One of the sessions at the 2003 Fall Retreat was a funders-only conversation
where the panel (Harriet Barlow of the HKH Foundation, Tim Greyhavens
of the Wilburforce Foundation, Hal Harvey of the William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation and Josh Reichert of the Pew Charitable Trusts)
provoked participants to examine theories of change in the role that
foundations play. Many questions offered by attendees were not addressed
due to time constraints and in our post-Retreat survey we had many
suggestions to continue this conversation. Here Tim Greyhavens responds
to some of those questions––
Q: Much of what we’ve all worked for the past 30 years is under
siege. In times like these, what’s a smart investment of our
limited resources? Should we be picking lynchpin issues where we
build continual mass more effectively?
TG: Given the extent of this Administration’s attacks on the
environment, it’s essential to shift some of our priorities from
offense to defense. No amount of progress in other areas will make
up for weakening the Clean Air or Clean Water Acts, ESA, or NEPA. We
have to hold the line on our basic environmental laws, period. Legal
organizations like Earthjustice are indispensable, and with all that’s
under attack the legal groups are stretched to the limit. It’s
essential for as many foundations as possible to support the legal
defense of our core environmental laws.
Q: What’s the biggest similarity or difference between your
approaches?
TG: Our approaches are determined in part by the sizes of our foundations.
Smaller foundations like ours are not perceived as players at the
policy-making level, so we concentrate our grantmaking on building
and strengthening
an effective grassroots movement. For us, this means we focus our
time and resources through working with existing organizations rather
than
creating new ones. By supporting works in progress, we don’t
have to worry about delays in start-up time, introducing “new
members to the orchestra”, or reformulating existing coalitions.
This allows us to adapt to changes and respond in a relatively short
amount of time, whereas larger foundations may need many months of
research and planning before implementing their programs due to the
size of their grants.
Q: If theories of sustainable environmental and social change consistently
recognize the importance of time, why does so much of our rhetoric
imply that we are focused on large-scale, near-term change?
TG: There are compounding factors underlying this problem. First,
we have a poor understanding of how many environmental systems function
over the long-term. At most, science has accurately measured key environmental
changes over the last hundred years, and we still have very few answers
about what we need to do to address many of those changes. Secondly,
most environmental problems begin because of social problems. Generally,
we have an inadequate understanding of the dynamics of societal/environmental
cause-and-effects, and often where we do have the information we need,
we have not concentrated our resources to address the problems. Finally,
as foundations we have no standards about how we monitor and evaluate
our work. In place of more meaningful data, some foundations pick the
most basic scales of measurement, like number of acres protected, which
provide only one component of a much larger matrix of factors we should
be considering. Until we fund both the ecological and social science
studies to address these challenges, we will remain in limbo between
reality and our goals.
Q: How can you make the necessary investments to sustain the results
you have achieved?
TG: It’s not necessary to make major grants to realize substantial
returns for investments. Small amounts for capacity building can
leverage many times their initial value by allowing an organization
to become
more effective with fundraising, communications, planning, use
of technologies or general administration. Our foundation once made
a $500 grant to
allow an executive director to travel to a training on getting
major gifts. On her return flight home, she used her newly learned
skills
to open a dialogue with the person next to her on the plane and
wound up getting a $5,000 contribution for her organization before
the end
of the flight. The additional funds allowed her organization to
fund a law suit that they eventually won. Results are sustainable
only when
the groups that achieved them in the first place are sustainable
as well, and in many cases that means investing in the leaders of
those
organizations. A small amount of funding to support individual
leadership often goes a long way.
Q: Give us an example of a good grant that exemplifies your approach
to or your theory of change. What keeps you from making more such grants?
TG: We gave a three-year grant of $252,000––$84,000 each
year to the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). $75,000 of this
amount is for general support of their work, with an additional $9,000
each year to allow them to upgrade their computer systems and purchase
donor management software. We identified CBD’s work as critical
to our mission since they focus on protection of endangered species,
and they have a strong track record of accomplishments. We then worked
with them to articulate specific outcomes within their existing programs
that match our goals. This allowed us to give them general support
funding over a longer period. At the same time we made sure to include
funds that will allow them to strengthen their effectiveness and
diversify their funding base. We continually look for additional
opportunities
to make similar grants, within the constraints of our goals and the
limited number of organizations that concentrate on the same issues
as our foundation.
