2006 Annual Meeting - Philanthropy: Art or Science?
Tired of Working Alone? (You Can't Do Everything
Yourself)
• Betsy Nichols, Executive Director, Paul &
Edith Babson Foundation
• Ann Fowler Wallace, Program Consultant, Funders' Network
for Smart Growth & Livable Communities
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on Philanthropic Collaboratives
The workshop entitled “Tired of Working Alone?” focused
on collaborative engagements in philanthropy and in particular
on funder collaboratives and affinity groups. Martha Moore, Director
of the Resource Center of Philanthropy at AGM, provided a short
introduction to the topic of collaborative organizations and the
benefits to foundations of participating in these.
Our speakers Betsy Nichols of the Paul & Edith Babson Foundation
and Ann Fowler Wallace of the Funders’ Network for Smart
Growth & Livable Communities shared their experiences with
several collaborative organizations such as The Summer Fund, Boston
Schoolyard Funders Collaborative, EdVestors and the Funders Network
for Smart Growth & Livable Communities.
Collaboration in the philanthropic sector takes many forms. It
can be between individual foundations, between the public and
private sectors, between for-profit and non-profits, between foundations
(funders) and non-profits, and sometimes between foundations and
other philanthropic organizations (regional associations like
AGM). The funding mechanisms are also varied. In some collaboratives
the resources are pooled and decisions are made jointly. In other
collaboratives the issues and funding needs are discussed jointly
but funds are dispersed directly from the individual foundations.
Sometimes a collaborative is created to channel support for a
specific issue, such as EdVestors which provides a vehicle to
fund nonprofits working in the public school systems. The caveat
is to find the model that works best for your organization.
The speakers acknowledged that there is definitely an explosion
of funding collaboratives and affinity groups. Sometimes funding
networks will spawn even more focused collaboratives. Both Ann
and Betsy felt that the increase is due to people in philanthropy
recognizing the power of networking and the benefits of these
collaborative arrangements. Some of the benefits include:
• Pooling of resources leads to having greater impact, often
being able to fund staff, general operating expenses, and issues
that you couldn’t do as an individual foundation
• Ability to leverage expertise of many organizations
• Ability to build broader consensus which builds strength
of programs and commitment
• Increases the willingness of individual foundations to
support a nonprofit or a project for a longer term
• Encourages more deliberative decision making at the individual
foundations
• Stimulates strategic thinking and joint learning
• Individual foundations are more willing to take on risk
when doing it in concert with others
• Increases support for research, or more in-depth analysis
of issue areas
• People to people networking, “deep-sharing”
enriches everyone’s experience.
The speakers felt that the benefits are many but there are potential
pitfalls in working with collaborative organizations. You need
to make sure you understand fully what the collaborative is about,
how they operate (funding models), how decisions are made, and
certainly the time and financial commitments involved. Is the
collaborative staffed or will your foundation be expected to contribute
staff time? If you consider these questions before making a commitment
to a collaborative the benefits will far outweigh the negatives.
The attendees felt that the way AGM could help its members would
be to conduct a survey of its memberships to discover who is participating
in collaborative organizations and in what context, how has the
experience been. AGM can also provide a means for sharing this
information and other resources on this topic via agmconnect.org.
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