Learn how local funders:

• Develop a collaborative
• Create a new project
• Share responsibility
• Apply to Local Funding Partnerships

Sharing Responsibility

Looking at the funders’ collaboratives in Boca Raton, FL that supports the Caregiving Youth Project and in St. Louis, MO that funds the Aging Out of Foster Care Initiative, we find some similar characteristics.

1. The funders agreed on the problem to be addressed and the intervention to solve the problem, and all are passionate about helping to achieve successful outcomes.
2. Funders contributed different dollar amounts and different levels of other resources, yet all the participating grantmakers have an equal voice in decisions.
3. The funders act in many ways like an external board:
   • Meeting regularly to monitor progress against goals and objectives
   • Recruiting additional support through their community contacts whether in dollars, in-kind donations, publicity or participants
4. All support is welcome.
   • Some grantmakers contribute to the project although they don’t wish to be involved in governance.
   • Their contribution may be restricted such as funding an evaluation or publications, or providing services such as health care at a hospital, or even sharing volunteers or staff.

However, the two collaboratives have developed different styles of internal governance. No two communities are alike and both models are presented here.

1. Role of a lead funder
   • In St. Louis the Incarnate Word Foundation serves as lead funder in name only, for example to fill the blank on a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation matching grants application that calls for “the nominating funder.”
     
     The nine funders meet regularly and have divided themselves into three active subcommittees: oversight, fiscal review, and communications/advocacy.
   • In Boca Raton the executive directors of the Toppel Family Foundation and the Schmidt Family Foundation provide the day-to-day support as co-lead funders.
     
     They lead the ongoing fundraising so that the project director is free to develop the program.
2. Use of consultants
   • In St. Louis the funders hired a freelance consultant to coordinate all the work required from one meeting to the next while they were in the process of researching and setting up the project. The consultant gathered and summarized data, investigated other models, and coordinated the Request for Qualifications sent out to nonprofit agencies.
   • In Boca Raton, the collaborative uses a community fiscal agent with its own influential board of directors. The Palm Beach County Education Commission accounts for the distribution of funds to the project as local funders cut checks at different times of the year.
3. Reporting
   • In St. Louis the funders meet with the project leadership quarterly and all are able to accept the same reports on the same schedule.
   • In Boca Raton all the funders receive quarterly reports from the project director. However, the grantmakers have different funding cycles and reporting requirements. A chart was created to outline the timing of reports due to different foundations with an eye towards consolidating as much as possible.

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