Lea Remigio

The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) recently published a report about how foundations can assist their grantee organizations in a more holistic fashion. The findings in the article were powered by surveying nonprofit directors and other decision makers. The article, titled “Nonprofit Challenges: What Foundations Can Do“, did not contain any exceptionally surprising conclusions, but it was a nice reminder of how foundations may be able to provide support that is more than just focused funding.

In a nutshell, the report points out that foundations should strive to get to know their grantee organizations better, foster a transparent working relationship with them, provide some streams of unrestricted (non-project based) funding, and provide technical assistance. I take back what I said in the last paragraph about a lack of surprising information to point out that about 5% of their survey responders reported receiving technical assistance from their foundation funders. Only five percent! What I thought when I read that is that most foundations require some level of outcomes reporting (usually statistical in nature) on a regular basis as part of the grant requirements agreement, yet provide no assistance to their funded organizations for how to produce those outcomes. Can that be accurate? What a somber thought.

Information systems and technology provide limitless powerful tools to help nonprofits maximize the number of people they can assist on dwindling budgets. I think by now most nonprofit leaders understand this. What they also understand is that researching and implementing the right solutions can be a real resource hog and, if not done properly, can sink money into technologies that fail. The investment of time and money and the high risk of failure may often deter nonprofit directors from tackling IT improvements at their organizations. It may seem safer to limp along on old information systems that get the job done and require no significant resource investment (maintenance fees, dedicated staff members, training costs, etc). But this limp leads to long-term productivity leakage.

Think of a swimming pool floaty with a small hole in it – the longer you sit on it, the lower you sink.

(my brother, sinking his swan floaty)

So in most situations, nonprofit leaders should take decisive action to improve their technology and information systems. This is where foundations or other funders can assist. Most of my recent work has been with a foundation, so I’m going to focus on foundations as a type of funder for purposes of this post.

It’s fair to say that most foundations serve grantees who share similar missions and qualities. There’s a huge opportunity for foundations to impact the organizations they assist by providing information technology assistance such as:

• Common software application trainings (MS Word, Excel, or a widely used case management system)
• Standardized report templates for outcomes reporting
• Workflow and business process analysis
• Bulk software purchasing arrangements
• Annual aggregate statistical data that grantees may use for writing grant proposals or to compare themselves to their peer organizations
• Recommendations for free or open source software solutions (EG: Google Apps, Joomla!, Dreamhost)
• Shared contractual resources to help them implement the recommended solutions

The side effect of a strong foundation that provides some types of technical assistance is the promotion of a more cohesive and focused network of providers. The technical assistance topics provide common ground for exchange of ideas and provide opportunities for the participating organizations to work together.

All said, successful technology assistance efforts cannot be one-sided. Grantee organizations must also devote resources to the technical assistance provided by their funders. While the CEP report shows evidence that the technical assistance is necessary, its scope does not include tips on what grantee organization leaders must do to support the foundation’s assistance investment.  I have worked with organizations that took full advantage of foundation technical assistance by devoting people, time and thought to the projects.  I have worked with organizations that simply take all the technical assistance they can get without contributing and constantly ask for more. The success rate between these two ends of the spectrum is colossal. The organizations that fail to devote leverage resources to foundation-provided technical assistance are generally less satisfied with the outcome of such projects and experience chronic gaps in the implemented solutions. (“This information system I’ve devoted no resources to… it never works right for us.”) They also tend to drain resources away from the foundation’s overall effort to provide equal technical support opportunities to all grantees…because their needs can never be fulfilled. It takes two to tango, right?

I don’t want to get too long-winded with this post, but it’s worth exploring what foundations can do to increase the likelihood that the grantee organizations will engage in technical assistance projects in a meaningful way. Look for a follow-up post on that topic soon.