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Resource Type: Publication

Which Stakeholders Should We Involve in Our Decisions and How?

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Taking time early in the grantmaking process to map out the stakeholders affected by our work, and their position in the ecosystem, helps creates a deeper understanding of key issues. It also prepares us to address future concerns and to tap stakeholder expertise in a proactive way that helps build agreement and buy-in that ultimately leads to more effective programs. In order to do this well, grantmakers need to master stakeholder analysis and determine how to bring key players into decision-making.

How Do We Build and Maintain Authentic Relationships?

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While we may not be able to totally remove the inherent power imbalance between grantmakers, our grantees and the communities we serve, we can take steps to build more trusting, honest and authentic relationships.

What is Empathy and What Are the Benefits?

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Empathy is one of the main reasons individual and institutional philanthropy exist. Grantmakers in communities across the country and around the world are mission-bound to try and help people and communities overcome challenges in order to thrive.

What Does Effective Due Diligence Look Like?

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Due diligence is a process that helps grantmakers get to know grantseekers. Typically, it’s seen strictly as a means to ensure an organization’s financial and legal compliance. However, when done well, due diligence has the potential to provide insight into such critical attributes as the role of the organization’s board, the position the nonprofit holds in its field and community, and the level of alignment between our own mission and the goals of the grantseeker.

Where Should We Start in Using Evaluation as a Tool for Learning?

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Many grantmakers agree that an increased focus on evaluation and learning can help us tease out insights on our true impact and how we can continue to do better. However, despite significant investments in evaluation in recent years, philanthropy continues to struggle to measure its work.

What is Stakeholder Engagement?

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Many grantmakers are recognizing that in order to ensure better results, we need to tap into the knowledge experience and energy of key stakeholders — nonprofits, community members, other funders, thought leaders.

How Can We Embrace a Learning for Improvement Mindset?

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A priority for grantmakers and our grantees is to create a space to reflect and learn so that our organizations can become more relevant, and more effective in achieving our goals. Learning, and evaluation, that is specifically focused on improvement provides grantmakers and grantees with the information and the perspective we need to better understand both how we’re doing in our work and how to get better results.

What Roles Can Grantmakers Play in Supporting Networks?

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Grantmakers of all kinds care about tangible progress on tough problems, but we also seek harder-to-measure results. Networks for social change can help on both of these fronts, building new capacity for making progress on complex problems and achieving significant measurable results. Tapping into network connections is becoming the norm for social change makers, whether we’re mapping influential relationships for an advocacy campaign, coordinating a protest to fight climate change or spreading an approach to community engagement