Published by Chronicle of Philanthropy
The James Irvine Foundation asked five veteran nonprofit leaders what philanthropy gets wrong. They didn’t hold back.
The James Irvine Foundation asked recipients of its Leadership Awards, given over the past 20 years to people who apply innovative solutions to California’s most pressing problems: “What should philanthropy know right now?”
The answers reveal how grant makers can better support the leaders and organizations at the forefront of the most important and difficult issues of the day.
Here is feedback for funders from five leaders who’ve spent decades addressing major challenges — and have earned the right to be blunt about what philanthropy can do better.
Sustain the work; trust the outcomes.
Ellen Beck was a family physician in San Diego when she saw a need: providing comprehensive health care to people who had fallen through the safety net. In 1997, she began a clinic in a church basement where volunteer licensed clinicians supervised health-professional students as they provided free, high-quality medical, dental, and mental health care to people who had nowhere else to turn.
The UCSD Student-Run Free Clinic Project grew over time, becoming a national model that now handles more than 4,000 visits annually in many communities. The project focuses on human-centered, thorough care but costs only, on average, $800 per patient per year while training a new generation of physicians committed to underserved communities.
Beck says, “The need is vast, so please fund the work — the care and services — not only something new. Join other philanthropic leaders in funding ongoing services. It is good to fund assessments of what is needed and outcomes, but often those are clear and philanthropy can focus on the people served and inspiring the next generation.”
Normalize failure and offer more than money.
In 2012, Doniece Sandoval was a marketing executive raising her family in San Francisco. She witnessed elderly neighbors facing eviction and homelessness. An idea was born when Sandoval encountered a woman on the street crying, “I will never be clean!”
Learning that San Francisco had only 16 public showers for as many as 7,000 people living on the streets, she crowdfunded $75,000 to buy buses the city was retiring and retrofit them with showers and toilets.
Her organization, Lava Mae, went on to provide showers to thousands of people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco, then Los Angeles, and seeded the launch of 72 shower programs across the country. But after a decade of work, Sandoval encountered significant swings in funding and closed the organization during a year of shortfalls, instead turning its model into a tool kit for cities around the world to replicate.
Let your grantees know that failure, even if small, is inevitable and that you see it as an opportunity for growth.
About philanthropy, she reflects, “Let your grantees know that failure, even if small, is inevitable and that you see it as an opportunity for growth. That way, when they experience it, they’ll feel they can turn to you for help if needed. And explore what resources you have that grantees might use — meeting space, conference invitations, volunteers, the ability to facilitate collaborations between grantees.”
Fund leadership innovations — and experiment yourselves.
Eunice Lin Nichols co-leads CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org), a nonprofit working to turn a moment when more generations are alive at once than ever before into one in which older and younger people join forces to solve problems and co-create the future.
She never envisioned having this leadership role. “Most of my career I would have described myself as a No. 2,” Nichols says. “I didn’t see any models of leadership I wanted to step into.”
When its founder and CEO Marc Freedman asked Nichols to take over, she put off a response. The lone-ranger model of a CEO never appealed to her, and she didn’t want to lose Freedman’s expertise. Eventually she said she’d do it only as a co-leader. That co-generational partnership became the organization’s core thesis.
CoGenerate now builds intergenerational infrastructure across civic, educational, faith, and workplace settings. Nichols believes that if generations practice collaboration early and often, the dramatic power handoffs that destabilize organizations and communities become unnecessary.
Foundations can play a vital role supporting these experiments — and trying it themselves, says Nichols: “Collaborative or co-generational leadership is the wave of the future, and it will be really hard to do without philanthropy’s partnership. This is the more resilient model. I can’t tell you how many people in leadership roles have struggled with child care, elder care, and their own care. Co-leading is not a sign of weakness; it is the opposite. It’s an investment in what we all need more of — interdependence — and philanthropy itself should play around with this model themselves.”
Give more when the needs are greatest.
When Tony Brown took over Heart of Los Angeles in 2006, it was an after-school program in a single building. The organization had begun 17 years earlier in a church gym with five kids and a basketball to help get students off the streets.
Brown transformed the program into a community campus serving 3,100 young people a year, nearly all from families living in poverty. The nonprofit now offers visual arts, music, athletics, and academic support, including college prep and scholarships. About 900 youths visit the main community campus daily, guided by mentors who take their aspirations seriously.
Among its elementary students, 94 percent perform at or above grade level, 80 percent of middle schoolers maintain or improve their grades, and college-bound students greatly outpace expectations.
Now is the time for philanthropy to be loud, proud, and to distribute a larger percentage of their assets. Be bold, give more.
The strains on low-income families and the institutions that serve these students have never been greater. Brown argues for bold, sustained investment in young people who are routinely underestimated — especially in our current funding climate.
“This moment is akin to COVID. Communities serving immigrants and people of color are facing threats that require a COVID-like response,” says Brown. “It’s a time for philanthropy to give more — not just the 5 percent payout but 6 to 7 percent (or more) for a few years to support the safety net. This is an emergency that affects everyone.”
Show up in the field and share power.
Keith Wattley’s family has endured the pain of unresolved trauma: His sister’s untreated childhood trauma led to addiction, isolation, and years of incarceration, affecting multiple generations.
Wattley founded UnCommon Law because he saw that prison rarely offers counseling to help incarcerated people understand and heal from experiences that contribute to incarceration. To fill the gap, he developed a trauma-informed model of advocacy for people incarcerated for serious crimes. He believes that people should have competent legal representation and real opportunities for healing and change behind bars instead of isolation and more harm.
UnCommon Law’s counselors and lawyers help clients develop accountability while understanding how their histories shaped their actions. Clients are two to three times more likely to receive parole, and they have a post-release recidivism rate of just 1 percent, compared with 65 percent for the broader prison population.
Labels attached to more difficult cases make fundraising hard, even from funders committed to criminal justice reform. He advises funders, “Truly partner with us. Join us in the field and meet the people we work with behind bars. It’s nice to be a grantee, but a partner sees what we see and do. Then you can use that proximity and perspective to make our work more impactful.”
He echoes the sentiment of other grantees in this difficult moment for nonprofits and the country: “Now is not the time to play it safe or for business as usual. Recognize that nonprofits fill a critical gap in society’s infrastructure, especially with attacks on that infrastructure. Now is the time for philanthropy to be loud, proud, and to distribute a larger percentage of their assets. Be bold, give more.”