What is philanthropy's role in the shutdown?

Source: Wikipedia Commons/Vinoth Chandar

This article originally appeared in the A.J. Fletcher Foundation's blog.
 
Damon Circosta and Shannon Ritchie

We’re now on day 14 of the government shutdown, and things just got real in NC. With families starting to feel the effects of the crisis, the nonprofit community struggles to meet their needs and the organization’s funders and supporters are left asking, what now?

The hardest hit victims of this crisis are children. WIC benefits were threatened until yesterday for almost 264,000 women, infants, and young children though thankfully temporary funding was secured so they don’t need to rely on food banks. Child care subsidies are starting to run out, leaving tens of thousands of families unable to afford child care by the end of this month (likely leading to many lost jobs for parents). We also learned from our partner Covenant with NC Children that NC DHHS has issued a “stop work order” to contractors funded by federal block grants – affecting a whole host of child welfare services.

It’s all so unfair, isn’t it?

In this time of need, foundations, private companies, and individuals have stepped in to help. Examples include:

• •  The Laura and John Arnold Foundation in Texas giving $10 million to keep Head Start programs open across the country.
• •   Fisher House, a private foundation, taking care of death benefits to military families, with support from The Special Operations Warrior Foundation.
• •   Food Lion announcing a $500,000 donation to food banks in NC to supplement for the potential loss in WIC benefits.
• •   A SC man even showed up at the Lincoln Memorial with a lawn mower and leaf blower to keep it looking beautiful during the shutdown – “just doing [his] part.”

These stories make headlines, but support from private donors is a drop in the bucket compared to the support low-income families receive from the government. The WIC program alone has a $205 million annual budget in NC.

As a charitable foundation that provides support to the nonprofit community in NC, it’s hard to watch this go down and not do something. I’m sure the other organizations I mentioned, among many others, feel similarly compelled which is what makes them act. But our work at Fletcher Foundation is to support big, innovative ideas, putting money behind them to watch them grow and improve the lives of families and communities in the state. The government’s work is to support taxpayer’s interests which include caring for our poor and vulnerable citizens – giving them money for food, subsidies for childcare assistance to help them work, etc.

Make no mistake, we’re not chastising organizations and individuals who are pitching in and doing what we pay our government to do on our behalf. We get it and many people are grateful for their generosity. But we do ourselves a great disservice if we lead the public to believe the private sector can make a difference in this mess. As the burden shifts the public implies, “Oh, let’s look to private foundations and companies to foot the bill for these services we desperately need,” but they lack the understanding of just how vast the gaps are. The only entities that can make a difference are our federal and state governments, and perhaps our energy, time, and resources, are best served letting them know how our kids are hurting because of their inability to fund the services they greatly rely on.

Fletcher Foundation has created a site to collect stories, photos, and videos from our grantees and community about how the government shutdown is hurting kids in NC. In working with our partners, we hope to shed light on how desperate this situation is for so many and share with our elected officials in Washington as they make decisions that can change course for us here in North Carolina. We’d love to hear from you.

Can philanthropy ‘fix’ public education?

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Special to Philanthropy Journal

Damon Circosta

There is a battle going on in North Carolina, where I work, and across the country for the future of public education. In the fog of war, sometimes it’s tough to tell who is on what side. Everyone wants to ascend to the mantle of “champion for kids” or “reformers of education,” and everyone fervently believes their solution is the winner.

As the debate about public education has become increasingly polarized in the last decade, the sharp partisanship draws frustration from frustrated parents whose objective is to send their kid to a great school.

Meanwhile, another interesting trend continues.  Private philanthropic organizations continue to find ways to support strengthening our schools. The headlines speak for themselves: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Commits $350 Million Nationally To Help Students Succeed in the Classroom, Annenberg to Give Education $500 Million Over Five Years, and Mark Zuckerberg Giving $100 Million to Newark Schools.

For context, America spends more than $500 billion a year on public elementary and secondary education. States typically provide a little less than half, local governments about 44 percent, and the federal government contributes about 13 percent of all direct expenditures.

Philanthropists, by contrast, only spend about $4 billion annually. You need a good education to do the math, which equals just 0.008 percent of total expenditures. Though it’s a drop in the bucket, this private money is having a growing influence on public education. 

The flexibility that philanthropic dollars provide can help spur innovation in our public schools. But foundation money injected into the public school system is merely an opportunity. There are no guarantees that a grant will “fix” public schools.

In my limited experience working to fund education initiatives, here are some issues that we strive to address:

Know Your Limits
As states continue to feel the pinch of the recession, and public school funding does not keep pace with enrollment, foundations are increasingly being asked to send resources to our public schools. But as philanthropists, we must understand our place in a large, complex system. In 1972, the Ford Foundation published a critique of its own education reform efforts during the 1960s. The report observed that the foundation’s projects “underestimated the complexity of improving schools” and did not fully account for the difficulty of working with unions, community leaders and parents, or the effect of broader social conditions. Let this be a lesson for us going forward. 

