Focus on Funders - Local Funding Partnerships
Learn how local funders:
Developing a Funders' Collaborative
“If you went around and said ‘raise your hand if you are now currently or have previously funded this agency,’ most hands would go up. We’re all in the business of health and human care services,” says Ann Vazquez, president and CEO of the Lutheran Foundation of St. Louis. “Many foundations support the same organizations but we see ourselves as the sole funders responding to an individual request.”
Now Vazquez reports grantmakers are moving from parallel funding to proactive collaboration. “Nine funders in one collaborative as we have supporting the Aging Out of Foster Care Initiative is still not the norm. But it is more common to bring two or three other funders to the table. We have a greater impact when we work together.”
“At first putting together a group of funders was a fundraising technique: more partners equals more money,” explains Betsi Kassebaum, executive director of the Topple Family Foundation in Boca Raton, FL. “Over the years we’ve learned that it’s really about sustainability.” She says that building the right partnerships for a project with the right audience and the right product will help an issue maintain the interest of the community when the funders eventually move on to something else.
Sometimes a core group of grantmakers establish an ongoing collaborative such as the health funders who meet regularly in St. Louis, MO. According to Sister Joan Kuester, executive director of the Daughters of Charity Healthcare Foundation, they have lunch every two months to discuss their foundations, issue areas, and projects where they could collaborate in a small way. It doesn’t always require the magnitude of their commitment to the Aging Out Initiative.
Bridget Flood, executive director of the Incarnate Word Foundation, says that sharing passion around an issue is important, but the essential ingredients for a successful collaboration are:
- High level of trust
- Long-term relationships
- Experience in collaboration
- System change
- Commitment to the goal rather than particular programs/agencies, and
- Leaving personal agendas at the door.
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