Funders, please stop trying to be unique snowflakes

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A few months ago, I was attending a conference where there was a panel of funders. Someone asked a question about something, and a panelist answered with this joke: “Well, if you’ve seen one foundation, you’ve seen…ONE foundation!” Everyone chuckled; one because the joke was well-delivered with good comedic timing, but also because power dynamics have conditioned nonprofit leaders to laugh at funders’ and donors’ jokes, regardless of their mirthful qualities.

But this joke made me think about how easily we just take things at face value when it comes to funder behaviors, even when those behaviors negatively affect nonprofits and the communities they serve. This oft-repeated joke, when explained, means every foundation is unique and has its own values, processes, idiosyncrasies, likes and dislikes, and so on, and therefore, nonprofits would do well to do their own research on each foundation they approach instead of relying on general advice about funders.

To some extent, it’s natural to have some variations among foundations. Nonprofits have their own quirks as well. But with funders, this has gone a bit far. Funders seem to go out of their way to have their own strategies, processes, and requirements of grantees (while also ironically refusing to do anything unless other funders are on board, hence the game of Funding Chicken). This has caused all sorts of problems, including

• wasting nonprofit leaders’ time by requiring snowflake grant applications and reports when it’s all the same information
• chasing what’s new and “innovative” and leaving proven programs and services scrambling for funding
• funding for only one or two or three years, when nonprofits need stability over ten or twenty years to be at their most effective
• expending time and energy doing strategic plans, including going on long hiatuses and leaving nonprofits in the lurch
• wasting money, time, and goodwill doing “listening” sessions or funding redundant research, hoping for unique responses and angles
• coming up with strategies and priorities that often make no sense, aren’t requested by nonprofits, are completely useless, or are possibly even harmful to communities

When looked through the lens of harm to nonprofits and the community, “when you’ve seen one foundation, you’ve seen one foundation” stops being a charming joke and starts being enraging.

Imagine if hospitals had that philosophy: “Sorry, at our facilities all patient medical charts and reports must be written in 14-point font in Arial, double spaced, and each answer must be no more than 25 characters. Since you want to transfer this patient over from your hospital, we need you to convert all their charts into our format.”

There is a reason why hospitals, air traffic control, and other high-stakes professions agree to follow certain standardized protocols. Because it’s a matter of life and death. Forcing healthcare providers to waste their time with dozens of different processes if every hospital wanted to be special would cause people to die. Forcing pilots to learn hundreds of different communications protocols if each airport wanted to be unique would cause planes to crash and people to die.

So why is it ok among funders? Nonprofits also deal with life-or-death situations. They run suicide hotlines. They protect kids from being abused. They do advocacy work on a host of things that could lead to lives being saved. We need to have the same understanding when it comes to this sector: Forcing nonprofit leaders to waste time conforming to funders’ unique whims and processes causes people to die.

This is especially true during these horrifying times, when some nonprofits are helping prevent genocide and mass starvation in Palestine, and others are trying to fight fascism and save democracy. Food pantries, arts, music, cultural, research, advocacy, capacity building, whatever nonprofits are working on, directly or indirectly affects people’s lives. They do not have time or energy to spare navigating dozens of funders’ wildly different processes, whims, and idiosyncrasies.

With how dire everything is, we need all of us focused and at our best. That means funders need to be OK with setting aside their need to be special and unique. Here are a few things funders can do. Many of these things I and others have been saying for years, including by colleagues engaged in trust-based philanthropy, but they bear repeating because even though everything is on fire, we are still dealing with these same challenges:

1. Give multi-year general operating dollars (MYGOD)
2. Fund “boring” but essential stuff like rent, staff pay, HR systems, professional development, etc.
3. Rethink this idea that you need to be “strategic.” You don’t. “strategic philanthropy” the way many funders have been implementing it has long been disproven.
4. Work with communities to carry out solutions, even if they’re not exciting to you or they don’t make your foundation “stand out”
5. Accept grant applications that have already been written
6. Accept annual reports instead of requiring ones tailored to you
7. Simplify your grant portals, maybe use ones your peers already are using
8. Collaborate on due diligence so nonprofits don’t have to be vetted 12 different times by 12 different funders using 12 different processes
9. Invest in leadership and staff well-being
10. Move money quickly
11. Fund advocacy and systems-change work
12. Increase your payout rate
13. Take on responsibility if you’re going to ask nonprofits to do redundant stuff. For instance, enter whatever information you already have into your grant portals for your grantees

Yeah, none of those things will make your foundation unique or your board trustees to feel special, but we don’t need uniqueness or specialness right now. We need time, energy, flexible and stable funding, and trust to do vital work during a critical period in time, when every second counts.

In the meanwhile, let’s retire the “when you’ve seen one foundation” joke, or at least not consider it funny any more. Let’s make it so that the next time we hear “When you’ve seen one foundation…” the kicker would be “you’ve seen thousands that have put their egos aside for the sake of working toward a just and equitable world.”

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