Tropophilia

In a guest post on Tactical Philanthropy, I write about a session at the Council on Foundations conference called “Drowning in Paperwork, Distracted from Purpose.” This post might only be of real interest to folks who are involved in nonprofit fundraising or organized philanthropy, but I found the session really useful. Here’s an excerpt of my post:

I attended a session Monday afternoon that, frankly, won’t sound nearly as sexy and exciting as some of the topics covered recently by my fellow bloggers (micro philanthropy, socially responsible investing, venture philanthropy, etc). And yet “Drowning in Paperwork, Distracted from Purpose” spawned a great discussion about desperately needed measures for improving the grantmaking process that (I hope) a number of funders will implement when they return home from DC.

I go on to describe a few ideas that–while certainly not revolutionary–would help funder-grantee relations significantly, and help nonprofits (AND foundations) focus more on the important elements of their work. One example:

“Start[ing] from Zero:” the notion that foundation staff and board members should start from scratch and ask themselves “what information do I absolutely need?” to evaluate a grant proposal or project. Starting from zero means that funders should always be able to articulate to their grantees WHY they need follow-up materials, grant reports, a letter of support, etc. Many nonprofits interviewed for the study reported frustration from submitting reports to funders and not hearing any feedback. One nonprofit executive quoted in the study quipped: “We assume that [the funders] feed everything to a giant fiery furnace.” Starting from zero encourages funders to only request information that will be used in learning from grants or evaluating past and future efforts.

You can read the rest here. I should have one or two more guest posts at Tactical Philanthropy as I look back to my notes from the last few days. But let me take the opportunity to express what a pleasure it’s been to meet Sean and my fellow guest-bloggers this week, and to see segments of such a traditional-minded sector embrace blogging wholeheartedly. Good stuff; many thanks to Sean and Tactical Philanthropy for the opportunity.