Friday Rewind

The Friday Rewind offers a snapshot of PhilanthroNews —  that means news stories, articles, events of note, or information updates — from around our network and throughout the broad world of philanthropy. Whether you take a quick skim of the material or a deep dive through each item we hope to help inform your work and inspire your thinking.

1.  “Divest/Invest: From Criminalization to Thriving Communities” is a new toolkit website launched by Funders for Justice, a program of Neighborhood Funders Group. This website toolkit was created for funders to inspire proactive work to divest this nation’s resources from criminalization. Learn about the different ways to get involved, through coalitions, access to resources, and more.
2. “Deciding Together: Shifting Power and Resources Through Participatory Grantmaking” looks at why and how funders are engaging in participatory grantmaking and shifting decision-making power to the very communities impacted by funding decisions. Through examples and insights from a diverse range of participatory grantmakers, the report explores the benefits, challenges, and models of participatory grantmaking.
3. “Great Funder-Nonprofit Relationships” is a toolkit from Exponent Philanthropy  designed to help funders recognize the aspects of great relationships with your nonprofit partners, assess competencies, and consider ways to improve how to work with one another. Many ideas in this toolkit were generated by funders and nonprofits during a series of half-day programs around the country, hosted in partnership with the National Council of Nonprofits and with funding from the Fund for Shared Insight.
4. Strong organizations, leaders, and networks are crucial to foundations’ and nonprofits’ ability to achieve shared goals. What support are foundations seeking to provide to help grantees strengthen their organizations? Is that support in line with what grantees really need? How can funders be most helpful in this area? Based on survey responses from 170 nonprofit CEOs on CEP’s Grantee Voice panel and 187 foundation leaders who primarily oversee programmatic work at their organizations, Strengthening Grantees: Foundation and Nonprofit Perspectives provides a comprehensive examination of foundations’ efforts to strengthen grantee organizations and leaders. The data reveals that foundations are not as in touch with nonprofits’ needs as they think they are, and that both foundations and nonprofits alike have a role to play in closing the gap between the support nonprofits need and the support foundations provide.The findings in this report can help foundations and nonprofits better understand how they can work together to build organizations that are well positioned to make a difference.
5. As foundations become increasingly involved with public policy initiatives, articles such as “Philanthropy’s Real Value to the Public Sector” help illustrate the productive relationships that can be formed. Most of today’s philanthropists seek not to replace public solutions with private ones but to catalyze government to take new kinds of action — to take risks and experiment with new ideas, to move quickly and pivot easily, and to pay attention to issues that have been neglected.

Friday Rewind is published each Friday by NY Funders Alliance staff. To submit a story for the Friday Rewind, please email programs@nyfunders.org.