Philanthropy trends to watch - and watch out for

In a recent blog, Bill Somerville of the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation offers six encouraging predictions for philanthropy in 2014:

1. The philanthropic dollar will become more entrepreneurial and risk taking.
2. Philanthropy will focus more on outstanding individuals and organizations.
3. Philanthropy will embrace the concept of trust in all its dimensions.
4. More grants to programs will be for discretionary use on the grassroots level.
5. Relationships between applicants and foundations will become more collegial.
6. More young people will be in philanthropic work.

Predictions? Numbers 1-5 are what I consider to be among current best practices of strategic grant making and grants management. Here are my additional predictions for 2014 philanthropy:

1. There will be more value placed on planning and performance management.
2. Quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods will advance; experimentation and random trials will spread.
3. Digital media will keep driving a faster news and charitable fad cycle, fueling the short attention span of new philanthropists and enhancing the allure of quick wins.
4. Economic pressure and rancorous partisanship in the political arena will demand ever more policy savvy from philanthropies and their grantees.

Social change and taking social and technical innovations to scale and sustainability takes long-term commitment and engagement.  Philanthropies must seek traceable indicators of change and also balance optimism with caution in the face of double-edged trends.

Foundations Fall for Visibility

How does your visibility connect to funding from foundations? I just finished a project for a UK scientific research organization that is seeking to grow its business and impact.  As we discussed the origins of their funding streams, almost every philanthropic investment stemmed from personal relationships.  And those personal relationships had evolved from the staff’s visibility as leaders and innovators in their fields.  In my grant-maker experience, I began a new investment area by networking among experts in the field and crawling the web and literature to identify leaders, success stories, trends, and innovations – well before I sent any public signals of funding opportunities.  The notable get noticed and the noticeable are noted.

Visibility is also the lever by which foundations make a difference.  Foundations need grantee visibility for their impact.  Your websites, newsletters, speeches, blogs, tweets, publications and charisma must attract the attention of decision-makers, imitators and investors for foundations to achieve their goals of policy change, enterprise growth, and social change. 

The good news is that most of the strategic communications that you use to create change will also attract the attention of private foundations – most, but not all.  How you purposefully deploy your staff and your communications budgets will differ between the pathway from action to social change and the pathways that position your organization as an innovator, agenda-setter and change agent.  Mapping those two pathways can help to dictate resource allocations, identify key partners, point to critical tactics, and set priorities as well as communicate to your funders how you’ll achieve impact.  Our conversations in London last month showed that investing some time to considering the connections among visibility, funding and impact can have immediate benefits for strategic decision-making.