Board Bias for Control
Funder CEOs and staff speak of their board’s bias for control, including avoiding risk (vs. embracing risk capital), holding up a paradigm of grant success/failure vs. a paradigm of learning, and focusing on individual grantee results instead of portfolio results that map to the funders’ mission.
Data Highlight
Nonprofit leaders rated board biases the number two barrier to more flexible grantmaking (Accelerating Equitable Grantmaking Survey, MilwayPLUS, November 2021, n=30).
Additional Resources
Making It Happen: A Conversation Guide, Center for Effective Philanthropy resource for foundations seeking to start providing, or to provide more, multi-year general operating support grants
“Building Long-Term Partnerships with Nonprofits to Scale Impact,” Philanthropy News Digest article on lessons learned from sustained funding relationships
Getting Started:
-
Discuss the impact that you’d like to see through your portfolio of grantmaking, and the values underlying those aspirations for impact. Identify where your values and beliefs may be in tension with your actions as a foundation and discuss ways to align them better.
-
Build time into board meetings to discuss portfolio-wide impact and how the foundation could lean more into longer-term support for the issues that you care about.
-
Identify which of your grantees would be most compelling to your board and invite the grantee to come present on their work and explain the benefits of long-term, flexible support.
-
Tell your program officer that you’d value presenting your work to the board and prepare to show the positive impact of general operating support on advancing your shared mission as well as realistic timelines for change.