Resources

We are seeking thoughts, favorite resources, and/or policies that colleagues may have for when and how their foundation – in particular, a family foundation, might leverage their power/voice within a community to move the needle on any particular issue. Perhaps on an issue area where philanthropy is silent or having an emerging voice. Some topics can include immigration, gun violence or democracy.

Does anyone have a policy or approach they'd be willing to share re: distributed decision-making authority for grants? (E.g., awards over X amount must be approved by trustees; grants under Y amount can be approved by the program director, etc.)

I am wondering if/how foundations have addressed Board member compensation as a matter of equity, diversity and inclusion. Specifically, I’d like to know if anyone has experience implementing a Board compensation policy designed to remove financial and/or cultural barriers that make it difficult or impossible for some (if not many) to consider Board service.

Does your foundation have a reserve amount and if yes, how is that determined?

We are seeking information about other foundations who offer matching gift programs along with eligibility for and limitations of their programs.

The Vaccine Delivery team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is exploring what it means to shift to an agile strategy and operating model. We are interested in learning what it means to transform to a team that operates on rapid learning and decision cycles and has the ability to quickly and efficiently revise strategy, structure, processes, and people towards achieving impact while ensuring we remain strong, reliable partners to our grantees and the people around the world to whom we ultimately are in service. Do you know of agile resources, experts, practitioners, or organizations that can help us to be better informed about what agile is (and is not) and help us to understand what is needed to design and implement an agile operating model for our team?

At the Global Fund for Children, we are trying to get better at documenting interactions with our grantee partners. We would like to support our Program Officers to document phone calls, site visits, introductions made, and other important interactions using our current system, GIFTS Online, so that we may better track our inputs and relationships over time. As we offer capacity development services with our funding, we believe that better tracking will enable to us to keep clear records of how we engage with partners and improve institutional memory. We would love to know if anyone has any resources or strategies to help reinforce the importance of this practice for staff so it becomes a regular part of partner engagement and not an admin burden. Any practices in general that colleagues have found helpful around documentation would also be welcome.

The Finance Department at Global Fund for Children is working towards redesigning the way we manage and report on institutional grants. We are interested to know how you allocate program staff’s time who works on multiple grants in your accounting system.

Does anyone have resources/information on providing student loan payments to employees as an employment benefit?

The fields of strategic learning and evaluation have also grown and shifted over the last decade, and new ways of thinking about and evaluating grantmaking and its impacts have emerged. This paper responds to these changes and provides a fresh outlook and set of resources for grantmaker CEOs, evaluation staff, and senior leaders to use to engage their boards and trustees in strategic learning. Our hope is that staff and leaders use any or all of the ten tools we have developed to help board members and trustees understand what strategic learning is (and isn’t), why it is important, and how to better incorporate strategic learning practices into their work.