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| Best Practices: Philanthropy |
Sum of the Parts
Eileen Gunn
10/01/2004
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One of their first projects was to give
money to the University of Minnesota’s medical school to fund the development of
a new curriculum that would introduce integrative medical care. They knew they
were, as Penny readily acknowledges, “trying to change the medical system with
$150,000,” and from early on began thinking about how they might find partners.
This is not as easy as it might initially appear. RWJ’s Tarini recommends
that we seek funding partners from among our existing network of fellow
grant-makers. “These things tend to grow out of personal relationships, where
you already know there’s a mutuality of interest on a broad level,” he says.
Unfortunately, not all foundation heads have such a network. They may discuss
plans with grant recipients, but do not routinely meet with other people who
support similar organizations.
| Arm twisting, cajoling and even gentle persuasion are definitely not
tactics anyone recommends when a potential member expresses
reluctance. Let that person ride off into the sunset. |
One useful resource is the Council on
Foundations affinity groups, which gather together members according to their
areas of interest. These groups, listed on the Council’s website at www.cof.org, meet periodically or host online
forums to exchange ideas and generate collaborations among participants.
For
the Georges, however, establishing a network began with their own foundation
administrator, Diane Neimann, who knew many people in the fund-raising community
and began to spread the word through her connections. They invited other
foundation leaders to a conference at which health care professionals spoke
about how foundation money could make the most impact. That eventually led to
the Philanthropic Collaborative for Integrative Medicine, which the Georges
formed in 2002 with a group of roughly two dozen grant-makers interested in
holistic medical care.
One of the collaborative’s first projects was to
provide funding that enabled a group of six leading medical schools, including
Harvard and Duke, to jointly develop a curriculum; rather than providing six
grants to as many schools, they had a consortium that could accomplish the same
goal with one grant. By the late summer of this year, the group had 27 schools
involved and the collaborative was gearing up for step two: funding faculty
training for the new curriculum.
This is not to say it was easy for the
Georges to find matches for their particular philanthropic passion. Penny
grimaces: “It was like finding needles in haystacks.” It may take months for a
collaborative group to figure out its joint objectives, not to mention the
number of gatherings it might take just to get a group of people who started out
as strangers to trust one another. “People are gun-shy because almost any
contact they have has a hidden agenda. Everyone wants their money,” Penny
says.
Foundation leaders who have successfully worked with partners point out
that it often helps to tread into discussions of collaboration gradually,
starting out with a series of meetings or a conference where the goal is simply
to exchange information or learn more about a particular issue together, and
putting discussions about financial commitments on the back burner. Some of the
people the Georges invited to their first conference declined to join in on the
collaborative, preferring to work individually. Arm twisting, cajoling and even
gentle persuasion are definitely not tactics anyone recommends when a potential
member expresses reluctance. Let that person ride off into the sunset.
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