Fund Innovation
Foundation funds are not large enough to the fill budget gaps left when public revenue decreases. We shouldn’t even attempt to pick up the slack when public dollars fall short. Instead, our money is best spent on programs that are experimental in nature, not plugging holes. It’s been said that foundation dollars can be the “passing gear” of society. As such we should always look to rev the engines of something new, even if it means a greater risk that we will fail.

Invest in Talent
The lion’s share of grant funding goes to pay for salaries.  We need to invest that money in talented people who are doing innovative work. There is no shortage of remarkable talent in public schools, from the classroom teacher to local superintendents. Identify those who are making a mark, support their work and pay them well enough to keep them in public schools. 

Stay Local
A scathing critique of the Annenberg Challenge in the 1990s concluded that the reason this funding was largely a failure is because the program was based on the notion that failing public schools simply needed expertise from talented and motivated outsiders. Public education is a huge enterprise in this country. Philanthropic dollars work best when they are used to identify a specific, local problem. This strategy builds greater trust between partners and foundations don’t try to bite off more than they can chew.

Be a Cheerleader
While our public education system undeniably needs reform, we must remain positive and humble. Harping on the words “failure” and “broken” is unhelpful to our efforts. Nor is it helpful to pretend that philanthropy can save the day. It might feel good to couch a grant as the “winning ticket” for a school, but it does a disservice to all of the wonderful, important things that others do for public schools. We must be the outspoken and optimistic cheerleaders on the side, sticking up for public education and believing in its success.

Bring Your Friends With You
Too often, I see grant makers get really excited about a project and then restrict the ability of other interested funders to join the effort. The best school improvement projects I’ve seen are ones that have multiple funding streams and buy-in from a broad swath of the community. If you find a project worth investing in, let your grant-making friends know they can share in the work and outcome.

There are very few institutions in our increasingly segmented society that have the opportunity to bring people together like public schools. Our government is polarized, our churches are segregated and we have even begun again to live apart from one another. If we invest in the right strategies, we strengthen an institution that democratizes and unites us. Education provides for our country’s future. It’s vitally important that we get this right.

Damon Circosta is the executive director of the A.J. Fletcher Foundation, which provides operational funding for Philanthropy Journal.

Grant seekers should focus ask on fit with grantmaker’s mission and goals

Special to Philanthropy Journal

Damon Circosta

I am sort of an odd duck in philanthropy circles. About a year ago, I left a job running a small election reform nonprofit to take a job as executive director of the A.J. Fletcher Foundation, a charitable foundation based in Raleigh, N.C.

I don't think career shifts like mine are common. Most of my peers don't go directly from a grant-seeking organization to running a foundation. Sure, there are a lot of people who have some background in the nonprofit sector, but the culture shock that comes from being on one side of the ask and suddenly thrust onto the opposite side makes for a unique perspective.

From this new vantage point, I am not only learning about grantmaking, but also developing keen insight into the do's and don'ts of the grant-seeking process. In writing occasional posts for Philanthropy Journal, I aim to share some of what I've learned to help those who interface with foundations as part of their job in the nonprofit sector. I hope that my perspective will prove useful, and that my insights help to shed some light on how everyone in the sector can better work together.

There is no avoiding the fact that there is a power imbalance between foundations and those who seek funds from them. While we might all be on the same page when it comes to the societal goals we seek to achieve, the way in which we go about that work is very different. The inclination is to not discuss it, or perhaps make light of it.

The bottom line is that grantmakers have a responsibility to determine whether it makes sense to move resources out of their organization and into yours. It's never an easy task to make these decisions, but it is essential to know whether an applicant’s mission and strategic plan aligns with our goals.

I'm not an expert on the issues we fund, and I find it refreshing when grant seekers don't ask to "pick my brain" or "get some advice." The fact that it's now my responsibility to help decide where resources in the nonprofit sector are spent does not make me smarter, more capable or uniquely qualified to do so.

It's useful to also recognize that foundations have very few external accountability mechanisms. The market doesn't shape our "product" like it would in the private sector, and the media and public opinion are rarely going to scrutinize the charitable impulses of an organization. Therefore, we must strive exceedingly hard to hold ourselves internally accountable. Our vision for how things ought to be might not be as tight or as focused as the nonprofits we fund, but our priorities come from deeply held convictions about how the world works.

Most grantmakers I know are not weighing proposal against one another to see which one is best. Grant seekers can help their case the most by conducting research to truly understand what a foundaiton is trying to achieve and to see if their own work fits into that vision.

I value this approach far more than the overall worthiness of a proposal. All of the organizations I have met with in the first year of my work at AJF are worthy. For me, the decision is all about fit.

Lastly, although a trend in philanthropy is to focus increasingly on data collection and using metrics to guide grantmaking, we all still understand that the lion's share of funds that go out our door are used to fund people. A grant proposal might be spot on--it might be crafted so well that it is used as an example in a nonprofit development class--but at the end of the day, we are in the business of making investments in people, and building trust and a relationship between parties is essential.

Our foundation is not staffed or organized to change the world ourselves. We know our role. We make the investments and the nonprofits, through their excellent leaders and staff, carry out the valuable, world-changing work.

Damon Circosta is the executive director of the A.J. Fletcher Foundation, whose mission is to support nonprofit organizations in their endeavors to enrich the lives and well-being of people in North Carolina.