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. Project Streamline arose when a group of membership and other infrastructure groups that support grantmaking and grantseeking organizations came together under the leadership of PEAK Grantmaking (then called Grants Managers Network) to address a fundamental issue in the philanthropic sector: the burden of grant application, monitoring, and reporting on nonprofit organizations .
2. The net grant calculator helps you decide which grants to pursue and helps you prioritize those grants with the highest net grant value to your organization. Grantseekers can use the tool to help them calculate – and understand – their return on investment for grantseeking activities and ensure that you’re spending time on what’s most important.
3. When we provide funding that gives nonprofits space to innovate and the security to know our support is here for the long haul, they worry less about their own survival and focus more on responding to shifts in their environment and lifting up their communities. GEO’s research shows that grantmakers who are more connected to their grantees are more likely to provide the support that nonprofits need to be successful. Making a real difference on some of the most deep-rooted, systemic problems our communities face requires us to give nonprofits the support they need to grow and become stronger for the long-term.  Read more here
4. The Full Cost Project aims to shift the focus from overhead to outcomes and what good outcomes really cost. Simply put, the full cost includes all necessary costs for a nonprofit organization to deliver on mission and to be sustainable over the long term. Like any enterprise (think of for-profit corporations), nonprofits and social enterprises must be able to cover the whole cost of their programs and operations if they are to deliver excellent outcomes over time
5. Trust-Based Philanthropy is informed by our decade of experience that funder-grantee relationships are stronger when they are built on the foundation of trust. The idea is simple: philanthropy can be more effective when funders approach their grantee relationships from a place of trust, rather than suspicion. Trust-Based Philanthropy reimagines traditional funder-grantee relationships by addressing the inherent power imbalances that exist between foundations and nonprofits. Infused by core values of equity, humility, transparency, curiosity, and collaboration, Trust-Based Philanthropy envisions a world in which funders authentically partner with grantees in a spirit of service. A trust-based approach relies on six  interrelated principles which, when practiced together, contribute to greater equity in the sector: Read the principles here