Resources

Posting on behalf of an anonymous GEO member: “I'm interested in learning about and/or connecting with GRANTMAKERS (specifically; not nonprofits) who have gone down the path of a non-hierarchical or shared leadership model of management structure. I would love to hear about and learn from other foundations who are structured this way without a singular President/Executive Director or experimenting with other forms. Can you direct me to anyone who can offer advice or experience? Thank you in advance.”

Dear GEO Community, Our Foundation is currently in the implementation phase of a new strategic plan, which includes re-designing our organization to match our strategy. To assist us in this important phase of our development we are in the process of identifying potential consultants. Ideally, it would be most effective to engage a consultant/consulting firm that provides expertise in a number of areas including structure, process, and culture. Any insight, recommendations, and/or referrals you may be able to provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! Curtis

Hello all, Has anyone seen a form or other method of collecting demographic data from staff/constituents, that they feel is respectful and well done? We know that Candid is a good place to enter that demographic data once collected data but we've had questions from nonprofits and others about how best to collect the information from their staff and/or constituents. Any thoughts and/or resources you have would be much appreciated. Thank you! Georganna

Hello Everyone, We are looking at our Vacation/Sick Leave policies and considering transitioning to a PTO bank for leave. Is anyone willing to share their PTO policies, including any carryover or payout upon termination with us? Thank you, ___

This publication from Movement Tapestries offers insights and guidance for organizations navigating equity-embedded transformations, and the challenges that can come with embarking on such journeys.

Good morning, CFU has undertaken a process to develop a community impact strategy for our endowment, issue-based funds, and initiatives. We'd appreciate recommendations for any monitoring and evaluation consultants that this group has been especially impressed with. It would be a bonus if there were any experiences with ESG metrics. Many thanks in advance!

Hello Everyone, We would love to gain deeper insight from this community about grantmaking committees. Here are our questions: • What is the structure of your evaluating body – do you have one core committee or multiple committees (fund, sector, or program dependent, for example)? • What steps has your organization taken to diversify committees and to incorporate participatory grantmaking? How are community members considered for your committee (application process, word-of-mouth, staff-driven, etc)? • Is your organization utilizing content experts for proposal evaluations? If so, are they part of your core decision making body or used as advisors? • Would anyone be willing to share sample committee materials, such as training documents? • Finally, how do you show appreciation to your committee in cases where they are participating on a volunteer basis?

Dear grantmaking colleagues, Our team is in the search of a grants management system that will help automate our current manual grantmaking process. We’ve narrowed down our top 2 choices - SmartSimple and Salesforce – and want to ask if folks here have any thoughts, opinions, and / or red flags on these systems. Or – please let us know if you know of any exceptional GMS product that has served well for your organization. We are looking for a GMS that is easy to use, highly secure, functional, and continuing to grow in capabilities with our growing organizational needs. Thank you!

In 2021 we piloted the collection of applicant staff and board demographic data (race/ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation) in partnership with our evaluation partner, as one step to understand who our grants were going to and how applicant organizations were representative of the communities they and we want to be serving. It was not mandatory and doesn’t look it will be next year either. But, we are taking feedback and trying to understand how we can be more supportive of our grantees in 1) collecting this information in a safe and appropriate way and 2) using this information appropriately to reflect and strategize on what potential gaps there may be in representation within their own organizations. We haven’t done a ton in that second space, but wanted to reach out more about the mechanics of the data collection process to understand if and what others are doing. Some questions: Are you collecting demographic data from staff and/or boards of applicant organizations? If so, what is the method or conduit for which you do this? Is the applicant responsible for getting all of their data and putting it into the application/portal or a spreadsheet of sorts? Are there any third party programs or software that allow for collecting and aggregating data this data? We also heard that organizations, and particularly the people responsible for submitting application information, would appreciate an opportunity for anonymity for themselves and their coworkers within the data collection process. Has anyone seen any tools, or know of any strategies that allow for the organization to anonymously collect this data from their own orgs?

Good Morning, Our Community Foundation has gotten more involved in advocacy over the past few years. As part of that, we are hoping to develop specific policies/procedures related to advocacy to help guide our work. Do any GEO members have example policies, procedures, etc. related to advocacy that we could see and/or does anyone know of other foundations that have these and would be willing to share their work?