Resources

Employee Benefits question For those who cover a percentage of the premium for employees who participate in your foundation’s group medical health insurance plan, do you continue to pay any portion of the monthly costs when the employee goes on Medicare?    Further, for employee spouses who participated in the group medical health insurance plan, do you pay any portion of the monthly cost for spouses when they go on Medicare? 

We are looking to create a tuition reimbursement policy and developing a practice for employees who want to pursue degrees or certificate during their employment. If you have a policy and/or a practice in this space, I would most appreciate anything you might share here about it.

I’m doing some research into creating a (likely 2-year) post-college fellowship program and was hoping to get some insight from other foundations who manage this type of fellowship. In particular- • How do you manage recruitment? • What do the Fellow’s job description and assignments look like? • What are the ultimate goals of the Fellowship and how do you ensure they’re achieved?

Hello – we’re conducting some research on grants management systems (GMS) and wanted to hear from others if they have a GMS that they might recommend? The system needs to be robust with both internal management and external application infrastructure. System needs to support at minimum: multiple grants rounds within a year with no less than 15 unique applications; deployment of multi-year grants; processing of more than 2500 grant awards within a year; integration with a financial management system and process no less than 3000 payments within a year; management of over 100 internal users and over 900 external users; processing of at least $150mm in a single, year-long grant cycle; and robust reporting functionality. Thank you!

Hi All, Would anyone be willing to share examples of grantmaking policies prohibiting grants to hate groups, organizations under active investigation and/or organizations unreflective of the foundation's values? If the policy was written for a community foundation that would be especially helpful. Thank you,

Does anyone have any recommended resources for evaluating an Executive Director of a small foundation?

Hello!  I work with the Stryker Johnston Foundation in Kalamazoo, MI. We are currently in the process of seeking a branding/communications consultant to assist us in our brand development efforts. We want them to have experience working with nonprofits, align with our anti-racist platform, and have expertise in developing visual brand identities. We will be intentional about working with folks that are representative of our grant partners. If you all have recommendations, could you please send them my way? Appreciatively, 

Good Afternoon All, For effective and inclusive community change planning, our foundation has begun to work closely with local community members who will be affected by the proposals and projects under discussion. Our foundation is examining how to appropriately compensate individuals and collaborators who bring their community knowledge and experience to the planning and decision-making table. We are seeking to engage community partners through several avenues, such as serving on a committee or task force, attending meetings, and bringing questions and proposals for discussion back to neighbors and networks. We understand that providing expertise in a meaningful way and on an ongoing basis is a large time commitment for residents and agency staff members alike. To that end, we are seeking information from fellow funders on how you compensate key stakeholders and community partners for their time. How do you select key stakeholders? How are they compensated? Any best practices on communicating engagement/partnership expectations? Thank you in advance for any information you can share. Warmly,

Hello Colleagues, We are wondering about cyber insurance, particularly in view of remote work. Has anyone had experience with getting cyber insurance and/or the benefits (or not) of having such insurance? We’re wondering if there is a trend toward getting this insurance in the foundation/philanthropy serving organization, world. Thanks so much for any perspective you can share!

Good morning, At Global Fund for Children, we are exploring creating an online community space for our partners working with children and youth around the world. I would love to hear from our GEO community what has been your experience in launching and managing an online community of partners? What's worked? What hasn't? Right now, we have experience with some of our regional cohort groups using Whatsapp. We've heard back from some partners that they are interested in a more unique dedicated space (so not a Facebook or LinkedIn group). Would also love to hear any experiences with specific platforms, especially those that allow for a multilingual community. (From my research, there are few available!). A note on some of the objectives and potentials we're seeing with an online community space: • Facilitate network building within and across regions and issues • Share resources and events created by partners and Global Fund for Children • Create a library with capacity development resources • Share time-sensitive opportunities for funding, training, and advocacy • Generate conversation online and virtually about timely issues • Keep partners connected even if no longer grant recipients Thanks so much in advance for sharing your experience! I'm also happy to set up a time to chat or for a group of us to share experiences, depending on the response.