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.

“You have to have a lot of risk tolerance and the flexibility to change direction midstream, and not everyone does,” notes Chris Page, senior vice president of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors in New York, a firm that advises individuals and foundations on their philanthropic strategies, manages administrative details and helps clients set up collaborations. One of the firm’s earlier collaborative missions was to help individual members of the Rockefeller family join together with one another and other philanthropists on projects, including one they started in 1993 to keep community gardens growing in New York.

Gabfests Galore
Anyone thinking of embarking on a collaborative effort should be prepared to spend many months just talking with other interested people. Once the group actually gets off the ground—assuming it does—the dialogue will continue in periodic meetings, and members should have an agreement as to whether those meetings are monthly, quarterly or semiannual. “It takes a lot of time and effort and management to make a collaboration work. You have to count on it taking more time than you plan,” cautions Page. “Information-sharing, evaluation and assessment throughout are really important. You might have to alter your plans, and you want to have all the information you need in time to make those kinds of decisions promptly.”

Melinda Marble found that it took more than a year of talking to get a collaborative venture going. She is executive director of the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Charitable Foundation in Boston, where the focus is on combating homelessness in the area. Last year, the Fireman Foundation joined with four other foundations to form a group called Home Funders, which plans to provide home loans for 4,000 low-income families in Massachusetts over the next 10 years. The genesis was in 2001 when Highland Street Connection invited other grant-makers to a minisummit on homelessness.

“We wanted to keep it simple, but we still had endless conversations,” Marble says. “Since it’s such a long-term project, we had to protect each institution. We had to make everyone feel empowered, but at the same time recognize that some were taking on bigger risks [by committing more funding] than others.” Some of the people involved decided the plan was too complicated and opted out, but those who stayed in were the truly committed. In addition to agreeing on the crucial points of goals, time frame and structure, they also had to establish consensus on the minutia, such as how often they would meet and which issues would be subject to group vote versus which would be left to the biggest funders to decide. The verdict was that while everyone would have an equal share on the major issues, each member would have shares based on how much funding it was providing when it came to voting on day-to-day details.

Because Home Funders was in the business of investing in loans, rather than bestowing grants, the group found it necessary to work with lawyers who would make sure their assets were not at undue risk and that they were in compliance with IRS rules. Not all collaborations need elaborate legal advice. Page advises, nonetheless, that it is good practice to get the shared beliefs and objectives down in writing. “That way,” he says, “you have that reminder of where you were initially headed as you go along.”

The initial objectives are important, too, when a collaboration is successful enough to attract bigger brass, as has Home Funders, which currently has 126 homes under construction. In June, State Street Corp., Fidelity Management Trust and the Annie E. Casey Foundation joined the project and committed a total of $2.5 million, which the Fireman Foundation and Highland Street Connection will match.

In a successful collaboration, every participant has to forego a few accolades in the interest of a joint mission. Penny George says one of the reasons her group works well together is that “there isn’t huge ego.” When new philanthropists express interest in joining the collaborative, the group invites them to a few meetings to make sure they have both the drive to become active members and the humility to work well as part of a team. “We could all get more credit and renown by working on our own locally,” she says, “but we’re doing something more powerful than any of us could have done ourselves.”

Illustration by Jim Frazier.