Why Progressive Donors Should Fund Organizational Operations
📷 credit: Stanley Dai via UnSplash
I am going to begin this article with a statement: If you wish to impact the progressive philanthropic space and approach your grantmaking in a way that is aligned with progressive values, you must fund organizational operations.
Progressive Philanthropy in Broad Strokes
Now, before we move any further - let’s chat briefly about what we mean by “progressive philanthropy.” Progressive philanthropy is a nebulous term. What the heck does it really mean? Even within the progressive sphere, values and the resultant strategy that emerges from those values fall on a very broad spectrum.
For the purposes of this conversation, let’s build the frame around two foundational progressive ideas that underpin the vast majority of work in the progressive landscape:
The need for overarching systemic change;
The elevation and prioritization of a justice lens in the pursuit of said change.
If you have any background in social change work, these two concepts will be familiar to you. As funders, these ideas drive the mission and work of the organizations that we support. I would challenge you to extend the reach of these ideas to not just what organizations and work you support, but how you support those organizations and work.
Philanthropy vs. Charity
To many, philanthropy is often thought of as synonymous with charity. While they are related, often work together, and are both needed, they are not the same. Charity is an empathic response of aid to an acute need. Children are hungry, we feed them. People are sick, we get them access to medicine. Philanthropy, on the other hand, is a gift and investment intended to support longer term solutions to ongoing acute needs (sounds like overarching systemic change, doesn’t it?).
This differentiation is important because it directly impacts both the underlying assumptions and frameworks of our giving strategy and the means by which we measure “success.”
Success through a “charity frame” is most often measured by counting the “number of people impacted” by the work - how many sandwiches are given to hungry kids, how many doses of medicine are given to communities in need. These metrics are useful and incredibly important, but they are not only metrics that should be used in a “philanthropic frame.”
Success through a “philanthropy frame” is complex - harder to measure and definitely harder to count. Measuring the health, strength, resilience, and sustainability of organizations, communities, and societal systems is complicated - much more complicated that counting sandwiches and doses of medication.
Coming back to our framework of “underlying progressive values,” if we truly want to impact positive systemic change and elevate justice and equity in those transitions, we must support both the work that calls to us and the humans and organizations that are committed to executing that work. It is not enough to only address acute needs. We must also support the people and organizations that do the on-the-ground labor of delivering that support. That is why as progressive donors, we must support organizational operations and we must do so generously.
A Business Perspective
As a donor advisor that came to the work from a business background, the single most important area of analysis for me is organizational sustainability. The work, no matter how important, aligned, or inspiring, doesn’t matter if the organization committed to doing said work is not set up for sustainability. As funders and non-profit leaders, we must address organizational health first. Inspiration is irrelevant if ongoing implementation is impossible.
Now I know that this is an incredibly (and perhaps off putting) pragmatic perspective. Most people come to their philanthropy from an emotional empathic place, and there is great value in that. It is necessary and beautiful. Humans should be concerned about humanity. But the next step is to leverage that emotion into implementation and sustained impact.
This does not mean that organizations need to have perfect balance sheets and everything all figured out to deserve attention and support. It does not negate or diminish the fact that all of this work begins with a spark of human feeling. It means that all of us - organizations, donors, citizens of the Earth - must be thinking about how to build and fund the necessary scaffolding and infrastructure to support the inspiration, work, and emotional fortitude that is needed to collectively move us forward
Valuing the Humans Behind the Missions
As a donor advisor that works in a specifically progressive and justice focused firm, I brush up on a lot of different areas - climate, conservation, Indigenous rights, civil rights, activism, policy enforcement, health equity - different donors are called to different causes. But one of the common threads of this work is this - there are no quick solutions - no sprints, only marathons.
We must support the people and organizations that are on the ground running those marathons day after day, month after month, year after year. The world’s changemakers are not an expendable resource to be used up and thrown away when they are empty, broken, and emotionally burned out.
This is why donors must consider the way in which they view and measure the success of their philanthropic work in the world. As a donor, are you considering both the acute work that needs to be done and the needs and welfare of the people that have committed themselves to doing that work?
Stretch your reflection just a little bit more and think about the long term emotional and physical endurance of the people that make up those organizations that you support. What investment do they deserve? How might an investment in their stability and wellbeing positively impact the long term work on the ground?
The Challenge of Securing Operational Funding
As a sweeping statement, securing stable year over year operational funding is difficult. It is much easier for nonprofits and NGOs to obtain program specific funding. This makes sense. It feels good to fund program work. It is easy to measure the good that is being done when you can count the sandwiches and doses of medication. It is less inspiring and emotionally gratifying to support the salaries, benefits, rent, and office supplies of an organization. But why is it less inspiring? Not as easy to measure? Harder to directly tie dollars to sandwiches?
Going deeper, for many, it may be uncomfortable to extend trust and relinquish power to organizations and the communities that those organizations serve. How do we know that our “investments” are being used wisely? How do we know that they are buying the cheapest pens and making the most economical choices when it comes to benefits? If we can’t count the sandwiches, how will we know?
These are trust and power questions that are too complex to be unraveled in a single post, but as an invitation to inquiry, consider this: If we believe that our current system is broken, inadequate, unjust, and inefficient. Why would we use the assumptions and metrics of that current system to build our strategy and measure our success in changing it?
I hope the points and perspectives raised in this post help to challenge you to consider the assumptions that guide your philanthropic strategy and I invite you to keep this conversation in mind as you navigate your own continuous journey of evolution and self reflection.