Q: What recommendation(s) do smaller foundations have for larger ones?
TG: As much as possible, let us know what you’re planning to
do before you do it. Most of our grants are in the $25,000 to $50,000
range and support existing programs. It’s frustrating to spend
several months looking at what we think are all of the factors our
Board will want to know about a possible $30,000 grant, and after approving
the grant, find that the same organization will get a $200,000 grant
from a large foundation for the same work. We all have difficult choices
to make, and a decision about a grant that’s 10% of your entire
budget can be just as agonizing when it’s $15,000 as when it’s
$1,500,000.
Q: Isn’t it important not to confuse knowing and getting close
to decision makers with building a power base that will move decision-making
to a more favorable forum?
TG: Absolutely. There are decision makers at every level, and it’s
essential to know whom you’re trying to reach. Sometimes the
power base that reaches one level of decision makers is a broad coalition
of citizen activists; at other levels decision makers respond best
to other decision makers. We need to know as much as possible about
the leaders we want to influence and who those people turn to when
they make decisions. We should seek out and support a variety of
programs in a larger network of leaders who both listen well and
are listened
to in their respective communities.
Q: Where are the highest leverage funding opportunities to advance
the values that are central to systemic, sustainable change?
TG: Never underestimate the power of the individual. As Malcolm
Gladwell points out in his book, The Tipping Point, major changes
in our society
often have happened suddenly and unexpectedly because of the influence
of one idea or one individual. While this is not a new concept, his
descriptions of so-called “social epidemics” remind us
all that ideas sometimes catch hold not because they’re great,
but because one person was in the right place at the right time.
The conservative movement has done an excellent job of developing
and grooming
individuals to influence the way the media and therefore our society
perceives issues, and we need to do the same. We need to significantly
increase funding for leadership development programs, fellowships,
think tanks and other programs that allow our brightest and most
compelling progressive leaders to be heard.
Q: Is the foundation/grantmaking model fundamentally flawed? That
is––how
can we truly fund grassroots movements to self-sufficiency?
TG: I believe the progressive foundation community’s greatest
strength and greatest weakness is our multiplicity of approaches. We
know from studies that foundations funding more progressive movements
tend to support a wide variety of organizations, while those supporting
more conservative movements concentrate their dollars in a smaller
number of grantees. We’re seeing the advantages of the latter
approach during the current economic downturn ––a few large,
well-funded organizations are more self-sustaining than numerous small,
partially-funded groups. At the same time, our support of the grassroots
is essential to keeping an engaged and informed society. We need to
find ways to support the grassroots community that doesn’t
involve replicating thousands of smaller groups, each struggling
to survive.
One way EGA might be able to help on issues such as this is to serve
as a clearinghouse for information about effective grantmaking strategies
and issues, so we can be better learn from each other.
Q: How do you use evaluation in your foundation? What outcomes do
you seek (e.g., acres protected, public attitude shifts)? How do
you know it’s the best approach?
TG: Evaluation is an integral part of all of our work. We have a
well-articulated strategic plan with specific goals and objectives.
Some examples of
the types of outcomes we support include increasing the amount of
protected critical wildlife habitat, assuring the quality and extent
of connective
corridors between protected areas, increasing public knowledge of
wildlife populations, and improving habitat management plans that
ensure the
viability of endangered, threatened or indicator species in the region.
Each proposal we consider has to specifically address one of our
goals and has to include an evaluation plan that ties directly back
to the
activities that are being proposed. Since we usually don’t have
enough money to completely fund a given program, it is impossible for
us to know if what we fund is the best approach. Therefore, we often
fund a range of programs that all address the same issue––advocacy
campaigns, public education, litigation, science and communications,
just to name a few. Concurrently, we also fund organizational effectiveness
programs for the groups doing this work so we help build a sustainable
progressive community.
