Resources

Does anyone know of any sources/policies that touch upon the issue of Family foundations’ with regard to privacy versus transparency?

The Arcus Foundation is seeking information about fellow funders’ policies and protocols for when staff travel. We’re interested in example guiding principles or expectations and other best practices that help ensure staff safety while traveling as well as enable workflow continuity. Please let us know if you have resources or strategies that might be of assistance to us.

As part of our capacity building program, we would like to provide scholarships for our grantees to attend trainings and conferences (both local and out-of-town) focused on racial equity. From GEO members who do provide scholarships, I'd love to hear more of the details of your program.

We are researching best practice for a reserve amount that would ensure stability and sustainability of program funding. Any experience, feedback or resources on the area of reserves would be appreciated.

We are venturing into a strategic planning process for a 2 and 5 year internal strategic plan, and we have engaged a consultant to support us in this process. I am curious to hear/read any key lessons learned in the process of strategic planning (we should have done that, wish we didn’t do that, oh my I never thought of that – these kinds of things).

If you include current or past grantees on your board, how do you handle the possibility of those organizations applying for funding? I’d love to know your rationale and/or guidelines for allowing or not allowing them to apply for grants from your foundation.

Would you mind sharing your relocation allowance policy? I’m trying to get a sense on whether we are offering new hires a fair and competitive benefit.

I am writing today to see if you have guidance at your foundation for program staff about working well with grantees that you could share with us. We are embarking on a cross-foundation effort to create guidance for program staff on many dimensions doing excellent work with grantees. This might include guidance for how to engage grantees (i.e, communications, responsiveness, site visits, frequency of contact) or guidance on what to cover (i.e., how success will be measured, the role of and plans for evaluation, full/true costs of grantees’ work, D/E/I topics, and so forth).

We are introducing a multi-year grant for the first time, specifically a three year grant. We would appreciate hearing back as to best-practices for reporting and/or model for language proposing a multi-year grant to a grantee.

I am seeking guidance on a more equitable policy for Indirect. I am noticing that more and more nonprofits are adding an indirect rate to their grant budgets. It used to be that we only saw this with universities and research entities. When talking to some of our grantees about this rate, I've learned they each calculate the rate differently. Also, when an applicant breaks down what would normally be considered "indirect," we don't add up the expenses to see if they come within our policy. Our current policy is no more than 12% (but again, that's if they title it "indirect.") Please include your average grant size or grant range in your response.