Smarter Grantmaking in Action: GAR Foundation

  • Shantaé François, August 24, 2017

How GAR Foundation is narrowing its focus to have a deeper impact in the community.

Challenge

Throughout its fifty-year existence, GAR Foundation has been a place-based private foundation with a primary focus on Akron and Summit County, Ohio. Founded in 1967, GAR Foundation’s mission is to help Akron become smarter, stronger, and more vibrant. In recent years, GAR realized that it enters a lot of grant transactions, but does not see a great deal of impact on key community conditions. GAR underwent a strategic planning process in 2016 to drive more tangible outcomes in its priority areas — intentionally acknowledging that as the foundation moves toward a narrower, deeper approach to its work, some groups that have historically received grants may not fit within its new direction.

Solution

Christine Amer Mayer, president of GAR Foundation, says there were two main factors driving the strategic planning process: “Our board and staff felt a lot of concern about statistics on poverty, education, and economic and workforce development in our core community of Akron, Ohio. Even though we felt we were making great grants to solid organizations, when we look at those numbers, we understand that we need to change our behavior to impact them in a bigger way,” says Mayer. “Another reason to do the strategic planning process was to examine everything we’re doing and make sure we’re putting our dollars and human resources to the highest and best use to drive the changes we’re interested in,” she continues.

How It Worked

From the very beginning both staff and board members understood that a change in their direction could disrupt funding for some organizations that have received GAR grants for a number of years. Mayer says, “The board wants GAR to move in this new strategic direction and we’re really excited about it and the impact we can have, but we are all also sensitive to the fact that we will have to step away from some long time partners and that has a real impact as well.”

GAR Foundation’s new strategy implementation will begin in 2018, with fall 2017 largely dedicated to transitioning away from some grantees and finalizing new strategies, tactics, and metrics. “We committed that we weren’t going to drop anyone from where they were to $0 in one fell swoop, so we’re making a number of what we call phase out grants. These grants are normally a smaller dollar amount than what the grantees have received historically. We’ve been preparing a lot of these folks over the past year or more,” says Mayer.

Bad news is never fun, but bad news with no notice is very disruptive.

Christine Mayer, president of GAR Foundation

Outcomes

Prior to the strategic shift, GAR Foundation averaged 120 – 140 grants per year. Going forward those numbers may decrease by 35%. To prepare grantees and community members for the changes, GAR Foundation has been communicating this process from the very beginning. Since summer 2016, when the strategic planning process began, the foundation has been sending periodic updates to GAR’s entire grantee community and encouraging them to add their board members to GAR’s newsletter list. The foundation has also been consistently rolling out information on their website and hosted six well-attended community information sessions for nonprofits and their board members to explain its planning efforts, what it learned, and what it will mean going forward. GAR Foundation will also be offering free technical assistance support for nonprofits later this year on topics that grantees and community members suggested, many of them related to financial sustainability. Organizations that have been told that they won’t be a fit with GAR’s work going forward will receive priority registration but the support will be available to all.

Mayer says, “I’ve heard a lot of people say that they think our community really needs the funders to do fewer things more deeply. Anyone can say that, but when your organization is the one that doesn’t get funded, it’s a little harder to feel good about it. It speaks volumes about our community that many people whose work will no longer be a strategic fit remain supportive of our new strategy.”

She continues, “Everyone in philanthropy knows that the occupational hazard is you don’t get much honest feedback. Because if you’re writing the grant checks, no one will tell you if what you’re doing is not helpful to the community. In that environment, it’s possible to pat ourselves on the back forever and feel good about the way we’ve always done it because there are lots of great stories, there are lots of good organizations. But we have to be honest with ourselves that if the community conditions aren’t where we want them to be, and we keep doing the same thing over and over again, shame on us. We’re missing an opportunity to be more thoughtful and intentional about impacting some of those community metrics and to put our resources to the best possible use.”

Inspiring Ideas for Improvement from Christine Mayer

  • Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. When you think you can’t say it one more time, say it ten more times.”
  • Saturate your marketplace with the message, using multiple means to get to your audience. Because of our intensive communications work, we removed to a large degree the element of surprise, which in my opinion, especially if you have bad news, is one of the most important things you can do.”
  • Don’t plan in a vacuum. Be mindful of what your role should be and where you are positioned to make the most impact, as well as what others are focusing on so you can be comfortable with the role you play in the larger ecosystem. Don’t just create your strategy without thinking about the rest of the world and what it makes sense for other people to be doing. Try to have sightlines to other funders and priorities and how they all fit together.”