 million. The majority of their grants
are split between New England and the mid Atlantic area, but they
have grants as far south as Florida and as far west as New Mexico
(CA?). They have four people on staff, of whom two have primary
program responsibilities.
In order to manage this large number of grants spread out over
a wide geographic area, Jenny emphasized the importance of long-range
planning. For example, they plan their travel almost a year in
advance, building their trips around anchor conferences and really
packing their agendas. She said that a typical 3-day visit might
include a conference, 3-4 site visits and meals with grantees
or peer foundations as well. The anchor conferences are particularly
important for building and maintaining networks of colleagues
interested in similar funding projects.
In addition, they draw on networks of other funders, as well
as trustees who live in communities where they make grants to
provide input and intelligence on grantees that would be new to
the foundation.
They have an intern, part of whose responsibilities is to scan
10-12 relevant newspapers each day and identify and circulate
key articles.
When people are on travel, they rely heavily on email to keep
in contact. When staff are in the office, they meet regularly
and schedule “learning lunches” so that information,
best practices and lessons learned from site visits and conferences
can be shared amongst all staff.
Tom Kennedy outlined Sovereign Bank’s giving. Their footprint
covers all of New England. They make 400-500 grants per year,
at an average grant size of $5,000-7,000. Although they are a
corporate foundation, there is no endowment. Rather, they are
treated as a separate cost center within the Bank and must advocate
for their budget each year. There are four staff assigned to the
foundation, but because of other duties, there is essentially
the equivalent of 2.5 FTEs work on foundation activities.
Sovereign came into the Massachusetts market in March 2000, and
as part of their entry made commitments that their giving would
follow their Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) investments –
focusing primarily on issues such as housing, community development,
economic development, etc. The foundation has a secondary focus
on youth, education, and arts and culture.
The foundation faces a tremendous number of claims on its resources
because of its relationship with the bank and its depositors who
often feel the depository relationship gives them priority in
grantmaking. There are over 300 branches in the New England footprint,
which increases the demand, but is also an opportunity in terms
of getting senior managers at all the branches involved in the
grantmaking process and decision making. This involvement by senior
managers helps spread the workload, and also brings local knowledge
to the table for decision making.
However, it also means that there has to be ongoing training
and education of those senior managers to make sure they fully
understand the foundation’s priorities, mission and policies.
Tom emphasized the importance of having very strong and clear
administrative guidelines for grantmaking so that grantees and
staff were all very clear about expectations and process.
In addition to the presenters, audience members offered other
suggestions for stretching staff resources as far as possible.
For example, for shorter grants, require a minimum of reporting,
and keep your grant programs very focused, so you don’t
get a lot of “off-target” applications.
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